Land excavations

Two of the Centre's three land excavations are presently drawing to a close and the plots will be taken over by the constructors. Both of these sites have revealed important and well preserved remains of 2nd century BC domestic architecture complete with an elaborate system of underground water supply. A considerable period of study will be required to draw up the final reports of these digs. The third site, which will remain in the Centre's hands for the time being, has already provided long term work in the mosaics that have been unearthed. Some 100m2 of Roman era floor mosaics of quite remarkable quality have been lifted from the site and are being restored by a specialist member of the team.

The Centre is also looking ahead to tackling a further two sites in the heart of town which promise to be equally if not more important. One of these is on present-day Sultan Hussein Street, in an area believed to be near the location of the Ptolemaic Gymnasium. If local memory is correct, this site has never been built on and thus could provide a wealth of undisturbed archaeological information. The other is on Horreya Street which follows the line of the Canopic Way, one of the principal axes of the ancient city and known to have been bordered by a double colonnade. In modern times, the site has held only one construction - a recently demolished 19th century villa - and so also promises valuable scientific rewards.

A novel and exciting archaeological intervention was undertaken in the spring of 1997. This involved a geophysical survey of the peninsula that lies between Alexandria's two harbours in search for traces of the Heptastadion, the causeway that was built at the very foundation of the city in order to link the continent with the island of Pharos. By checking electrostatic resistance, seismic and electro-magnetic conduction in the subsoil of the streets that traverse the peninsula, the aim was to plot the exact line of the Heptastadion without the necessity of major disruption in a heavily populated area. A preliminary report has already been compiled though further study is continuing. Should the team be successful in locating the Heptastadion it would be of great significance in understanding the orientation of ancient Alexandria's road network.

Other underground features of Alexandria, the fresh water cisterns, are also the object of a long term study. Without a direct supply of drinking water, the city, from its foundation until the 19th century, had to rely upon a canal from the Nile which fed water into domestic and public cisterns. During the French expedition under Bonaparte in 1798, engineers wrote of some 400 cisterns. Today only ten are known of directly, though a further 30 have been provisionally located. Using documentation from the turn of the century, a team of architect-archaeologists are endeavouring to find the missing cisterns and plot them on a map, thus providing an overview of the water system of the town. Already, it has become apparent that during the Islamic period, a number of large cisterns were constructed outside the city walls, suggesting that there was still a flourishing agricultural belt around Alexandria; further evidence of the city's continued prosperity after the Arab conquest.

At the present moment the CEA is heavily involved with the Egyptian antiquities service in a salvage dig within the district of Gabbari, to the west of Alexandria. During the construction of an elevated highway, designed to connect the Cairo Desert Road with the western harbour, the diggers pierced a large Hellenistic tomb complex. Certain individual tombs from this cemetery to the west of the city have been discovered and excavated over the years but never before has such a sizable segment been accessible to the archaeologist. The word "necropolis" was coined by Strabo at the end of the 1st century BC to refer to this very area and it should be taken in its literal sense of "city of the dead". Here there were gardens and embalming workshops set amongst innumerable tombs. The extent of the necropolis was striking even to the ancients and it must have been truly immense, reflecting the size of Alexandria itself. Work so far has cleared some fifteen chambers all pitted with loculi, some holding rock-cut sarcophagi and funerary urns. Preliminary study of artefacts would suggest that the tombs date from the early Hellenistic period but there are traces of occupation into the Christian era and while the complex has been well pillaged over the centuries by grave robbers it is hoped that the lower levels, still inaccessible due to ground water, may hold some undisturbed burials.

Conclusion