BBC History Magazine

ANNIVERSARIES

21 JULY AD 365

Alexandria is hit by a tsunami

A megaquake in the Mediterranean wreaks havoc

During the early hours of a summer morning in AD 365, the city of Alexandria, along Egypt's Mediterranean coast, was devastated by an enormous tidal wave.

“Slightly after daybreak, and heralded by a thick succession of fiercely shaken thunderbolts, the solidity of the whole Earth was made to shake and shudder, and the sea was driven away, its waves were rolled back, and it disappeared,” wrote the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus.

Beneath the eastern Mediterranean, just off the island of Crete, the Earth's crust had slipped, displacing an immense quantity of seawater towards northern Egypt. Although people at the time had no means of measuring earthquakes, modern-day geologists estimate that it likely registered somewhere between 8.0–8.5 on the Richter Scale – a truly devastating event.

Indeed, there is evidence that Crete itself

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