Two thousand years ago, Alexandria on the Tigris was a flourishing trade centre and regional capital near the Persian Gulf. Today, only its extended rampart is visible in the southern Iraqi landscape. A British-German research team including archaeologist Stefan Hauser from the University of Konstanz explores the city's remains and reconstructs its function in the ancient world.

What was the political and economic importance of the ancient city Alexandria on the Tigris? How was the city laid out? And what does the material culture of the international trade hub look like? These are the questions that Stefan Hauser, professor of ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern archaeology at the University of Konstanz, and his British colleagues Jane Moon, Robert Killick and Stuart Campbell have been working on since 2016. With the help of modern geophysics methods, thousands of drone images and a systematic surface survey, the researchers concluded that Alexandria on the Tigris had been an impressive metropolis.

"We realized that we had really found the equivalent of the famous Egyptian city, Alexandria on the Nile. In both places, Alexander the Great founded a city in a location where the open sea meets with rivers, e.g. the inland transport systems", Hauser explains. "For more than 550 years, Alexandria on the Tigris, later renamed Charax Spasinou, served as a central trade hub and political centre in what is today southern Iraq. It was from here that the riches of India, including spices, exotic woods like palisander and semi-precious stones, but probably also Chinese silk and many other commodities, entered the huge urban centres of Babylonia, and even the Mediterranean."

For details on the city's layout, its rise and the probable reasons for its decline, check out the background article "The forgotten city of Alexandria" in the University of Konstanz's online magazine. Word has it that the city's demise was likely linked to geological changes in its environment.

Yet there are other reasons why archaeologists have only recently been looking into Alexandria on the Tigris. "Aside from Alexandria's heyday being in a period that had long been neglected in historical-archaeological research, its location, known today as Jebel Khayyaber, had traditionally been very difficult to access", Hauser says. "It is just fifteen kilometres from the Iranian border. During the First Gulf War between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, the region had been a key battleground. A military camp was built in the city's ruins." When the archaeological team started to work in the area, the Islamic terror organization that called itself "Islamic State" still controlled large portions of northern Iraq and Syria, which meant that research could only be conducted under the tightest security measures.