TOPOGRAPHY AND URBANISM

Alexandrian housing

This first theme directs the salvage excavations on land. Among the ten or so sites that are proposed to us by the Egyptian antiquities service every year, we take on two or three, depending on our financial situation. We have tried to remain in the same district of town with the aim of easing the construction of the immense puzzle that Alexandrian archaeology presents. Aside from reading the stratigraphy, which we find from one dig to the next and is becoming familiar, our intention is to gain a better knowledge of the topography of the town with its road network, not forgetting the walls and water system, both of which are the object of more general research on the scale of the city. The digs have revealed Hellenistic and Roman housing in a good enough state of conservation to give us an idea of the style of occupation in the Bruccheion quarter that was to the south-west of the royal palaces.

Dining room decorated with a pebble mosaic (beginning of 3rd century BC.)

Excavation of the garden of the former British Consulate (1994, 1996-1997)

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