Place · Egypt
Alexandria
Founded by Alexander himself and seat of Ptolemaic power. It was home to the most influential Jewish community outside Judea in the Hellenistic period.
31.2014°N 29.9098°E · representative coordinate · Pleiades 727070 ↗
Statements linked to this place
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Greek-style cities, with a Greek notion of citizenship, were founded or reorganized across the Near East. The best known was Alexandria, which Alexander founded personally. Jerusalem, too, was reorganized along these lines.
At its height, the Jewish community of Alexandria probably ran to hundreds of thousands of people, and it produced Philo of Alexandria, a first-century CE philosopher. It declined in late antiquity, and its literature has reached us only because Christians preserved it.
By the first century CE, Jews made up most of the population in two of Alexandria's five districts. The community ran its own courts and had a partly autonomous leader, called ethnarch at least under Rome. The districts were not ghettos: nothing confined Jews to them.
Community: Jews of Alexandria
At its height, the Jewish community of Alexandria probably ran to hundreds of thousands of people, and it produced Philo of Alexandria, a first-century CE philosopher. It declined in late antiquity, and its literature has reached us only because Christians preserved it.
By the first century CE, Jews made up most of the population in two of Alexandria's five districts. The community ran its own courts and had a partly autonomous leader, called ethnarch at least under Rome. The districts were not ghettos: nothing confined Jews to them.
The Jews of Egypt cultivated a close relationship with the Ptolemies as patrons: synagogue inscriptions pay tribute to the royal couple. Jews and Ptolemies shared the condition of being foreigners in Egypt, in a pattern inherited from the Persians (military service in exchange for support of communal institutions).
Community: Jews of Alexandria under Rome
Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemaic ruler, hoped to revive her kingdom alongside Mark Antony, her Roman lover. In 31 BCE Octavian, adopted posthumously by Julius Caesar, defeated them both and added the title of pharaoh to his powers. The book's timeline records the conquest of Egypt and the end of the Ptolemies in 30 BCE.
In the mixed cities of North Africa, Jews shared cities with large Greek-speaking and indigenous communities, and coexistence often turned to violence. Alexandria is the best-known case. Greeks and Egyptians resented the Jews, Rome stoked the rivalry by sometimes taking sides and sometimes setting one group against the other, and the Jews, insecure in their position, feared their neighbors and at times attacked them. In 38 CE an anti-Jewish riot left many dead and synagogues destroyed; in 41, with Caligula's death, came the Jewish reprisal; in 66 a new fight ended with a Roman massacre of Jews.
The harshness of the repression shows how great the danger was. In Mesopotamia thousands were killed; Cyprus forbade Jews to remain; in Egypt, the Alexandrian community was crushed. Jews still lived in the city, but the community that had given the world the Septuagint and Philo practically vanished.
Josephus was no exception: in Palestine (the Romans' name for the strip between the Mediterranean and the Jordan) and in Alexandria, many Jews not only accepted Rome but served it. In Philo's family, his nephew Tiberius Julius Alexander rose to governor-general and was Titus's deputy at the siege of 70 CE. Philo himself saw in emperors such as Augustus a reflection of divine virtues.