The Shatby Necropolis: Resting Place of Alexandria’s First Greek Settlers

Tombs from the play erstwhile Alexandria was emerging arsenic a cosmopolitan superior of the Hellenistic world. Credit: Alexandria Necropolis Project

The Shatby Necropolis from the precocious 4th–3rd period BC is the resting spot of Alexandria’s archetypal Greek settlers and the the oldest surviving archaeological tract successful the Egyptian city.

It was brought backmost to beingness aft decades of neglect done the Alexandrian Necropolis Project (2020–2023), spearheaded by the Archaeological Society of Alexandria. The necropolis present stands arsenic a visitable monument to the city’s aboriginal history—when Alexandria was emerging arsenic a cosmopolitan superior of the Hellenistic world, renowned for its scholarship, architectural splendor, and planetary influence.

Shatby Necropolis offers a glimpse into Alexandria’s earliest Greek community

“This is the oldest archaeological tract successful Alexandria,” affirmed Dr. Kyriakos Savvopoulos, co-director of the excavation and researcher astatine the University of Oxford, speaking to the Athens-Macedonia News Agency recently.

“Based connected the coins, offerings, and architecture, we are witnessing the archetypal generations of Greek settlers—people who built the metropolis but did not yet carnivore the rubric ‘citizen of Alexandria.’ They were immigrants, and their spot names bespeak that—possibly for sentimental reasons.”

Located conscionable extracurricular the past metropolis walls, the Shatby Necropolis offers a uncommon model into aboriginal Hellenistic funerary practices successful Egypt. Though stylistically reminiscent of Macedonian tombs, it reflects a chiseled Egyptian Hellenism—a taste synthesis disposable adjacent successful its architecture.

Credit: Alexandria Necropolis Project

“This is not simply a burial site,” Dr. Savvopoulos explains. “It’s designed similar a house. There’s an andron—a eating country for men with banquet couches, a gynaikeion, oregon women’s chamber, and adjacent partition paintings with mendacious windows half-open to the sky. These are open, societal spaces. The dormant were placed successful undecorated niches, portion the surviving gathered, commemorated, and socialized successful rooms that mirrored mundane life.”

A monumental rediscovery

Originally uncovered successful the aboriginal 20th period by Evaristo Breccia, past manager of the Greco-Roman Museum of Alexandria, the necropolis was ne'er afloat excavated and was aboriginal buried nether layers of ungraded and municipality neglect. Breccia, lone 26 astatine the clip of the archetypal excavation successful 1904, preserved what helium could, but the excavation remained incomplete.

Decades later, the Archaeological Society resumed his work. “When we returned, we had to pump retired 5 meters of earth—half of it mud,” says Dr. Savvopoulos. “But erstwhile we reached the earthy floor, offerings and painted tomb façades emerged—things we ne'er expected to find. It was a infinitesimal of bonzer luck and discovery.”

The task identified Underground A, a large, multi-chambered tomb complex, on with 2 smaller complexes (Underground B and C) and an country of surface-level funerary monuments—likely bases for columns oregon altars supra pit graves.

A corporate legacy

Tombs astatine Shatby Necropolis, Alexandria, Egypt. Credit: Ministry Of Tourism and Antiquities of Egypt

Unlike the elite tombs of Macedon designed for individuals oregon families, Shatby was a multi-collective burial space, indicating a community-oriented attack to commemoration. Many of the interred were not peculiarly affluent but seemed portion of a larger societal structure—perhaps metropolis administrators, artisans, oregon soldiers tied to Alexandria’s founding institutions.

Evidence includes coins dating backmost to the Ptolemaic satrapy (beginning 323 BC) and the reign of Ptolemy I, Alexander the Great’s wide and successor successful Egypt. A tomb mural adjacent depicts a mounted soldier, suggesting a imaginable transportation to the royal guard. Though speculative, these findings hint astatine proximity to power, if not ceremonial affiliation with the Ptolemaic court.

Behind the cemetery erstwhile stood the Royal Squares, the bosom of aboriginal Hellenistic Alexandria. “The tract is truthful close,” Savvopoulos remarks, “you tin spot it from the ‘balcony’ of the Royal Squares. It’s apt these aforesaid radical lived and worked nearby—and chose to physique their tombs conscionable beyond the metropolis walls.”

A affluent cache of finds

Credit: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Among the galore discoveries: sculptures, glassware, coins, ceramics, and galore Hadra-type hydriae—distinctive funerary vessels unsocial to Alexandrian burials. Researchers adjacent recovered hidden sacristies beneath tombs, with quality remains and ritual items, revealing antecedently chartless funerary customs successful the city.

“In immoderate cases, we recovered skeletons beneath the rooms—women successful the gynaikeion, men successful the andron—mirroring the part of abstraction successful Hellenistic homes,” Savvopoulos notes. “Some tombs included mendacious doors and adjacent portraits of the deceased, often depicted arsenic soldiers oregon riders, captured successful motion. It’s arsenic if they wanted to sphere the vitality of life, adjacent successful death.”

“It’s not conscionable a tomb,” says Savvopoulos. “It’s a surviving monument that tells the communicative of however a caller nine was formed—how the archetypal Greek settlers imagined themselves successful this caller land. In these tombs, we spot however they lived, however they died, and however they wished to beryllium remembered.”

Now unfastened to visitors, the Shatby Necropolis invites some scholars and the nationalist to locomotion done Alexandria’s earliest layers—where architecture, identity, and representation converge.

Related: The Story of Alexandria, the Iconic City of the Ancient Greek World