Ancient Alexandria Research Articles

Sensitivity Analysis on Odds Ratios.

The classical Cornfield inequalities state that if a third confounding variable is fully responsible for an observed association between the exposure and the outcome variables, then the association between both the exposure and the confounder, and the confounder and the outcome, must be at least as strong as the association between the exposure and the outcome, as measured by the risk ratio. The work of Ding and VanderWeele on assumption-free sensitivity analysis sharpens this bound to a bivariate function of the 2 risk ratios involving the confounder. Analogous results are nonexistent for the odds ratio, even though the conversion from odds ratios to risk ratios can sometimes be problematic. We present a version of the classical Cornfield inequalities for the odds ratio. The proof is based on the mediant inequality, dating back to ancient Alexandria. We also develop several sharp bivariate bounds of the observed association, where the 2 variables are either risk ratios or odds ratios involving the confounder.

Storying early Alexandria: occluded histories, colonial fantasies

Abstract There is something very affective, and also formulaic, about the story of the foundation of Alexandria. What makes it so enduring? What is it really about? And whose story is this? This paper explores the European historiographical tradition regarding the landscape and occupation of the site of Alexandria prior to and at the time of the city’s foundation. The number of publications on ancient Alexandria from its foundation in 331 bce to the Arab conquest of 642 ce is immense. Yet what interests me here is neither ancient Alexandria nor its early occupation per se, but rather the story European(ized) scholars have been telling about it, and how this story relates to land, people, and power. As such, it is a study in intellectual history.

Iatrosophist Zeno and Medical Schools of Alexandria in the Fourth Century

This article discusses some aspects of the curriculum of medical schools in Late Antiquity, the status of medical schools and the educational space of Late Antique Alexandria in the fourth century AD. The study focusses on the biography of Iatrosophist Zeno of Cyprus, an erudite, rhetor and one of the most famous teachers of medicine in the fourth century, whose biography the sophist Eunapius of Sardis included in his Lives of Philosophers and Sophists. The author opposes the hypothesis established in historiography by W. K. Wright and M. Civiletti, according to which Zeno died before 336, and puts forward new arguments in favor of the fact that he was identical with the archiater Zeno of Alexandria, with whom in 359-361 the rhetor Libanius and the Emperor Flavius Claudius Julian (the Apostate) corresponded. The chronology of the lives of Zeno’s disciples (Oribasius from Pergamum, Ionicus of Sardis, and Magnus of Nisibis) testifies in favor of the fact that the iatrosophist could not have died before 336. In addition, it can be considered proven that Zeno’s of Cyprus school of was based in Alexandria. A successive occupation of the medical chair in the capital of Egypt by two famous iatrosophists named Zeno is not impossible, but highly improbable. Thus, with a high degree of probability, the correspondent of the rhetor Libanius and the Emperor Julian the Apostate was the same Zeno mentioned by Eunapius of Sardis. In other words, Zeno of Cyprus lived at least until the end of 361 AD. In general, the research results allow us to correct the generally accepted dates of the iatrosophist’s life and provide new arguments in favor of R. Penella and J. Giangrande’s assumption that Zeno of Cyprus and Zeno of Alexandria was one and the same person. In addition, the article provides the author's translation of a letter from Libanius to Zeno that has not been published in Russian yet.

Book review: "Alexandria Antiqua: A topographical catalogue and reconstruction" by Amr Abdo, Archaeopress 2022

Anyone involved in archaeological research of Alexandria will welcome this latest publication with great interest. Following in the wake of Stefan Riedel’s Die Basileia von Alexandria. Topographisch-urbanistische untersuhungen Zum Ptölemaisch Königsviertel (Brepols, 2020) is this new study of the topography of Alexandria which covers both the city and its suburban districts. Appearing almost 30 years after Barbara Tkaczow’s The topography of ancient Alexandria (archaeological map) (Warsaw, 1993), Amr Abdo’s book brings an excellent opportunity to reflect on and take stock of recent achievements in the field.

