Antirhodos

Antirhodos

Map of ancient Alexandria. "2" marks the island of Antirhodos.
Map of Egypt showing the location of Antirhodos.
Location	Alexandria
Region	Egypt
Coordinates	31°12′24″N 29°54′01″E / 31.20667°N 29.90028°E / 31.20667; 29.90028Coordinates: 31°12′24″N 29°54′01″E / 31.20667°N 29.90028°E / 31.20667; 29.90028
Altitude	−5 m (−16 ft)
Type	Island
Part of	Alexandria Port
Length	300 metres (980 ft)
Area	500 ha (1,200 acres)
History
Founded	c. 250BC
Cultures	Ptolemaic Kingdom
Associated with	Cleopatra
Site notes
Excavation dates	1996
Archaeologists	Franck Goddio
Condition	Submerged

Antirhodos (sometimes Antirrhodos or Anti Rhodes) was an island in the eastern harbor of Alexandria, Egypt, on which a Ptolemaic palace was sited. The island was occupied until the reigns of Septimius Severus and Caracalla and it probably sank in the 4th century, when it succumbed to earthquakes and a tsunami following an earthquake in the eastern Mediterranean near Crete in the year 365. The site now lies underwater, near the seafront of modern Alexandria, at a depth of approximately five metres (16 ft).

Descriptions of the island were recorded in classical antiquity by Greek geographers and historians.Strabo described a royal house on Antirhodos in 27 BC and wrote that the island's name ("counter-Rhodes") derived from the island's rivalry with the island of Rhodes. Antirhodos was part of Alexandria's ancient royal port called the Portus Magnus, which also included parts of the Lochias peninsula in the East and the island of Pharos in the West. The Portus Magnus was abandoned and left as an open bay after an earthquake in the 8th century.

In 1996, underwater archaeology in the harbour of Alexandria conducted by Franck Goddio located the island and found that it was on the opposite side of the harbour from where it was placed by Strabo. The excavations showed that the island had been occupied from before the founding of Alexandria and that it was totally levelled and prepared for construction around 250BC. The island was small (about 500 hectares or 1,200 acres) and fully paved, with three branches leading in different directions. The main branch was 300 metres (1,000 ft) long and had an esplanade facing the site of the Caesarium temple on the mainland seafront. On the esplanade Goddio uncovered the remains of a relatively modest (90 metres by 30 metres) marble-floored 3rd century BC palace, believed to have been Cleopatra's royal quarters. On another narrow branch of the island there was a small Temple of Isis which had at its entrance a life-size granite statue representing a shaven-headed Egyptian priest of the goddess Isis carrying a jar topped with an image of Osiris. A pair of granite sphinxes flanked the statue, one of which had the head of Cleopatra's father.