When the Macedonian king Alexander the Great arrived at the barren island of Pharos in 331 BC, he was still in his mid-twenties and barely five years into his reign. The ambitious young warrior had been drawn to this spot on Egypt’s Mediterranean shore after reading about it in the epic poetry of Homer, most revered of the ancient Greek writers. A lover of literature, Alexander had even styled his hair in long locks to emulate Homer’s hero, Achilles.
What he found was a tiny, lifeless island facing a series of small fishing villages scattered across a windswept coast. A few miles to the south on the mainland spread a vast freshwater lake, around which the ancient Egyptians had constructed a canal network.
In his unceasing quest for world domination, this was just the location for which Alexander had long searched - at the intersection of Africa, Europe and Asia. And when he arrived at this strategic hotspot, he dropped to his knees in a state of ecstasy and began scattering barley across the sandy ground, roughly designing the layout of what would soon become the world’s first modern city