Subsidence model of the ancient Alexandria Royal port linked to sea-level rise and natural hazards using integrated geophysical methods

Marine geophysical methods are quite valuable in geoarchaeological investigations and remote seabed classifications due to their capability to cover vast areas in a short time and reveal fine details of the seafloor and subsurface features in unexcavated sites. The present study aimed to reconstruct the depositional history of the uppermost sediment sequence of the ancient Royal port of Alexandria during different historical periods, and point out the impact of the post-glacial eustatic sea-level rises and natural hazards that took place through the last 2000 years. To resolve this riddle, seismic and geomorphologic surveys were conducted by using a sub-bottom profiler and side scan sonar respectively in integration with previous sediment core data, to extrapolate the vertical extent of the strata and monitor the recent seafloor situation. The results of this study confirmed the subsidence of the ancient port mainly as a result of sea-level rises and the 365 AD tsunami. Seismic interpretations suggested a depositional scenario through successive stages from the Royal port’s construction until its abandonment, also the detailed analyses of backscatter images showed significant variations on the seafloor geomorphology that took place through the recent years which in turns give prominence to the impact of the short-term winds and storms as well.

Water management in ancient Alexandria, Egypt. Comparison with Constantinople hydraulic system

Abstract The collection, evaluation and listing of all available data related to the supply, collection and disposal of water is a project of combining and recording all the data for infrastructure projects and their structure within the urban structure of Alexandria and the wider region, as it was discovered and studied to this day. The paper is a description of the most important storage structures for the waters of the Nile River and the rain. Composing data from previous descriptions, archaeological excavations and random discoveries during construction work created a database. This database currently has 144 tanks of 1 to 4 levels, from 6 m3 to 2,500 m3. In particular, they have identified 27 tanks on 1 level, 50 tanks on 2 levels, 49 tanks on 3 levels, 9 tanks on 4 levels and 9 tanks whose exact morphology is unknown to us. The examples of reservoir technologies and management practices given in this work may be of some importance to the sustainability of water resources for the present and the future. Reservoirs have been used to store both rainwater and spring and river water to meet the needs of seasonal variations. The tanks range from simple to large underground structures. Then, a comparison is made with the water management systems in the wider Mediterranean region and especially in Istanbul, where there is such infrastructure.

Historical Visionary in the Writings of Dissident Authors

This article reviews the creation and the roots of two historical legends about the trip of Ivan Smera to Alexandria and the privilege of Alexander Macedon to Slavs. The methodology of current research is based on the comparison of historical narratives. Two versions of the legend about the trip to the Orient were composed on the ground of old Kyivan chronicle which narrates the story about the choice of religion by Kyivan prince Volodimer in the last decades of the X th century when several ambassadors were sent to study the peculiarities of Judaism, Islam, Latin and Byzantine Christianity. During the second half of the XVI century, a new version of this tale was composed by Calvinists in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It narrates the visit of a certain person (Jolash or Ivan Smera) who arrived at Alexandria in North Africa to investigate the customs of the local Christian community. Ivan Smera found that the customs and the rite of the local community reflect the ideals of simple Christian service, without icons and church decoration. The rite of this religious community responds to the customs and the service of Calvinism. Smera has reported about the customs of Alexandria’s Christians to Volodimer but the Kyivan price ignored the ambassador’s notes and accepted Christianity in the byzantine rite. The other legend, which circulated in East and Central Europe during the Renaissance, narrates about the privilege of Alexander Macedon that was inscribed by golden letters on the tables in Alexandria. This imagined document relates that Slavic tribes arrived from the lands of Illyria and Dalmatia under the rulership of chieftains Lech, Roxolan, and Czech. It seems that both legends are rooted in Alexandria because Arianism prevailed in this city during late antiquity and Calvinism leaders supposed to establish good relations with orthodox patriarchs of this city in the second half of the XVI century. Religious life in ancient Alexandria was treated by the authors of the legend about the trip to North Africa as an example of perfect Christianity.

