An international team of researchers has confirmed the rediscovery of the lost city of Alexandria on the Tigris River in Iraq. It was founded by Alexander the Great (356 BC to 323 BC), whose short-lived empire stretched from Greece to the Indus River, covering large swaths of Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia, and was an important trading center until the 3rd century AD.
News of the discovery was announced in January by Germany’s University of Konstanz, where Professor Stefan Hauser, head of the department of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Archeology, is leading the archaeological program documenting the site.
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Alexandria on the Tigris (later renamed Chalax Spasinus) was one of several major cities founded by Macedonian generals, the most famous of which was Alexandria in Egypt, which is today the country’s second largest metropolis. However, unlike its Egyptian counterpart, it was lost over time. By the third century AD, the Tigris River, which connected it to sea transport, had moved westward and the settlement was largely abandoned.
In the mid-20th century, while reviewing aerial photographs, researcher John Hansman linked the ruins of the Jebel Khayyaber area to descriptions of the city written by Pliny the Elder in the first century AD. However, war and political instability – including the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s – made further research impossible for decades.
It was not until 2014 that a team of British researchers, traveling in an armored vehicle under tight security, were allowed to enter the site. In 2016, Hauser joined them in what was officially named the Charax Spasinou project.
Working conditions remain dangerous and difficult, and until recently, the team had only conducted non-invasive research, including ground surveys (always under the protection of armed guards) and drone photography, which revealed the outlines of a planned large-scale metropolis. Subsequent magnetic analysis identified four main parts of the city: a vast residential area, a river port with workshops, a magnificent palace, and an agricultural irrigation system on the outskirts of the city.
“Then we realized that what we had in front of us was the equivalent of Alexander on the Nile,” Hauser said.
Future excavations are planned.
