Caesarium
Coordinates: 31 ° 13 ' N , 29 ° 56' E
The Caesarium was a temple near the city of Alexandria in Egypt, which Cleopatra VII had built in honor of Mark Antony , her lover. The large-scale temple had two obelisks at the entrance , which are known as the needles of Cleopatra . These two obelisks were first built in the city of Heliopolis , near Cairo , by Thutmose III. and were brought to the Caesarium after the death of Cleopatra when the building was rededicated as a temple for the Roman imperial cult .
Whereabouts
The temple and obelisk were on the spot where Saad Zaghloul Square is now. It is believed that the structure must have stood between the station building and the harbor wall. The temple building stretched south along Safia Zaghloul Street . Over time, the temple was converted into a church.
The Caesarium can no longer be found today, it is buried under several layers of rubble from the old city of Alexandria. The obelisks, on the other hand, have been almost completely preserved, even though one of them had fallen over. They were considered the main attraction of Alexandria until the 19th century.
In the 19th century, the Ottoman ruler Muhammad Ali Pasha gave one obelisk to the American and British government as a gift. You can still see the obelisks in New York's Central Park and London today .
literature
- Guy Rachet: Lexicon of Ancient Egypt . Patmos, Düsseldorf 2002, ISBN 3-491-69049-8 .
Web links
- About the Caesarium ( Memento of April 11, 2004 in the Internet Archive )