Mocking Parades and the Place of Pagan Statuary in Late Antique Alexandria

Abstract With the present paper I would like to discuss a particular form of procession which we may term mocking parades, a collective ritual aimed at ridiculing cultic objects from competing religious communities. The cases presented here are contextualized within incidents of pagan/Christian violence in Alexandria between the 4th and 5th centuries, entailing in one case the destruction of the Serapeum and in another the pillaging of the Isis shrine at Menouthis on the outskirts of Alexandria. As the literary accounts on these events suggest, such collective forms of mockery played an important role in the context of mob violence in general and of violence against sacred objects in particular. However, while historiographical and hagiographical sources from the period suggest that pagan statues underwent systematic destruction and mutilation, we can infer from the archaeological evidence a vast range of uses and re-adaptation of pagan statuary in the urban space, assuming among other functions that of decorating public spaces. I would like to build on the thesis that the parading of sacred images played a prominent role in the discourse on the value of pagan statuary in the public space. On the one hand, the statues carried through the streets became themselves objects of mockery and violence, involving the population of the city in a collective ritual of exorcism. On the other hand, the images paraded in the mocking parades could also become a means through which the urban space could become subject to new interpretations. Entering in visual contact with the still visible vestiges of the pagan past, with the temples and the statuary of the city, the “image of the city” became affected itself by the images paraded through the streets, as though to remind the inhabitants that the still-visible elements of Alexandria’s pagan topography now stood as defeated witnesses to Christianity’s victory.

From Serena to Hypatia: John Toland's Women

AbstractThis paper focusses on John Toland's influentialHypatia(1720), an account of the neo-Platonist philosopher and mathematician murdered in ancient Alexandria; it also considers segments of hisLetters to Serena(1704), and suggests various conjunctions between the two texts which confirm Toland's genuine and sustained feminist commitment. As I try to establish, Toland's concern is as much about contemporaneous events as it is about ‘disinterested’ history: by promoting Hypatia as the representative of philosophy in its perennial struggle with superstition and priestcraft, Toland is able to underscore the wider case for an inclusive and capacious conception of ‘enlightenment’.

Heterogeneity of Ancient Alexandria and Subsidence Phenomena

Heterogeneity of Ancient Alexandria and Subsidence Phenomena

Alexandria between Antiquity and Islam: Commerce and Concepts in First Millennium Afro-Eurasia

Abstract Late antique Alexandria is much better known than the early Islamic city. To be fully appreciated, the transition must be contextualized against the full range of Afro-Eurasiatic commercial and intellectual life. The Alexandrian schools ‘harmonized’ Hippocrates and Galen, Plato and Aristotle. They also catalyzed Christian theology especially during the controversies before and after the Council of Chalcedon (451) that tore the Church apart and set the stage for the emergence of Islam. Alexandrian cultural dissemination down to the seventh century is here studied especially through evidence for the city’s libraries and book trade, together with the impact of its educational curriculum from Iran to Canterbury. After the Arab conquest, Alexandria turned into a frontier city and lost its economic and political role. But it became a city of the mind whose conceptual legacy fertilized not only Greek scholarship at Constantinople, but also Arabic science and philosophy thanks to the eighth- to ninth-century Baghdadi translation movement. Alexandria emanated occult energies too, thanks to the Pharos as variously misunderstood by Arabic writers, or the relics of its Christian saints, not least the Evangelist Mark, surreptitiously translated to Venice in 828-29. Study of the astral sciences too - astronomy but also astrology - was fertilized from Alexandria, as far afield as India and perhaps China as well as Syria, Baghdad and Constantinople. Egypt’s revival by the Fatimids, who founded Cairo in 961, had little impact on Alexandria until about the end of the eleventh century when, for a time, the city attracted Sunni scholars from as far away as Spain or Iran, while commerce benefited from the rise of the Italian merchant republics and the beginning of the Crusades. While the early caliphate had united a vast zone from Afghanistan to the Atlantic, the eleventh century saw a reemergence of late antique distinctions between the Iranian plateau, Syro-Mesopotamia, and the two Mediterranean basins. Alexandria was one of the points where these worlds intersected, though sub-Saharan Africa, to which it formally belonged, remained largely beyond its horizon until the twentieth century.

