قام الامبراطور دقلديانوس ببناء الحصن حوالى سنة ٢٠٠ ميلادية لجناية ميناء العددية التي كانت تمر بين برجى الحصن وتصل نهر النيل بالبحر
تراجان حوالى سنة ١١٠ ميلادية كما انشأ ايضا قناة تراجان التي كانت تمر بين برجى الحصن وتصل نهر النيل بالبحر
الاحمر ويفيد رؤية البرجين ٠٠ البرج الشمالي الذي بنى فوق حوائط الميناء ويعلوه الآن كنيسة مارجرجس الرومانى بينما
بنى البرج الجويى على أساسات من الكتل الحجرية

## The Round Towers of the Fortress of Babylon

The fortress was constructed c. 300 AD by Diocletian to fortify the Roman harbour of Old Cairo, built by Trajan c. 110AD

The massive round towers flanked the entrance from the harbour to the Canal of Trajan, which linked the Nile with the Red Sea.

The northern tower (now under the Greek Church of St. George) was built over the existing Trajanic harbour wall while the southern tower had been constructed on massive stone foundations

USAID
FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

OLD CAIRO
ARCHAEOLOGY

# The Fortress of Babylon

## The foundation of Babylon

Archaeological evidence and the accounts of ancient writers indicate a date during the Late Period (664–525 BC) for the first settlement in Old Cairo. Ceramic finds suggest this first foundation was a river port with extensive trading contacts throughout the Levant and the Aegean. The settlement at Babylon thus appears to be contemporary with the first attempted cutting of a canal between the Nile Valley and the Red Sea by Necho-II (610–595 BC) and its successful completion by the Persian king Darius (521–486 BC). The first-century-BC account of the Greek geographer Strabo links the name of the settlement to its foundation ‘by some Babylonians who had taken refuge there’.

Babylon occupied a position of great strategic importance at the head of the Nile Valley, as well as at a natural crossing point of the Nile via the island of Roda and the conflux of a number of important east-west trade routes.

## Roman Babylon - the two phases of the harbour and the fortress

In 112 AD the Roman emperor Trajan shifted the head of the Red Sea canal to Babylon and built a massive stone harbour around the entrance to the canal. The re-opening of the canal by Trajan was connected to strategic and commercial interests in the eastern empire following the annexing of Nabataea in 106 AD.

Around 300 AD the Emperor Diocletian secured this important strategic location by constructing the massive fortress of Babylon. The fortress formed part of a comprehensive military and administrative reorganization of Egypt that included the construction of a string of strategic fortresses along the length of the Nile Valley. The alignment of the fortress was derived from the existing riverside walls of the Trajanic harbour and the canal, with the eastern and western walls of the fortress framing two enclosures of equal width on either side of the canal. The entrance to the canal remained the same, although it was now flanked by the massive round towers that today mark the entrance to the Coptic Museum.

## *Babylon after the Arab Conquest*

After the Arab Conquest of Egypt in 641 AD the new capital of al-Fustat was founded around the nucleus of the former fortress. Today Old Cairo contains a uniquely important group of early-mediaeval religious buildings within and around the impressive remains of the Roman fortress of Babylon.

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