The Mediterranean Sea is awash with sunken treasures. When Alexander the Great died in Babylon in 323 BC, his companion, Ptolemy I, laid claim to Egypt as his domain. He founded a dynasty that was to rule for three hundred years from Alexandria. Ptolemy II made Alexandria the center of culture and founded the Alexandria Library and Museo, the first research center and “think tank.” The Pharos Lighthouse was built, and it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Its beam of light could be seen for thirty miles.

 

 

 

 

 

After Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BC, he established his city called Alexandro, which became Alexandria.

 

On an April day in 331 B.C., on his way to an oracle in the Egyptian desert, before he set off to subdue Persia, Alexander envisioned a metropolis linking Greece and Egypt. Avoiding the treacherous mouth of the Nile, with its shifting currents and unstable shoreline, he chose a site 20 miles west of the great river, on a narrow spit of land between the sea and a lake. He paced out the city limits of his vision: ten miles of walls and a grid pattern of streets, some as wide as 100 feet.

For nearly a millennium, Alexandria was the Mediterranean’s bustling center of trade.

 

Alexandria was washed into the Mediterranean Sea in 365 AD, following an earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

 

 

 

                 

 

 

Cleopatra's royal barge on the Nile, last of the Pharaoh Queens - Khufu's royal barge - solar boat for the afterlife

 

 

 

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