Ecological risk assessment of surficial sediment by heavy metals from a submerged archaeology harbor, South Mediterranean Sea, Egypt

A protected semi-enclosed embayment, the Eastern Harbor (EH), is situated in the central sector of the Mediterranean coast of Alexandria, Egypt. It is a famous fishing dock and water-sport center and its importance arose after the discovery of the Ptolemaic royal quarter of ancient Alexandria. To protect this national treasure and improve its environmental health, the untreated anthropogenic effluents, which continued for decades into the EH since 1992, must be totally stopped. Accordingly, it is an important issue to continually monitor and asses the environmental status of the EH. The sediment texture, total organic carbon, and the accumulation, distribution, and ecological risks of Cd, Cr, Pb, As, Hg and Al were determined with a total of 14 surficial sediments samples collected in the EH during 2010. Metal contents were compared to the literature data to assess the pollution status of sediments. Enrichment factors, Degree of contamination (mCd) and potential ecological risk were calculated as a criterion of possible contamination. Since mCd calculation produces an overall average value for a range of pollutants, in the present study the contamination factor that provides a measure of the degree of overall contamination in the surface layers in a particular sampling site may provide a better indication of the state of pollution in the EH sediments than other indicators.

A Study on the Monumental Center of Ancient Alexandria: The Identification of the Ptolemaic Mouseion and the Urban Transformation in Late Antiquity

Summary Among the whole burden of the written sources dealing with the urban appearance of Ptolemaic and Roman Alexandria, five or six ancient authors give us precious information which could finally offer a lead to the reconstruction of the monumental center of Alexandria: 1) Strabo, 2) Diodorus, 3) Zenobius, 4) Achilles Tatius, 5) Pseudo-Libanius and 6) Pseudo-Callisthenes. Nowadays, the written testimonia concerning the historical topography of Alexandria are severely withstanding to a hypercritical treatment, to a disapproval instead of a reappraisal. Tkazcow 2013, 687: The reconstruction of the topography of the city in the Ptolemaic and Early Roman Periods was, for a long time, based exclusively on Strabo's description (sometimes supplemented with information provided by Diodorus, Polybius and Caesar); the critic is moved against Adriani 1966 and Fraser 1972, 13–34; McKenzie 2007. Yet, there is no other way to solve the puzzle of the monumental center of Ptolemaic Alexandria, but to explain the thinking behind what the ancient authors, principally Strabo, may have seen in Alexandria as eyewitnesses.

Alexander's Alexandria and the Archaeoastronomy

Here we discuss the town-planning of the ancient Alexandria and its astronomical orientation according to sunrise. This orientation was proposed by Robert Bauval in 2004, as that of the direction of the sunrise on the day of Alexander's birthday as a solar Horus-king. The same orientation was also considered in 2012 by Luisa Ferro and Giulio Magli.

Religious Currents and Occult Sciences in Ancient Alexandria during the First Three Centuries A.D

Religious Currents and Occult Sciences in Ancient Alexandria during the First Three Centuries A.D

Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities. James Turner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. Pp. xxiv+550.

<i>Philology: The Forgotten Origins of the Modern Humanities</i>. James Turner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014. Pp. xxiv+550.

Geoarchaeology of Portus Mareoticus: Ancient Alexandria's lake harbour (Nile Delta, Egypt)

