114 TRAVELS IN UPPER 



CHAP. IX. 



Enclosure of Alexandria by the Arabs — Cleopatra s 

 needles — Cleopatra — Palace of the kings of Egypt 

 — Pompey's column. 



The enclosure of the city of Alexandria, once so 

 vast, being several leagues in circumference, and 

 containing near a million of inhabitants, had been 

 contracted by the Arabs on their invasion of it. It 

 is this new enclosure, formed of a hundred arched 

 towers and solid walls, which encompasses modern 

 Alexandria, the state of which, as we have seen 

 in the preceding chapter, was so deplorable. But, 

 too small for a zone of such extent, the existing 

 city is far from occupying the whole interior of it : 

 it is separated from the precinct by prodigious in- 

 tervals, which present only the image of the most 

 complete devastation, of piles of rubbish, and of 

 wreck scattered about. Some authors pretend 

 that these are the very walls which Alexander had 

 ordered to be built. This opinion, long ago 

 abandoned, has of late been revived by M. 

 Tott * ; but their architecture has nothing similar 

 to that of the Greeks or of the Romans ; it is 

 evidently in the style of the Arabs, *nd of the 



* Memoirs of the Baron de Tott, vol. ii. p. 180. 



same 



