Much of the space under the houses was occupied by vaulted subterranean cisterns, which were capable of containing a sufficient quantity of water to supply the whole population of the city for a year.
From the time of its foundation, Alexandria was the Greek capital of Egypt. Its population in the time of its prosperity, amounted to about three hundred thousand free citizens, and probably a larger number of slaves. This population consisted mostly of Greeks, Jews and Egyptians, together with settlers from all nations of the known world.
After the death of Alexander the Great, Alexandria became the residence of the Ptolemies. They made it, next to Rome and Antioch, the most magnificent city of antiquity, as well as the chief seat of Greek learning and literature.
Alexandria had reached its greatest splendor when, on the death of Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, in 30 B. C, it came into the possession of the Romans. Its glory was long unaffected, and it was the emporium of the world’s commerce.
In the reign of Caracalla, however, it suffered severely. The strife between Christianity and heathenism in the third century—powerfully described in Kingsley’s Hypatia—gave rise to bloody contests in Alexandria. The rise of Constantinople only served to hasten its fall. The choice of Cairo as capital of the Egyptian caliphs hastened the now rapid decay of the city; the discovery of America, and of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, very much diminished its trade; and when, in 1517, the Turks took the place, the remains of its former splendor wholly vanished.
Under Mehemet Ali, however, the tide turned, and the city recovered rapidly. It is now again one of the most important commercial places on the Mediterranean with a population of about three hundred and fifty thousand. The Suez Canal diverted part of its trade; but this was more than compensated by the general impetus given to Egyptian prosperity.
Of the few remaining objects of antiquity the most prominent is Pompey’s Pillar, as it is erroneously called. Of the so-called Cleopatra’s Needles—two obelisks of the sixteenth century B. C. which long stood here—one was taken to England and erected on the Thames Embankment, London, 1878; and the other, presented by the khedive to the United States, was set up at New York in 1881.
Assuan or Assouan (äs-swän), the ancient Syene is the southernmost city of Egypt proper, on the right bank of the Nile, and beside the first or lowest cataract. It is noted for its granite, and was the place of banishment of Juvenal, the Roman poet. Here also is the great Nile irrigation system, begun in 1898, including a dam at Assuan and another at Assiout (two hundred and fifty miles nearer Cairo). The Assuan dam, finished in 1902 was designed to raise the level of the Nile for one hundred and forty miles above the first cataract. Its total length is one and one-quarter miles, the maximum height from the foundation about one hundred and thirty feet and the total weight of masonry over one million tons.
The difference of level of the water above and below is sixty-seven feet, and navigation is provided for by a series of four locks, each two hundred and sixty feet by thirty-two feet. The dam is pierced with one hundred and eighty openings, twenty feet by six feet, capable of discharging fifteen thousand tons of water per second. The reservoir, when opened, held something over one thousand million tons of water.
In 1907 the level was raised by twenty-three feet, steps being taken to preserve (as far as is consistent with partial submersion) the ruins of the temples on the island of Philæ within the area of the dam. Barrages at Zifteh and at Esneh help to regulate the flow.