Archaeologists confirm the site of a lost city founded by Alexander the Great

Archaeologists have confirmed the site of a long-lost city founded by Alexander the Great – a once-thriving trading center hidden for centuries.

The ancient city, known as Alexandria on the Tigris, is located in southern Iraq, near the Persian Gulf.

It was founded in the fourth century BC as a port city connecting trade from India to Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean world. It fell into obscurity after the third century AD, when the course of the Tigris changed.

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Over the past few years, researchers have mapped the city’s fortified walls, street grids and city blocks, thanks to drone imagery and high-resolution geophysical scanning.

Archaeologists have worked on the site since the 2010s, when ISIS controlled Iraq – but it was not until now that the full scale of the lost metropolis was revealed.

The University of Konstanz in Germany, in a Jan. 28, said that archaeologists “are only allowed to carry out investigations under the supervision of the military or police.”

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Researchers have identified temple buildings, workshops with fireplaces and hearths and remains of the city’s port and aqueduct system.

The city was “flooded repeatedly,” but was remarkably well preserved, said Stefan R. Hauser, a professor of archeology at the University of Konstanz.

The nearly untouched site offers what researchers call a rare opportunity to reconstruct an entire ancient city plan. (Charax Spasinou Project 2016 (Jörg Fassbinder))

Hauser told Fox News Digital that, like its more famous counterpart in Egypt, Alexandria on the Tigris was founded at the crossroads between the river and the sea.

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This city was founded at a time when a new port for trade with India was much needed in southern Mesopotamia.

Hauser said Alexander the Great personally chose the site in 324 BC, citing the author Pliny the Elder, who relied on older sources.

“The quality of the geophysical evidence is amazing… The preservation of the buildings is amazingly good.”

Alexander, the Macedonian leader who conquered the Persian Empire, was drawn to the area of ​​the river.

The archaeologist said he was surprised by the size of the 2.5 square kilometer city, which he called “the largest ancient city.”

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“The size of the buildings in the city is amazing,” he said. “It surpasses even those that were capitals of that time, such as Seleucia on the Tigris or Alexandria on the Nile.”

Hauser added, “The quality of the geophysical evidence is truly amazing… The preservation of the buildings is amazingly good, and we started to identify the walls very quickly underground, which in turn has good results in the geophysical survey.”

Scholars say the city was founded at a critical crossroads between the river and the sea, serving as an anchor for trade routes across the Persian Gulf. (Charax Spasinou Project 2022 (Robert Killick))

Hauser said research began in 2016 under British archaeologists Jane Moon, Robert Killick and Stuart Campbell, whom he credits with establishing the project.

Excavating the site was a challenge, he said, as summer temperatures soar above 120 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition, the common area suffers from air pollution.

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The research team plans to investigate the city quarter and horse workshops in the future, pending funding.

“We began to identify the walls immediately below,” said the archeology professor. (Charax Spasinou Project (Stuart Campbell 2017)

Hauser emphasized that the site could shed light on the Parthian Empire, which controlled the city centuries after Alexander’s conquest. He described this kingdom as one of the ancient kingdoms that have not been well studied.

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“There is not a single useful summary [of] its history, architecture and culture,” said Hauser.

The medieval depiction of Alexander the Great crossing the Tigris, seen above, shows the legacy of the Macedonian emperor who founded Alexandria on the Tigris in the fourth century BC (Art Images via Getty Images)

The site is “very suitable for this kind of research, because there has been no later construction work since ancient times,” he added.

“We have an almost unique opportunity to rebuild the entire city system [through] geophysical research, and we are currently hoping to finish geophysics this year.”