ALEXANDRIA:
A HISTORY AND A GUIDE.
Vue d’Alexandrie—extraite du
IOVRNAL
DES VOYAGES
DE MONSIEVR
DE MONCONYS
LYON M DC LXV.
See p. 83
If a man make a pilgrimage round Alexandria in the morning,God will make for him a golden crown, set with pearls,perfumed with musk and camphor, and shining from the Eastto the West.
To any vision must be brought an eye adapted to what is to be seen.
PREFACE.
This book consists of two parts: a History and a Guide.
The “History” attempts (after the fashion of apageant) to marshal the activities of Alexandria duringthe two thousand two hundred and fifty years of herexistence. Starting with the heroic figure of Alexanderthe Great, it inspects the dynasty of the Ptolemies, andin particular the career of the last of them, Cleopatra;an account of Ptolemaic literature and science follows,and closes this splendid period, to which I have given thetitle of “Greco-Egyptian.” The second period, called“Christian”, begins with the rule of Rome, and tracesthe fortunes of Christianity, first as a persecuted andthen as a persecuting power: all is lost in 641, when thePatriarch Cyrus betrays Alexandria to the Arabs. Aninterlude comes next—“The Spiritual City”—whichmeditates upon Alexandrian philosophy and religion,both Pagan and Christian: it seemed better to segregatethese subjects, partly because they interrupt the main