The Catacombs of Alexandria · A Place No One Went Down Into for Two Thousand Years

The catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa in Alexandria mix three styles, Roman, Greek and Egyptian: the columns at the entrance are Roman, the wall paintings show the Egyptian weighing of the heart, and deep in the burial chambers are Greek banquet carvings.

They were abandoned for many years and were only rediscovered in the early twentieth century, when a donkey fell down the shaft. The passages spiral down through three levels, and the lowest is flooded with groundwater.

As designed, the place could have held several hundred sarcophagi. Very few have actually been dug out. No one knows where the rest went.

Occult Chronicles / Alexandria · Egypt / 2nd century