ABSTRACT 055NF TR GREAVES, ed.
[email protected] Alexandria: a history and a guide, Edward M. Forster, 1961; Garden City, New York, Anchor Books. 243pp, indexed, illustrated.
Forster, the author of A Passage to India, A Room with a View, etc., wrote another ?tribute to Alexandria? entitled Pharos and Pharillon, published in 1923 by Alfred Knopf and Company. The volume reviewed here would be the ideal traveler?s compan-ion for a sojourn in the legendary city. The historical half begins with its founding by Alexander and ends with its bombardment, in 1882, by one Arabi, ?founder of the Egyp-tian Nationalist Party.? The guide section includes a plan and room-by-room description of the Greco-Roman Museum on the Rue de Musee. This institution is in the neighbor-hood of the Municipal Library: ?The Library is good considering its miserable endow-ment; the City that once had the greatest library in the world now cannot afford more than 300 pounds per annum for the combined purchase and binding of her books.? Sic transit gloria mvndi! All the famous landmarks (the Serapeum, the Pharos, Pompey?s Pillar, etc.) are described in detail with much additional historical material included. The location of Alexander?s lost tomb is guessed at and the loss of the Library duly lamented. Four infor-mative appendices provide further information on the death of Cleopatra, modern relig-ious communities, the uncanonical gospels of Egypt, and the Nicene Creed. Alexander was 25 when he founded his Egyptian capital; he went on to establish several more Alex-andrias during his conquests, each intended for the political and cultural hub of its region.
The book is written in highly readable prose and a better introduction to Alexandria Aegyptos would be hard to find.
KEYWORDS
Alexandria/ Cleopatra/ Hypatia/ Gnostics/ Pompey/ Julius Caesar/ early Christianity/ Isis/
Serapis/ the Museum/ Pharos/ Plotinus/ Clement/ Mark Antony/ Canopus/ Ptolomy Soter/
Demetrius Phalerus/ monasteries and churches
