This circumstance, however, remedied in the beginning, was fatal to the city’s magnificence ever after, and the cause of its being in the state it is at this day.
The importance of its situation to trade and commerce, made it a principal object of attention to each party in every war. It was easily taken, because it had no water; and, as it could not be kept, it was destroyed by the conqueror, that the temporary possession of it might not turn to be a source of advantage to an enemy.
We are not, however, to suppose, that the country all around it was as bare in the days of prosperity as it is now. Population, we see, produces a swerd of grass round ancient cities in the most desert parts of Africa, which keeps the sand immoveable till the place is no longer inhabited.
I apprehend the numerous lakes in Egypt were all contrived as reservoirs to lay up a store of water for supplying gardens and plantations in the months of the Nile’s decrease. The great effects of a very little water are seen along the calish, or canal, in a number of bushes that it produces, and thick plantations of date-trees, all in a very luxuriant state; and this, no doubt, in the days of the Ptolemies, was extended further, more attended to, and better understood.
Pompey’s pillar, the obelisks, and subterraneous cisterns, are all the antiquities we find now in Alexandria; these have been described frequently, ably, and minutely.
The foliage and capital of the pillar are what seem generally to displease; the fust is thought to have merited more attention than has been bestowed upon the capital.
The whole of the pillar is granite, but the capital is of another stone; and I should suspect those rudiments of leaves were only intended to support firmly leaves of metal[63] of better workmanship; for the capital itself is near nine feet high, and the work, in proportionable leaves of stone, would be not only very large, but, after being finished, liable to injuries.
This magnificent monument appears, in taste, to be the work of that period, between Hadrian and Severus; but, though the former erected several large buildings in the east, it is observed of him he never put inscriptions upon them.
This has had a Greek inscription, and I think may very probably be attributed to the time of the latter, as a monument of the gratitude of the city of Alexandria for the benefits he conferred on them, especially since no ancient history mentions its existence at an earlier period.