Our time in Alexandria was not complete. The next morning we drove to an archaeological site from the Roman period. From my extensive wanderings over the years, this site felt familiar despite it being my first visit. It’s filled with all the usual furnishings that Romans would find familiar: baths, a theater, lecture halls, and more. Alexandria was the second largest city in the empire in the first century after Rome itself.
The previous day was the lighthouse. What else is Alexandria famous for? Its library! While that is long gone and its location unknown, the reputation has remained. In 2002 they completed a new library in the city. With 2 million volumes (in a variety of languages), this is no small, local library. (The Library of Congress, by comparison according to Wikipedia, has 38 million books and other printed materials) The building itself is beautiful. We had a tour and some free time to wander.
There’s a particularly important book, however, that was written in Alexandria: the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. As Greek became more prominent, a Jewish community in Alexandria made the first translation of the Hebrew Bible. This translation was the defacto standard during the New Testament era and what it commonly quoted (the New Testament was also written in Greek).