Alexandria in Egypt became the second most important city in the Roman Empire.
It would be easier for someone . . . to cross from east to west than to travel from one point in Alexandria to another. For the most central pathway in this city is more vast and more impassable than even that extensive and untrodden desert that it took Israel two generations to cross. Our smooth and waveless harbors have become an image of that [Red Sea]. . . . The river, too, that flows by the city, has sometimes appeared drier than the waterless desert. . . . At other times, it has overflowed all the country around it. Dionysius of Alexandria (c. 262, E), 6.109.