Alexandria: A History and a Guide

by E. M. Forster

Rue Chérif Pacha, a smart little street bristling with flag staffs, leads out of the Square to the left of the Bourse. Here are the best shops. Towards the end, left, at the entrance of the Rue Toussoum Pacha, is the Banco di Roma, the finest building in the city. Architect, Gorra. A modified copy of the famous Palazzo Farnese, which Antonio da San Gallo and Michelangelo built in the 16th cent., at Rome. The materials are artificial stone and narrow bricks of a charming pale red. It has two stories as against the Farnese’s three, but there is a sort of half storey up under the heavy cornice. Each side of the door are elaborate torch holders of bent iron; over door, the Wolf of Rome. In a cosmopolitan city like Alexandria, which has never evolved an architecture of its own, there is nothing incongruous in this copy of the Italian Renaissance. A little further up Rue Toussoum Pacha is the Land Bank of Egypt, with a good semi-circular portico.

Rue Chérif Pacha then joins the Rue Rosette.

Rue Rosette.

This street, despite its modern appearance, is the most ancient in the city. It runs on the lines of the Canopic Way, the central artery of Alexander’s town, (p. [10]), and under the Ptolemies it was lined from end to end with marble colonnades. Its full title is “Rue de la Porte Rosette” from the Rosetta Gate in the old Arab walls through which it passed out eastwards (p. [81]). The Municipality have recently changed its name to the unmeaning Rue Fouad Premier, thus breaking one of the few links that bound their city to the past.

At its entrance, right, are:—the Caracol Attarine (British Main Guard); the Rue de la Gare du Caire, leading to the main railway station; and the Mohammed Ali Club, the chief in the town—a small temple to Serapis once stood on its site. Here too is Cook’s office.

100 yds. down it is crossed by the Rue Nebi Daniel and by a tramway. Here, in ancient times, was the main crossway of the ancient city—one of the most glorious places in the world (p. [10]). Achilles Tatius, a bishop who in A.D. 400 wrote a somewhat foolish and improper novel called Clitophon and Leucippe, thus describes it:—

The first thing one noticed in entering Alexandria by the Gate of the Sun (i.e. by the Rosetta Gate) was the beauty of the city. A range of columns went from one end of it to the other. Advancing down them, I came in time to the place that bears the name of Alexander, and there could see the other half of the town, which was equally beautiful. For just as the colonnades stretched ahead of me, so did other colonnades now appear at right angles to them.

Thus the tramway was also lined with marble once.

Turning to the right, a few yards up the Rue Nebi Daniel, we come to:—The Mosque of the Prophet Daniel which stands on the site of Alexander’s tomb—the “Soma” where he and some of the Ptolemies lay, buried in the Macedonian fashion (p. [19]). The cellars have never been explored, and there is a gossipy story that Alexander still lies in one of them, intact: a dragoman from the Russian Consulate, probably a liar, said in 1850 that he saw through a hole in a wooden door “a human body in a sort of glass cage with a diadem on its head and half bowed on a sort of elevation or throne. A quantity of books or papyrus were scattered around.” The present Mosque, though the chief in the city, is uninteresting; a paved approach, a white washed door, a great interior supported by four colonnades with slightly pointed arches. The praying niche faces south instead of the usual east. All has been mercilessly restored. Stairs lead down to two tombs, assigned to the Prophet Daniel and to the mythical Lukman the Wise; it is uncertain why or when such a pair visited our city. The tombs stand in a well-crypt of cruciform shape, above which is a chapel roofed by a dome and entered from the mosque through a door. Here and there some decorations struggle through the whitewash.

In a building to the right of the approach to the Mosque are the Tombs of the Khedivial Family, worth seeing for their queerness; there is nothing like them in Alexandria. The Mausoleum is cruciform, painted to imitate marble, and covered with Turkish carpets. Out of the carpet rise the tombs, of all sizes but of similar design, and all painted white and gold. A red tarboosh indicates a man, a crown with conventionalised hair a woman. The most important person buried here is Said Pacha—third tomb on the right. He was the son of Mohammed Ali and ruled Egypt 1854-1863: Mohammed Ali himself lies at Cairo.