The topographical position of Alexandria, selected by its illustrious founder, seems to have been chosen on account of its detachment from Egypt proper. The city was erected upon a strip of land having the Mediterranean on the one side and the Mareotic lake on the other. It was thus cut off from the hinterland far more effectively even than was Carthage by its semicircle of hills. Alexander had intended to make the city a purely Greek settlement, the port at which the Greeks should land their goods for distribution throughout Egypt, and whence the produce of the abundant Nile should be shipped to the north and west. He selected a remote corner of the Delta for his site, with the plain intention of holding his city at once free of, and in dominion over, Egypt; and so precisely was the location suited to his purpose that until this day Alexandria is in little more than name a city of the Egyptians. Even at the present time, when an excellent system of express railway trains connects Alexandria with Cairo and Upper Egypt, there are many well-to-do inhabitants who have not seen more that ten miles of Egyptian landscape; and the vast majority have never been within sight of the Pyramids. The wealthy foreigners settled in Alexandria often know nothing whatsoever about Egypt, and Cairo itself is beyond their ken. The Greeks, Levantines, and Jews, who now, as in ancient days, form a very large part of the population of Alexandria, would shed bitter tears of gloomy foreboding were they called upon to penetrate into the Egypt which the tourists and the officials know and love. The middle-class Egyptians of Alexandria are rarely tempted to enter Egypt proper, and even those who have inherited a few acres of land in the interior are often unwilling to visit their property.
Egypt as we know it is a terra incognita to the Alexandrian. The towering cliffs of the desert, the wide Nile, the rainless skies, the amazing brilliance of the stars, the ruins of ancient temples, the great pyramids, the decorated tombs, the clustered mud-huts of the villages in the shade of the dom-palms and the sycamores, the creaking sakkiehs or water-wheels, the gracefully worked shadufs or water-hoists,—all these are unknown to the inhabitants of Alexandria. They have never seen the hot deserts and the white camel-tracks over the hills, they have not looked upon the Nile tumbling over the granite rocks of the cataracts, nor have they watched the broad expanse of the inundation. That peculiar, undefined aspect and feeling which is associated with the thought of Egypt in the minds of visitors and residents does not tincture the impression of the Alexandrians. They have not felt the subtle influence of the land of the Pharaohs: they are sons of the Mediterranean, not children of the Nile.
The climate of Alexandria is very different from that of the interior of the Delta, and bears no similarity to that of Upper Egypt. At Thebes the winter days are warm and brilliantly sunny, the nights often extremely cold. The summer climate is intensely hot, and there are times when the resident might there believe himself an inhabitant of the infernal regions. The temperature in and around Cairo is more moderate, and the summer is tolerable, though by no means pleasant. In Alexandria, however, the summer is cool and temperate. There is perhaps no climate in the entire world so perfect as that of Alexandria in the early summer. The days are cloudless, breezy, and brilliant; the nights cool and even cold. In August and September it is somewhat damp, and therefore unpleasant; but it is never very hot, and the conditions of life are almost precisely those of southern Europe.
The winter days on the sea-coast are often cold and rainy, the climate being not unlike that of Italy at the same time of year. People must needs wear thick clothing, and must study the barometer before taking their promenades. While Thebes, and even the Pyramids, bask in more or less continual sunshine, the city of Alexandria is lashed by intermittent rainstorms, and the salt sea-wind buffets the pedestrians as it screams down the paved streets. The peculiar texture of the true Egyptian atmosphere is not felt in Alexandria: the air is that of Marseilles, of Naples, or of the Piræus.
