Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great about the time when Greece, in losing her national independence, lost also her intellectual supremacy, was well adapted for becoming the new centre of the world's activity and thought. Its situation brought it into commercial relations with all the nations lying around the Mediterranean, and at the same time it was the one communicating link with the wealth and civilization of the East. The natural advantages it enjoyed were increased to an enormous extent by the care of the sovereigns of Egypt.