THE EGYPTIAN FOUNDATIONS OF GNOSTIC THOUGHT

Chapter Four: Graeco-Egyptian Synthesis in Alexandria
When Alexander visited the place and saw the advantages of the site, he
resolved to fortify the city on the harbour. Writers record, as a sign of the good
fortune that has since attended the city, an incident which occurred at the time
of tracing the lines of the foundation. When the architects were marking the
lines of the enclosure with chalk, the supply of chalk gave out; and when the
king arrived, his stewards furnished a part of the barley-meal which had been
prepared for the workmen, and by means of this the streets also, to a larger
number than before, were laid out. This occurrence, then, they are said to have
interpreted as a good omen. 1
Thus begins Strabo’s description of Alexandria at its founding in 331 B.C.E.
Indeed, although we shall be focusing in this section upon the intellectual
developments among the literati of Alexandria and Memphis, we should not lose sight
of the economic foundations for prosperity which made such achievements possible.
Even before the Roman conquest, the corn trade from the interior made its way up the
canal for transhipment from Alexandria to feed the citizens of Rome. 2
The port went
on to become the greatest trading centre in the ancient world and, according to
Diodorus, was the largest city in the world by the end of the Ptolemaic period. 3
Ptolemaic Egypt was the most potent mercantile economic power the world had yet
seen as a result of early Greek scientific and economic reforms in Egypt and
Alexandria; as the hub of the new empire it became a clearing-house for goods and
ideas, including a multi-national population. A substantial Jewish community
established itself in the eastern part of the city 4
and the Persians were also evident in
the city as military colonists.
The laws concerning foreigners settling in Alexandria were apparently lenient
and although it is likely that in the first century of Ptolemaic rule a great gulf existed
between the Greeks and Egyptians, 5
it is as probable that the Ptolemaic immigrants
1
The Geography of Strabo VIII, trans. H.L. Jones (1932; reprint, Loeb Classical Library,
1967), 17 1.6.
2
This harbour was called “Eunostus,” which probably refers to a corn deity. P.M. Fraser,
Ptolemaic Alexandria, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1972), 26. Following the
Roman conquest, Egypt supplied one-third of the empire’s grain requirements
3
According to Diodorus Siculus, Alexandria had 300,000 free people (probably around
500,000 total) in the time of Augustus. The population of Egypt was 7 million – 100 years
later it was 7.5 million, not including Alexandria. See also Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 91,
Lewis, Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt, 26.
4
Victor Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilisation and the Jews (New York: Atheneum, 1970),
makes the point that Jewish emigration from Palestine to Egypt cannot be historically
connected with Alexander himself; rather, it seems it occurred under Ptolemy I (323-283).
5
With regard to the first point, it is Fraser’s conjecture that the Ptolemies encouraged the
influx of Greeks with talent; Ptolemaic Egypt, 52. The second point is part of Fraser’s model
which insists upon the Hellenic purity of the opening phases of Ptolemaic rule. Certainly the