PLATEIA, PEDION, “CANOPIC STREET”: ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE MAIN STREET OF ANCIENT ALEXANDRIA
PLATEIA, PEDION, “CANOPIC STREET”: ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE MAIN STREET OF ANCIENT ALEXANDRIA

Author(s): Barbara Tkaczow
Subject(s): Archaeology
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: ancient Alexandria; ancient urbanism; architectural decoration
Summary/Abstract: The street network of ancient Alexandria has been a subject of studies for nearly one and a half centuries, and successive archaeological discoveries throughout the years have enhanced and adjusted its image in different epochs. Even though many new and atypical streets have been discovered, scholars show unceasing interest in the principal longitudinal street of the ancient city, which they conventionally named “Canopic”. Ancient written sources use different terms to refer to it, yet its name is never stated. Ancient texts describe – usually very superficially – the dimensions of the street, its decoration, and the buildings located along its sides, as well as the different events in the history of the city that it witnessed. When archaeological evidence was added to the ancient descriptions, an impressive, nevertheless, ahistorical reconstruction of the appearance of the street was created, as the data from different epochs were matched incorrectly. The division of that evidence into three major periods in the history of ancient Alexandria shows that the first period (Ptolemaic and Early Roman) poses the biggest challenge in reconstruction, and the two which followed (Roman Imperial and Late Roman) have fuller archaeological documentation, even if occasionally difficult to distinguish precisely. The period when the street gradually ceases to be the principal artery of the new, Arabic, Alexandria is a separate scientific question for future study.

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