Alexandria's Oldest Burial Tombs

These underground chambers, the oldest burial tombs in Alexandria, are cut into the bedrock around an open court where funerary rituals were conducted. They were discovered accidentally at the turn of the 19th century.

Some chambers feature bed-shaped sarcophagi, but most contain rectangular burial niches carved into the walls like those pictured here. Others consist of a niche housing an urn which contained the remains of the deceased after cremation. Although much of the original decorations are not preserved, enough survive to give tantalizing glimpses into the past grandeur of these chambers, their sculpted walls, elaborate columns, and solid pseudo-windows.

In “The Mistress,” one of the nine stories in my collection titled The Deadliest Deceptions, Miriam and Phoebe pass through the Gate of the Moon to a hamlet near the main necropolis:

Once we passed through the Gate of the Moon, we were near the necropolis, where Alexandrians have been burying their dead for more than a century. It was easy to spot the hamlet at the end of a gritty access road. On the brow of a hill, a few ugly cottages were threaded together by a dusty path fringed by a riot of untended brambles and a few stunted plane trees infested with wasps and gasping for water. No wonder so few lived beyond the Gate. My own nostrils were smarting from the putrid stink of rotting flesh, the pickle-like stench of the embalming workshops, and the cloying reek of funereal oils.

Following the completion of a thorough three year preservation project, this Hellenistic Era necropolis, near the present-day Library of Alexandria, is open now. You can visit, or you can settle in to read The Deadliest Deceptions. Just click here.