At first sight, to those approaching the coast of northern Egypt, the low-lying country with its peculiar light suddenly seemed to rise out of the sea. In the greenish-yellow currents of the debouching Nile hippopotami could be seen swimming out to sea from the delta swamps. When passengers crowded the decks on arrival at Alexandria, the city appeared to be a shining noble place, surrounded by stout double walls protected by ‘towers, moats, warlike machines and having fair palaces within’. On closer inspection, however, the streets were narrow, ugly, tortuous and dark, full of dust and dirt.

Founded in 331 BC by the charismatic Macedonian, Alexander the Great, on the site of the ancient Egyptian town of Rhakotis, Alexandria was advantageously positioned between a natural deep harbour at the north and Lake Mareotis at the south. It had easy access to fresh water and the limestone materials used for its illustrious buildings. This sophisticated Hellenistic city, capital of Egypt for over 900 years, became renowned throughout the civilised world. Emulating that of Athens, the renowned library, initiated by the insatiable Ptolemies, housed the accumulated knowledge of scholars who bickered at will among its columns and porticos. After the rediscovery and translation of Latin and Greek classical literature by Italian humanists, and its subsequent dissemination through printing, a trawl through even the most incomplete Renaissance library lists indicates the numbers of books they contained by ancient authors who wrote about Egypt. The works of Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Theophrastus and Pliny were prominent. These accounts were woven about with tales of the fabulous Queen Cleopatra, ‘Egyptia femina, totius orbis fabula’ and the widely read disparate Alexander Romances, which resounded down the centuries that followed.

Alexandria became one of the earliest centres of Christian teaching and the seat of the senior bishop. Side by side with the classics on the shelves of Renaissance libraries were the works of the early Church Fathers, such as Clement of Alexandria (AD c.150–c.215) and his pupil Origen. In the mid-second century AD, the neo-Platonic Alexandrian school of philosophy nurtured such pupils as Longinus, Plotinus, and Theon, whose ideas influenced Renaissance philosophers such as the Florentine Marsilio Ficino. Marsilio subsequently translated the works of Plato, printed in 1484, and of Plotinus, printed in 1492.