Ancient Alexandria possessed not only an important maritime front but also a long lake waterfront on its southern side. This dual waterfront was praised by the ancient geographer Strabo in the first century BCE, because its geomorphological configuration opened Alexandria to Mediterranean trade, and also the Nile delta and Egypt. While the city's maritime palaeogeography has been widely described and studied, Alexandria's lacustrine waterfront has largely been neglected and little is known about its palaeo-geography and archaeology. Here we report the chronostratigraphy of the southern edge of the modern city. Bio-sedimentological analyses of sediment archives allow us to reconstruct the evolution of the depositional environments and palaeogeographies for parts of ancient Alexandria's lacustrine waterfront. The chronological framework spans the last 2000years. By marrying our data with ancient maps and historical sources, we propose a location for Portus Mareoticus. The lake's geomorphology suggests the presence of three ancient jetties, perpendicular to the shoreline and several hundreds meters long. The occupation of the investigated area began at the end of the first century BCE, linked to Roman domination and probably ended during late Roman times. The waterfront was then disconnected from the city during the 9thcenturyCE, due to the desiccation of Maryut Lake, concomitant with the drying-up of the Canopic branch. Alexandria canal subsequently became the sole waterway linking the city to the Nile. The most western part of the canal, which extended freshwater supply and fluvial navigation down to the western marine harbour of Alexandria, was completed in the 16th century, probably in relation to the development of the marine harbours at the beginning of the Ottoman period. Our research sheds new light on the topography of ancient Alexandria.

Applications of Augmented Reality in cultural tourism: The case of Bibliotheca Alexandrina

This is an exploratory study about the applications of augmented reality in cultural tourism. The application was 3D Video Mapping Show on Ancient Alexandria as a pilot project. Seeking to verify the study objectives, differentiated between virtual and augmented reality, also reviewed a number of examples, which demonstrate the diversity of applications of this new technology in cultural tourism. The study also used participant observation and focus group on investigating the effectiveness of the show in enhancing the cultural tourism in the city. The results indicated that current application of augmented reality lack the ability to attract visitors to the destination or cultural attraction and It needs to be reconsidered.The conclusion and recommendations were presented giving experts the opportunity to the development of augmented reality technology in a larger scale in the particular circumstances of the case.

Żona Hioba – różne oblicza tej samej kobiety. Interpretacja Hi 2,9–10 w BH i LXX oraz wątek żony w Testamencie Hioba

The article focuses on the figure of Job’s wife in three different traditions. Starting from the Hebrew text of the Book of Job, it shows the different stages in the interpretation of the character of Job’s wife and its role in the Book. In the Hebrew text Job’s wife appears only in the verses 2:9–10, where she pronounces one sentence (“curse God and die”). She is presented there as a kind of “devil’s helper”, diavoli adiutrix , as she was called by St. Augustine. However, the oldest translation of the text – the Greek Septuagint – shows her role in the Book differently: LXX extends her speech into couple of verses, paying attention not only to Job’s suffering but also to the affliction of his wife, who suffers like her husband (in particular because of the loss of her children and her hard work). On the basis of this interpretation, which in all probability was the work of the LXX translator of the Book of Job (original LXX variant), grew even more elaborate view of Job’s wife in the apocryphal Testament of Job , which was created in the environment of ancient Alexandria (thus the same as the Septuagint), probably in the I century BC. The character and role of Job’s wife, who even receives a name Sitis, expands to several chapters there. Her attitude toward suffering husband is considered almost like of the women who are praised in the Wisdom tradition as the courageous ones (for example in the poem from Proverbs 31). Such an extended thread can be considered as the oldest interpretation of the LXX text of the Book of Job. These three interpretations due to reveal different faces of the same woman and are the good example of the influence that the Greek translation of the LXX had on the history of interpretation of the Book of Job.

Ancient Alexandria and the dawn of medical science.

[first paragraph of article] From the banks of the Nile to the shores of the Mediterranean, it is in the land of Egypt where medicine probably started. This is the story of a great period in the history of medicine. But let us start at the beginning. Imhotep, who flourished about 5,000 years ago, is the first person whose name is recorded not for being a king or a conqueror, but for the way he contributed to knowledge 1 . He was a statesman: he advised Pharaoh Zoser. He was an engineer: he built the stepped pyramid of Saqqara, precursor to the many great pyramids to come. But above all he was a physician of talent, who launched the first true medical revolution: that disease was not something to be dealt with by magic, but by science: observation, diagnosis, and treatment. Egyptians would later deify him as the god of medicine.