ABSTRACT
The city of Alexandria is situated in the western part of the Nile Delta along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in eastern North Africa. It is named after its founder, Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.), who established the city as a world class cosmopolitan beacon of diversity in the ancient world. Strabo describes a city filled with public grounds, royal palaces, sacred temples, including the museion which was presided over by a priest appointed by Caesar. It also held the great Alexandrian library that embodied Alexandria’s stature as the global center of intellectual inquiry (Strabo, Geography XVII.7-10: 229-230). In the third century B.C., it was the home for the translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek in what became known as the Septuagint (LXX). It teemed with competing Gnostic sects, pagan temples, Jewish synagogues and Christian churches. All the major philosophical schools found a home in Alexandria, including the Stoics, Pythagoreans, Aristotelians, Platonists and others.
