Alexandrian ship on a Coin of Commodus.
| the country. Mohammed Ali dug a canal, called El- Mahmoudieh (a compliment to Mahmoud, the father of the present sultan, Abd-el-Mejid), which opened a water communication with the Nile, entering that river at a place called Fouah, a few miles distant from the city. All about the city, but particularly to the south and east, are extensive mounds, and fragments of ancient luxury and magnificence, granite columns, marble statues, and broken pottery. The modern city of Alexandria is surrounded by a high wall, built by the Saracens between A.D. 1200-1300. Some parts of the walls of the old city still exist, and the ancient vaulted reservoirs, extending under the whole town, are almost entire. The ancient Necropolis is exca- vated out of the solid rock. The site of that part known to have been Rhacotis is now covered by the sea ; but beneath the surface of the water are visible the remains of ancient Egyptian statues and columns. Alexandria became not only the seat of commerce, but of learning and the liberal sciences. This distinc- tion also it owed to Ptolemy Soter, himself a man of education, who founded an academy, or society of learned men, who devoted themselves to the study of philosophy, literature, and science. For their use he made a collection of choice books, which by degrees increased under his successors until it became the finest library in the world, and numbered 700,000 vol- umes (Strab. xvii, p. 791 ; Euseb. Chron.). It sus- tained repeated losses by fire and otherwise, but these losses were as repeatedly repaired ; and it continued to be of great fame and use in those parts, until it was destroyed by a mob of Christians, A.D. 391, or, accord- ing to others, burnt by the Saracens, A.D. 642. See Alexandrian Library. Undoubtedly the Jews at Alexandria shared in the benefit of these institutions, as the Christians did afterward, for the city was not only a seat of heathen, but of Jewish, and subsequent- ly of Christian learning (Am. Bib. Repos. 1834, p. 1-21, 190, 617). The Jews never had a more profoundly learned man than Philo, nor the Christians men more erudite than Origen and Clement; and if we may judge from these celebrated natives of Alexandria, who were remarkably intimate with the heathen phi- losophy and literature, the learning acquired in the Jewish and Christian schools of that city must have been of that broad and comprehensive character which its large and liberal institutions were fitted to produce. It will be remembered that the celebrated translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek [see Septua- gint] was made, under every encouragement from Ptolemy Philadelphus, principally for the use of the Jews in Alexandria, who knew only the Greek lan- guage (see Sturz, De dialecto Macedomca et Alexan- drina, Lips. 1808) ; but partly, no doubt, that the great library might possess a version of a book so remarka- ble, and, in some points, so closely connected with the ancient history of Egypt. The work of Josephus against Apion affords ample evidence of the attention which the Jewish Scriptures excited. According to Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. ii, 17), Mark first introduced the Gospel into Alexandria; and, according to less au- thentic accounts, he suffered martyrdom here about A.D. 68. A church dedicated to this evangelist, be- longing to the Coptic (Jacobite) Christians, still ex- ists in Alexandria (liosenmuller, Bib. Geoff, iii, 291 sq.). The Jewish and Christian schools in Alexandria were long held in the highest esteem, and there is reason to believe that the latter, besides producing many eloquent preachers, paid much attention to the multiplying of copies of the sacred writings. The fa- mous Alexandrian manuscript (q. v.), now deposited in the British Museum, is well known. For many years Christianity continued to flourish at this seat of learn- ing, but at length it became the source, and for some time continued the stronghold, of the Arian heresy. The divisions, discords, and animosities which w< re. thus introducod rendered the churches of Alexandria
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an easy prey to the Arabian impostor, and they were swept away by his followers.
The population of Alexandria was mixed from the first (comp. Curt, iv, 8, 5), and this fact formed the groundwork of the Alexandrine character. The three regions into which the city was divided (Regio Judce- orum, Brucheium, Rhacutis) corresponded to the three chief classes of its inhabitants, Jews, Greeks, Egyp- tians ; but in addition to these principal races, repre- sentatives of almost every nation were found there (Dion Chrys. Orat. xxxii). According to Josephus, Alexander himself assigned to the Jews a place in his new city ; " and they obtained," he adds, "equal priv- ileges with the Macedonians" (Ap. ii, 4) in consider- tion "of their services against the Egyptians" (War, ii, 18, 7). Ptolemy I imitated the policy of Alexan- der, and, after the capture of Jerusalem, he removed a considerable number of its citizens to Alexandria. Many others followed of their own accord ; and all re- ceived the full Macedonian franchise (Josephus, Ant. xii, 1 ; comp. Ap. i, 22), as men of known and tried fidelity (Josephus, Ap. ii, 4). Alreadj' on a former occasion the Jews had sought a home in the land of their bondage. More than two centuries and a half before the foundation of Alexandria a large body of them had taken refuge in Egypt after the murder of Gedaliah ; but these, after a general apostasy, were carried captive to Babj'lon by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings xxv, 26; Jer. xliv; Josephus, Ant. x, 9, 7). The Jews, however much their religion was disliked, were valued as citizens, and every encouragement was held out by Alexander himself and by his suc- cessors in Egypt to induce them to settle in the new city. The same privileges as those of the first class of inhabitants (the Greeks) were accorded to them, as well as the free exercise of their religion and peculiar usages; and this, with the protection and securitj- which a powerful state afforded against the perpetual conflicts and troubles of Palestine, and with the in- clination to traffic which had been acquired during the captivity, gradually drew such immense numbers of Jews to Alexandria that they eventually formed a very large portion of its vast population, and at the same time constituted a most thriving and important section of the Jewish nation (Hecatams, in Josephus, Apion,2; War, ii, 36; Q. Curtius, iv, 8). The Jew- ish inhabitants of Alexandria are therefore often men- tioned in the later history of the nation, and their im- portance as a section of that nation would doubtless have been more frequently indicated had not the Jews of Egypt thrown off their ecclesiastical dependence upon Jerusalem and its temple, and formed a separate establishment of their own at On or Heliopolis. See On; Onias.