ABSTRACT
Alexandria has been inhabited continuously since its foundation in 331 BC, and is now a large, densely built-up modern city.1 At the beginning of the nineteenth century its fortunes were at a low ebb, and a plan made by Napoleon’s surveyors during his invasion of Egypt shows that at that time most of the site of the ancient city was unoccupied. It is particularly unfortunate, therefore, that the rapid expansion of the modern city in the nineteenth century destroyed most of the potential archaeological evidence before it could be recorded. Very little now survives, and the fragments which are visible or, if lost, have been reasonably well recorded are so few and scattered that no accurate plan of the ancient city is possible. Fortunately Alexandria was such an important, imposing city in antiquity that descriptions of it survive, the most important being those of Diodorus and especially Strabo.2 From these, and what archaeological evidence there is, an impression of the ancient city can be developed.
