This was changed, however, by the establishment of the Agricultural Bank. The government, which controls that bank, lends money to the farmers at eight per cent. to within half of the value of their farms. To-day, since the peasants all over Egypt can get money at this rate, the Greeks have had to reduce theirs.
The Italians number about forty thousand and the French twenty thousand. There are many Italian shops here in Alexandria, while there are hundreds of Italians doing business in Cairo. They also furnish some of the best mechanics. Many of them are masons and the greater part of the Aswan Dam and similar works were constructed by them.
There are also Germans, Austrians, and Russians, together with a few Americans and Belgians. The British community numbers a little over twenty thousand. Among the other foreigners are some Maltese and a few hundred British East Indians.
Sitting here at Alexandria in a modern hotel surrounded by the luxuries of Paris or New York, I find it hard to realize that I am in one of the very oldest cities of history. Yesterday I started out to look up relics of the past, going by mile after mile of modern buildings, though I was travelling over the site of the metropolis that flourished here long before Christ was born. From the antiquarian’s point of view, the only object of note still left is Pompey’s Pillar and that is new in comparison with the earliest history of Old Egypt, as it was put up only sixteen hundred years ago, when Alexandria was already one of the greatest cities of the world. The monument was supposed to stand over the grave of Pompey, but it was really erected by an Egyptian prefect in honour of the Roman emperor, Diocletian. It was at one time a landmark for sailors, for there was always upon its top a burning fire which was visible for miles over the Mediterranean Sea. The pillar is a massive Corinthian column of beautifully polished red granite as big around as the boiler of a railroad locomotive and as high as a ten-story apartment house. It consists of one solid block of stone, standing straight up on a pedestal. It was dug out of the quarries far up the Nile valley, brought down the river on rafts and in some way lifted to its present position. In their excavations about the pedestal, the archæologists learned of its comparatively modern origin and, digging down into the earth far below its foundation, discovered several massive stone sphinxes. These date back to old Alexandria and were chiselled several hundreds of years before Joseph and Mary brought the baby Jesus on an ass, across the desert, into the valley of the Nile that he might not be killed by Herod the King.
This city was founded by Alexander the Great three hundred and thirty-two years before Christ was born. It probably had then more people than it has to-day, for it was not only a great commercial port, but also a centre of learning, religion, and art. It is said to have had the grandest library of antiquity. The manuscripts numbered nine hundred thousand and artists and students came from all parts to study here. At the time of the Cæsars it was as big as Boston, and when it was taken by the Arabs, along about 641 A.D., it had four thousand palaces, four hundred public baths, four hundred places of amusement, and twelve thousand gardens. When Alexander the Great founded it he brought in a colony of Jews, and at the time the Mohammedans came the Jewish quarter numbered forty thousand.
At Alexandria St. Mark first preached Christianity to the Egyptians, and subsequently the city became one of the Christian centres of the world. Here Hypatia lived, and here, as she was about to enter a heathen temple to worship, the Christian monks, led by Peter the Reader, tore her from her chariot and massacred her. They scraped her live flesh from her bones with oyster shells, and then tore her body limb from limb.
Here, too, Cleopatra corrupted Cæsar and later brought Marc Antony to a suicidal grave. There are carvings of the enchantress of the Nile still to be seen on some of the Egyptian temples far up the river valley. I have a photograph of one which is in good preservation in the Temple of Denderah. Its features are Greek rather than Egyptian, for she was more of a Greek than a Simon-pure daughter of the Nile. She was not noted for beauty, but she had such wonderful charm of manner, sweetness of voice, and brilliancy of intellect, that she was able to allure and captivate the greatest men of her time.
Cleopatra’s first Roman lover was Julius Cæsar, who came to Alexandria to settle the claims of herself and her brother to the throne of Egypt. Her father, who was one of the Ptolemies, had at his death left his throne to her younger brother and herself, and according to the custom the two were to marry and reign together. One of the brother’s guardians, however, had dethroned and banished Cleopatra. She was not in Egypt when Cæsar came. It is not known whether it was at Cæsar’s request or not, but the story goes that she secretly made her way back to Alexandria, and was carried inside a roll of rich Syrian rugs on the back of a servant to Cæsar’s apartments. Thus she was presented to the mighty Roman and so delighted him that he restored her to the throne. When he left for Rome some time later he took her with him and kept her there for a year or two. After the murder of Cæsar, Cleopatra, who had returned to Egypt, made a conquest of Marc Antony and remained his sweetheart to the day when he committed suicide upon the report that she had killed herself. Antony had then been conquered by Octavianus, his brother-in-law, and it is said that Cleopatra tried to capture the heart of Octavianus before she took her own life by putting the poisonous asp to her breast.