In summer-time the sweating official of the south makes his way seaward in the spirit of one who leaves the tropics for northern shores. He enters the northbound express on some stifling evening in June, the amazing heat still radiating from the frowning cliffs of the desert, and striking up into his eyes from the parched earth around the station. He lies tossing and panting in his berth while the electric fans beat down the hot air upon him, until the more temperate midnight permits him to fall into a restless sleep. In the morning he arrives at Cairo, where the moisture runs more freely from his face by reason of the greater humidity, though now the startling intensity of the heat is not felt. Anon he travels through the Delta towards the north, still mopping his brow as the morning sun bursts into the carriage. But suddenly, a few miles from the coast, a change is felt. For the first time, perhaps for many weeks, he feels cool: he wishes his clothes were not so thin. He packs up his helmet and dons a straw hat. Arriving at Alexandria, he is amused to find that he actually feels chilly. He no longer dreads to move abroad in the sun at high noon, but, waving aside the importunate carriage-drivers, he walks briskly to his hotel. He does not sit in a darkened room with windows tightly shut against the heat, but pulls the chair out on to the verandah to take the air; and at night he does not lie stark naked on his bed in the garden, cursing the imagined heat of the stars and the moon, and praying for the mercy of sleep; but, like a white man in his own land, he tucks himself up under a blanket in the cool bedroom, and awakes lively and refreshed.
A European may live the year round at Alexandria, and may express a preference for the summer. The wives and children of English officials not infrequently remain there throughout the warmer months, not from necessity but from choice; and there are many persons of northern blood who are happy to call it their home. In Cairo such families rarely remain during the summer, unless under compulsion, while in Upper Egypt there is hardly a white woman in the land between May and October. Egypt is considered by them to be solely a winter residence, and the official is of opinion that he pays toll to fortune for the pleasures of the winter season by the perils and torments of the summer months. Even the middle and upper class Egyptians themselves, recruited, as they generally are in official circles, from Cairo, suffer terribly from the heat in the south—often more so, indeed, than the English; and I myself on more than one occasion have had to abandon a summer day’s ride owing to the prostration of one of the native staff.
The Egyptian of Alexandria and the north looks with scorn upon the inhabitants of the upper country. The southerner, on the other hand, has no epithet of contempt more biting than that of “Alexandrian.” To the hardy peasant of the Thebaid the term means all that “scalliwag” denotes to us. The northern Egyptian, unmindful of the relationship of a kettle to a saucepan, calls the southerner “black” in disdainful tones. A certain Alexandrian Egyptian of undiluted native stock, who was an official in a southern district, told me that he found life very dull in his provincial capital, surrounded as he was by “all these confounded niggers.” And if the Egyptians of Alexandria are thus estranged from those who constitute the backbone of the Egyptian nation, it will be understood how great is the gulf between the Greeks or other foreign residents in that city and the bulk of the people of the Nile.
I am quite sure that Cleopatra spoke of the Egyptians of the interior as “confounded niggers.” Her interests and sympathies, like those of her city, were directed across the Mediterranean. She held no more intimate relationship to Egypt than does the London millionaire to the African gold-mines which he owns. Alexandria at the present day still preserves the European character with which it was endowed by Alexander and the Ptolemies; or perhaps it were more correct to say that it has once more assumed that character. There are large quarters of the city, of course, which are native in style and appearance, but, viewed as a whole, it suggests to the eye rather an Italian than an Egyptian seaport. It has extremely little in common with the Egyptian metropolis and other cities of the Nile; and we are aware that there was no greater similarity in ancient times. The very flowers and trees are different. In Upper Egypt the gardens have a somewhat artificial beauty, for the grace of the land is more dependent upon the composition of cliffs, river, and fields. There are few wild-flowers, and little natural grass. In the gardens the flowers are evident importations, while the lawns have to be sown every autumn, and do not survive the summer. But in Alexandria there is always a blaze of flowers, and one notes with surprise the English hollyhocks, foxgloves, and stocks growing side by side with the plants of southern Europe. In the fields of Mariout, over against Alexandria, the wild-flowers in spring are those of the hills of Greece. Touched by the cool breeze from the sea, one walks over ground scarlet and gold with poppies and daisies; there bloom asphodel and iris; and the ranunculus grows to the size of a tulip. There is a daintiness in these fields and gardens wholly un-Egyptian, completely different from the more permanent grace of the south. One feels that Pharaoh walked not in fields of asphodel, that Amon had no dominion here amidst the poppies by the sea. One is transplanted in imagination to Greece and to Italy, and the knowledge becomes the more apparent that Cleopatra and her city were an integral part of European life, only slightly touched by the very finger-tips of the Orient.
Approximate plan of
ALEXANDRIA
in the time of Cleopatra.