Rhacotis

Feel the ground under your feet here. It is dusty, uneven, and a little higher than the streets around it. That rise is not natural. It is the slow build-up of many centuries of living, building, burning and rebuilding. You are standing in Rhacotis, the oldest layer of Alexandria. Around you, car horns, call-and-response from street sellers, and the smell of diesel and baking bread fill the air. Underneath all of it lies a story that begins before the city had its famous name.

When Alexander the Great arrived on this coast in 331 BCE, he chose a strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and a large lake to the south, called Lake Mareotis. Greek and Roman writers later said that an Egyptian settlement already stood here, called Rhacotis. The geographer Strabo described it as a village. In this telling, Alexander built his new Greek city around and beside an older Egyptian one.

Here is the first surprise. Some modern scholars question that neat story. The Egyptian word behind Rhacotis is often read as Ra-qedet, and one interpretation is that it means something close to 'building site'. If that reading is correct, the name may not belong to an ancient fishing village at all. It may simply be what Egyptians called the enormous construction project rising on their shore. The debate is still open, and that is part of the charm.

Whatever its origins, Rhacotis became the Egyptian quarter of the city. Under the Ptolemies, the Greek-speaking dynasty that ruled Egypt after Alexander, Alexandria was divided into districts. Greeks, Jews and Egyptians often lived in different neighbourhoods. The royal palaces and the harbour lay to the north and east. This western quarter, on higher ground, kept a strongly Egyptian character, with its own temples, workshops and crowded homes.

The most important building here was the Serapeum, the great temple of the god Serapis. Serapis was a deliberate creation of the Ptolemaic age. He combined Egyptian ideas linked to Osiris and the sacred Apis bull with the look of a bearded Greek god. The idea was a god that both Greeks and Egyptians could worship together. Archaeologists found foundation plaques that link the grand temple to Ptolemy the Third, in the third century BCE.

The Serapeum was more than a temple. Ancient sources say it held a collection of books, sometimes called the daughter library of the Great Library of Alexandria. While the main library stood closer to the palaces, this smaller collection sat here, in the Egyptian quarter. For a time, scholars, priests and pilgrims all climbed this same hill, for prayer, for learning, and for the view across the city to the sea.

That world came to a violent end. In 391 CE, during the reign of the Roman emperor Theodosius, Christian crowds led under Bishop Theophilus destroyed the Serapeum. Ancient Christian and pagan writers both described the event, from very different points of view. For many historians, the fall of this temple marks a turning point. The old gods of Alexandria lost their last great home in the city.

Now look for the tall column that rises above everything else. Most people call it Pompey's Pillar, and that is the second surprise. It has nothing to do with the Roman general Pompey. Medieval travellers gave it that name, and the name stuck. An inscription on its base dedicates the column to the emperor Diocletian, at the end of the third century CE. It was put up a century before the Serapeum fell.

The column is a single shaft of red granite, close to thirty metres tall including its base and capital. Granite like this came from quarries at Aswan, far up the Nile in southern Egypt. Think about that journey. A stone of this size travelled hundreds of kilometres by river, then was raised on this hill by hand, ropes and timber. It has stood through earthquakes, wars and the full growth of the modern city.

Around the column, the archaeological site is open ground, scattered with fragments. You will see granite sphinxes, broken statues and the outlines of foundations. Under your feet, there are underground passages cut into the rock. They are linked to the Serapeum and to the sacred animals and rituals of the temple. Walking here, you move between the surface ruins and the hidden rooms below, as visitors and priests once did.

Rhacotis did not end with the temple. The district remained a working, living part of Alexandria. Not far from here are the catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa, a Roman-era burial complex cut deep into the rock. Their carvings mix Egyptian, Greek and Roman styles in the same space. That blend of traditions is the real signature of this quarter. Here, cultures did not stay neatly separate. They overlapped and borrowed from each other.

Today, the area around the hill belongs to the busy everyday city, part of the neighbourhood often called Karmouz. Apartment blocks with laundry on the balconies press close to the ancient walls. Children play football in side streets. Tea glasses clink in small cafés. The past and the present share the same few blocks, and neither seems to mind the other very much.

Before you leave, stand for a moment at the foot of the red column and look up. Notice how the afternoon light warms the granite. Listen to the traffic and the voices drifting up the hill. This is the same rise of ground where Egyptian priests, Greek scholars and Roman soldiers once stood. As you walk back down into the streets, notice how the land slopes beneath you... you are stepping off the oldest layer of Alexandria and back into the city it became.