Alexander the Great is credited with the foundation of many cities in antiquity, most famously Alexandria in Egypt. However, Alexander was the ‘founder’ of Alexandria in much the same way as Romulus was the ‘founder’ of Rome – they both are credited by later literary sources with planning a city destined to be great, laying out its walls personally and in the process having encounters with prophetic birds. Yet historians have been much less willing to accept that Alexandria’s foundation story is as much a mix of fact and legend, propaganda and truth as what we have been told about the earliest moments of Rome.
Contemporary Egyptian-language sources and archaeological evidence clearly demonstrate that Alexander did not plan and build a city on the site of Egyptian Alexandria. His successor…
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Ancient History (Digital) - 1 Issue, AH 53