Ancient Egypt City Aligned With Sun on King's Birthday

The Egyptian city of Alexandria, home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, may have been built to align with the rising sun on the day of Alexander the Great's birth, a new study finds.
The Macedonian king, who commanded an empire that stretched from Greece to Egypt to the Indus River in what is now India, founded the city of Alexandria in 331 B.C. The town would later become hugely prosperous, home to Cleopatra, the magnificent Royal Library of Alexandria and the 450-foot-tall (140 meters) Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Today, more than 4 million people live in modern Alexandria.
Ancient Alexandria was planned around a main east-west thoroughfare called Canopic Road, said Giulio Magli, an archaeoastronomer at the Politecnico of Milan. A study of the ancient route reveals it is not laid out according to topography; for example, it doesn't run quite parallel to the coastline. But on the birthday of Alexander the Great, the rising sun of the fourth century rose "in almost perfect alignment with the road," Magli said.
http://www.livescience.com/23994-ancient-city-alexandria-sun.html

Both practical and beautiful, the 400-foot lighthouse at the mouth of Alexandria harbor started guiding sailors home around 250 BC. A fire made the lighthouse glow at night and a mirror reflected sun rays during the day, some say up to 35 miles away.
CREDIT: Photo Credit: The Pharos of Alexandria, an ancient lighthouse, is depicted in this hand-colored engraving by Martin Heemskerck.