Poole, Reginald S.: The cities of Egypt (London, 1882)

CITIES OF EGYPT.

ship. The Ptolemies maintained the interests of
trade. They varied the constitution by introducing
Hebrew citizens on a level with the Greeks, while
they gave the Egyptians an inferior place, thus injuring
, the scheme in the very direction in which they enlarged
it. To their action, though the idea may have been
Alexander's, it was due that their capital became a
second Athens, the centre of the Greek world, the meet-
ing-place of the intelligence of the East and the West in
a nobler commerce than that which filled the docks and
the markets with the merchandise of every sea which
Greek and Phoenician galleys traversed, of every land
into which caravans could penetrate. The Museum and
the Library of Alexandria have outshone the fame of her
luxury and trade. When her name is mentioned, we
think not of a stately city, but of the long roll of patient
students who there led the schools of thought which we
call Alexandrian, of the hardy pioneers of science, and
of our large debt to those early labourers who toiled for
our profit ; and we remember that greatest ancient
treasure of books, the loss of which we ceaselessly de-
plore, for most of them are known to us only by name
or from a tantalising fragment.