Alexandria was born under a regal star

With Christmas just around the corner and the stories about the star of Bethlehem flaring up once again, the time feels right to talk about the "birth" of Alexandria in Egypt, the first grand-scale city built by Alexander the Great.

Alexander founded Alexandria in 331 BC, and it is generally considered the first of the "king's towns." Recent studies by members of the Faculty of Civil Architecture in Milan, Italy, have revealed that the main longitudinal axis of the city, the Canopic Way, is oriented towards the rising sun on the day Alexander was born, and if that were not enough, to the Regulus star that rose in the same direction. This is not a coincidence but an achievement where astronomers and architects, or diviners and builders, worked hand in hand. An exciting revelation that incites us to have a closer look at the foundation of Hellenistic cities.

Despite the statements made by Plutarch and Diodorus, the location of Alexandria was not particularly suitable for building a city. In fact, it was set on a narrow strip of land squeezed between the sea and the marshy lands at the mouth of the Nile's Canopus mouth. Preliminary works are required if we believe what is written in the Alexander Romance, the drainage of several canals before covering the area with streets – at least three of such canals have been located during recent excavation works. Moreover, other excavations in the early 20th century revealed that the Canopic Way was deeply carved out from the underlying bedrock. Nothing was left to chance. 

Alexander never saw his city completed (achieved by Ptolemy, who inherited this part of Alexander's Empire after his death) as it became the home of the famous Lighthouse (one of the seven wonders of the ancient world) and the incomparable Library of Alexandria. Still, from its very start, the place was very unique.

Hippodamus of Miletus, who had revolutionized ancient town planning by introducing a plan of his own that answered to rigorously right-angled streets at mathematically equal distances, had been widely used throughout Greece and Asia Minor since the fifth century BC. Alexander took the very concept one step further in Egypt by adding an element of "cosmic" order.

From the very beginning, the city was designed in all its details with a rather huge perimeter. It was divided into five quarters, labeled with the five first letters of the Greek alphabet. The main east-west road was called the Canopic Way, and the main crossroad was, strangely enough, a dyke (Eptastadion) that connected the isle of Pharos to the mainland. The particularity of this city plan is that this Canopic Way played the role of city center with all the official buildings and temples aligned along its 30 meters wide street instead of placing them around a central agora. Yet the most striking factor is that this road was not laid out according to local topography but ran slightly off a parallel with the coastline of the Mediterranean.

Thanks to computer calculations, Italian researchers determined the sun's position in the fourth century BC, taking into account that the sun's path in the sky has changed over time because of the variations in the earth's orbit. This is how they determined that on July 20, 356 BC, the day Alexander was born, the sun rose in near-perfect alignment with the Canopic Way – the "near perfect" being less than half a degree off, a negligible difference. On top of that, they established that "Regulus," the so-called "King's star," i.e., the brightest star in the constellation of Leo located near its head, also rose along the same alignment. This is a clear statement that the city of Alexandria was born under its very own stars if you include the sun in stardom.

Who would have expected Alexander to take his planning to such a divine stage? And why would he have gone through so much trouble?

One would expect that the Egyptians were responsible for this kind of calculation. After all, they had a long history of associating the sun god Ra with their pharaohs and built the Great Pyramids perfectly oriented to the four points of the compass. Yet that was ignoring the thorough knowledge of Greek mathematicians and astronomers. Only now do we realize that the city's planners did not use the Egyptian solar calendar running 365 days per year, but the Greek lunisolar calendar. Alexander was born on the sixth day of the first month of the New Year, and New Year's Day was the day of the first new moon after the summer solstice, which eventually led us to July 20 in 356 BC. Additionally, the Greeks used the rising of the stars as forerunners of important festivals, which might very well apply to Alexandria.

Is it a surprise or a coincidence that "Regulus," the star associated with the kingship since Babylonian times, rose at the same azimuth on that same day? Knowing Alexander, he would not have missed the opportunity to include such a symbolic moment in the foundation of his new city. After all, he had just returned from Siwah, where he had been declared the son of Ammon-Zeus. Researchers now agree that Alexandria in Egypt was, in fact, the prototype for later Hellenistic towns designed as "king's towns" meant to refer to the divine power of their founder (and probably to the memory of Alexander).

It is interesting to hear that the Italian team has taken their research one step further to see if this same solar alignment occurred in other cities of the same period within the same cultural context. For that purpose, they examined the foundation of Seleucia-on-the-Tigris and the magnificent funerary monument at Mount Nemrud in today's eastern Turkey.

Seleucia-on-the-Tigris was founded in 300 BC by Seleucos, one of Alexander's generals, who by 305 BC became king of eastern Asia as Seleucos I Nicator (see: Seleucos Nicator, in the wake of Alexander). Seleucia, located as the name says on the banks of the Tigris River in modern Iraq, may be more symbolic than expected at first sight. The city is not far from Babylon, where Alexander died in 323 BC and where Seleucos built his new capital. Just like Alexandria, the foundation of this city is lost among many legends. Seleucos himself was acclaimed as a god, son of Apollo, and it is obvious that this divine power rubbed off on this city. 

Diodorus described Alexandria's shape as "similar to a chlamys," and Pliny records that Seleucia resembled an eagle. But focusing on Seleucia's main street, the Italian team discovered that its Canopic Way was entirely inspired by that of Alexandria. Archaeological maps and satellite images established that if Alexandria and Seleucia had been on the same latitude, the sun with a flat horizon would have risen in Seleucia in alignment with its Canopic Way on the very same day as it rose in Alexandria. There is, however, a slight difference in latitude between both cities, and the match would occur on July 27 instead – a minimal difference, but still close enough to Alexander's birthday. On top of this solar match, there is also a close concordance with the famous Regulus star.

The Italian professors are therefore tempted to declare that the foundation of Seleucia has been inspired by Alexandria's practical and symbolic perspectives. Being located so close to where Alexander died, it is not difficult to attribute an identical reference to his power several years later. The King's Star only adds to the magic and mystique of the site.

And then there is the case of Mount Nemrud, where a vast funeral monument was built for Antiochus I Commagene. The same story of Hellenistic divinity applies here, although different because we are talking about a tomb and not about a city. Today's location at 7,000 ft is off the beaten path in a relatively remote area of eastern Turkey but must have been an exceptional place in the first century BC when this monument was built. The two terraces of this tomb are directed towards the summer and winter solstices, and it has been recently figured out that the colossal (now beheaded) statues on the eastern side faced the sunrise on July 23, being the date of Antiochus' ascent to the throne as mentioned in the inscriptions on the monument. Moreover, there is another striking coincidence with Alexandria since Antiochus explicitly refers to Alexander the Great as his ancestor in the inscriptions mentioned above.

Only a few people know this tomb includes a peculiar "lion horoscope" depicting Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and even the crescent moon in Leo. Most notable is the presence of the Regulus star, which, like in Alexandria, rose at this latitude around July 23 during the reign of Antiochus I.

The above analysis clearly shows that nothing was left to chance when building new cities or important monuments. They include more astronomical elements and references to Megas Alexandros than we would suspect. It would be interesting to see more "Alexandria's" investigated similarly, for I wouldn't be surprised if we found more similar evidence in every Alexander city.

[For pictures, please refer to this article in the Archaeology News]