Alexandria in the Victorian Period

What better Victorian example than the British bombardment of Alexandria in 1882, when Homer's #1 fan, William Gladstone, was Prime Minister? These two excerpts are from the same article in The New York Times from July 15, 1882.

Below is a cartoon by Albert Bigelow Paine about the incident, I don't have an exact date for it.

George Grote

Here are two short excerpts from A History of Greece from the earliest period to the close of the generation contemporary with Alexander the Great  Volume X p. 206 and 209
Vasunia quotes his point about Polybius on page 98 of "Alexander and Asia: Droysen and Grote".

Louis-Francois Cassas visits Alexandria 1785

The Rosetta Gate

Canopic Way

Cleopatra's Needles (I've seen the structure in the background referred to as both the Tower of the Romans and the ruins of the ancient Musaeum but unfortunately I couldn't find any indication of what Cassas thought he was drawing)

Niebuhrmania

 This image of Niebuhr in a dashing orientalist outfit is credited to C.C. Glas Bach at the Danish Royal Library. 

Sold on the idea by a professor at Gottingen, King Frederik V sponsored Carsten Niebuhr and five others on an Arabian journey from 1761 to 1767. Like a veteran of the Oregon Trail, Niebuhr watched all his traveling companions die on the voyage. When he returned, he wrote Travels through Arabia and other countries in the East.

He mentions the Obelisk of Cleopatra and the Pillar of Pompey but explains that few monuments remain because, “the Mahometans in general, and especially the inhabitants of Alexandria, break down the finest monuments of antiquity, to employ the fragments in the most wretched structures unimaginable. Whenever they are at any loss for materials for building, they scruple not to dig up the foundation stones of the ancient walls and palaces. If one happens to find a beautiful column in his garden, he will rather make mill-stones out of it, than preserve it.” p 33.

Niebuhr’s displays his deep cultural sensitivity in his description of export laws:

“The Turks have absolutely forbidden the exportation of dead bodies or mummies […] however, as the customhouse of Alexandria is at present under the direction of Jews, we found means to procure one mummy and carry it on board an Italian vessel. But we were obliged to return it; for all the Italian sailors threatened to leave the ship, if the Captain did not send away that Pagan carcase (sic), which could not fail to bring some mischief upon them.” p 35.

He also tells a charming story of Catholic priests claiming that they carried away the head of Saint Mark by disguising it as salted pork so it wouldn’t be inspected at customs.

Lions and tigers and flying camps of wild Arabians: F.L. Norden comes to town

Here is an appraisal of Alexandria from Frederick Lewis Norden, a Danish explorer who published his original text in 1755. Norden describes the Obelisk of Cleopatra, so named because her palace was said to be located there. He is very impressed with the gate of Rosetta and the column of Pompey, the measurements of which he describes in detail. A description of Cleopatra's canal warns of the flying camps of wild Arabians lurking nearby. 

It seems that the modern city leaves much to be desired: 

"New Alexandria may justly be looked on as a poor orphan who has no other inheritance but the respectable name if its father. The ancient city's wide extent, is contracted, in the new, to a small neck of land between the two ports. The most superb of her temples are dwindled into inconsiderable mosques; her most magnificent palaces are degraded into dwelling-houses, of a very paltry structure: the imperial residence is debased into a prison for slaves. A once wealthy and numbers people are now misrepresented by a few interested strangers, and a collection of wretches who live in sordid dependence. A mart, formerly so celebrated for its extensive commerce, is now decayed to a meer landing-place. Alas, it cannot be compared to the phoenix, that from its ashes springs anew into life; no, it is a poor crawling insect, the spawn of filth, and infected by the Alcoran: such is the fallen Alexandria of our days, and therefore undeserving a formal description." (18)

Week 3b Paintings: Napoleon rides in on a white horse and all reach out to him

Feeder Napoleon in Alexandria on 3 July 1798: His grace to an Arab family Guillaume-François Colson

Battle of the Pyramids, July 21, 1798  Antoine-Jean Gros

Week 3

 This is an excerpt from a work by Benoit de Maillet, who died long before the Revolution, but whose perspective is lumped in with C.F. Volney. This book was published posthumously in 1748, ten years after his death, and then again in 1797, in time for Napoleon's campaign in Egypt.

Telliamed, Or, The World Explain'd:Containing Discourses Between an Indian Philospher and a Missionary, on the Diminution of the Sea, the Formation of the Earth, the Origin of Men & Animals : and Other Singular Subjects, Relating to Natural History & Philosphy ; a Very Curious Work. 

Benoit de Maillet W. Pechin, no. 15, Market-Street, 1797

P. 138 

Of the lofty and vast Alexandria, which extended from the Bigueirs to the tower of the Arabians, forty Italian miles, there now remains no more than some pillars standing or thrown down, and some cisterns found in the middle of the mountains composed of their own ruins. The present Alexandria, which only contains some refugees from Barbary and Morea, is not so much as situated with the bounds possessed by ancient Alexandria, since it is built upon the sand which has filled up the ancient harbour of that city.

Week 2

I thought it would be relevant to examine the entry for Alexandria in the first edition of Encyclopaedia Brittanica, released at the end of the period covered in this week’s readings, to see how much attention was devoted to it.

Encyclopaedia Britannica; or a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, Compiled on a New Plan. Vol. 1, 1st ed. 1771.

Page 78

ALEXANDRIA, a sea-port town of Egypt, situated in 31. 15. E. long. And 30. 40. N. lat. About fourteen miles westward of the most westerly branch of the river Nile.

For comparison, the entry on Athens, from page 501

ATHENS, anciently the capital of Attica, so famous for its learned men, orators, and captains, now called setines. It stands upon a plain watered by the rivers Illifus and Eridanus, about 40 miles east of the isthmus of Corinth. At present it is said to contain 10, 000 inhabitants, three parts of which are Christians. The town does not lie round the Castle as anciently, but on the north-west side of it. Here a Greek metropolitan resides. Among the many remains of antiquity, is the temple of Jupiter Olympius, and temple of Minerva, called Parthenion which last is still entire, and converted into a Turkish mosque, which as later travellers assure us, is the finest temple in the world. This city, as all the rest of Greece, is subject to the Turks. E. long. 24’ 15’ N. lat. 38’ 5’.

Though both entries are scant compared to those in subsequent editions, the difference between them is remarkable. In this first edition, Alexandria is nothing more than ‘a sea-port town’, reduced to a set of coordinates, while Athens is fleshed out to include references to ancient sites and, interestingly enough, the observations of recent travellers.