Researchers Confirm Location Of Lost City Of Alexandria On The Tigris

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Rediscovered in Iraq, Alexandria on the Tigris Reemerges Through Drones and Magnetometry

For centuries, Alexandria on the Tigris existed more as a name in ancient texts than a place on a map. Now an international team of researchers says it has confirmed the rediscovery of the long-lost city in Iraq, a settlement founded by Alexander the Great (356 BCE–323 BCE) that once anchored trade routes until the 3rd century CE.

The confirmation was announced in January by the University of Konstanz in Germany. The project is led by Professor Stefan Hauser, chair of Mediterranean and Near Eastern archaeology, who has been working with colleagues to document the site through a combination of remote sensing and on-the-ground survey.

Alexandria on the Tigris was later renamed Charax Spasinou, and its disappearance was not the result of a single catastrophe so much as a slow severing of infrastructure. By the 3rd century CE, the Tigris River - the city's connection to maritime shipping - had shifted westward. With the river's course altered, the settlement was largely abandoned, and over time its precise location faded from common knowledge.

Modern scholarship began to circle the site in the mid-20th century, when researcher John Hansman studied aerial photographs and proposed that faint structural traces in an area known as Jebel Khayyaber corresponded to a description of the city recorded in the 1st century CE by Pliny the Elder. But decades of war and political instability, including the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, made sustained archaeological work impossible.

Access came only recently. In 2014, a British team was granted permission to visit the area, traveling in armored vehicles and operating under tight security. By 2016, Hauser had joined the effort, which was formally organized as the Charax Spasinou Project.

Because conditions remained dangerous and logistically complex, the researchers initially relied on non-invasive methods. Surface surveys were carried out under armed guard, while drone photography provided a broader view of the terrain. Those aerial images revealed the outlines of a large, planned metropolis - a city laid out with an order that suggested administrative ambition as much as commercial purpose.

A subsequent magnetometric analysis sharpened the picture, allowing the team to distinguish four major components of the ancient city: an extensive residential area; a river port with workshops, indicating production and trade; a monumental palace; and, on the outskirts, an irrigation system that points to organized agriculture supporting urban life.

“We then realized that what we had before us was the equivalent of Alexandria on the Nile,” Hauser said, drawing a comparison to the most famous of Alexander's foundations: Alexandria in Egypt, now the country's second-largest city.

For archaeologists, the rediscovery is significant not only because it returns a major Hellenistic-era city to the historical record, but also because it demonstrates what can be achieved when excavation is not yet possible. With drone imaging and magnetometry, the team has been able to outline the city's functional zones and scale without turning a spade of earth.

Future excavations are planned, and researchers hope that, as conditions allow, targeted digging will confirm what the scans suggest - and bring new detail to a city that once linked river traffic, workshops, and palace power at the edge of Alexander's vast, short-lived empire.

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