The Catacombs of
Kom el-Shoqafa
Rediscovery
For centuries, Kom el-Shoqafa slumbered beneath the shifting earth. Earthquakes shook Alexandria. Sand and rubble piled high. Entrances collapsed. The necropolis was forgotten — not destroyed, simply buried by time itself.
There are no records of its closing, no stories of its last visitors. Just silence. The tombs lay undisturbed for over 1,700 years, a subterranean city of the dead sealed away beneath one of the most vibrant cities of the ancient world.
Then, in 1900, a twist of fate.
A donkey, pulling a cart near the area of Kom el-Shoqafa, stumbled. The earth beneath it gave way. The animal fell through a hole — not into dirt, but into darkness. A spiral staircase. Ancient walls. Statues watching in the gloom.
Archaeologists arrived, breath held. As they descended into the catacombs, oil lamps in hand, they realized what they had found was not just a tomb — but an entire forgotten world. One shaped by grief, beauty, ritual, and a bizarre fusion of civilizations.
To the modern imagination, it was like something out of myth: a city beneath a city, long silent, suddenly speaking again.
And Kom el-Shoqafa has never stopped whispering.
Experience it
Death Meets Design
As you descend the spiral staircase carved deep into the bedrock, you enter a world that doesn’t seem to obey the normal rules of history.
This was no ordinary tomb. It was a strange, beautiful contradiction — Egyptian in purpose, Greek in elegance, and Roman in extravagance.
In the antechambers, you’ll find statues that confuse the eye: a man stands in a Greek chiton, yet his head wears the solemn weight of an Egyptian headdress, and beside him, the carved wings of Roman funerary symbolism stretch like stone curtains. Gods of different empires appear side by side, not in competition, but in eerie harmony. There are carvings of Anubis (The Egyptian god of Death) dressed as a Roman centurion, and sarcophagi flanked by columns straight from a Hellenistic villa.
When the catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa were first carved out in the 2nd century CE, they were likely meant for one purpose: to lay a single wealthy Alexandrian family to rest in splendor. And at first, that’s all it was — a private descent into silence. One chamber, carefully adorned. One family’s tribute to the dead, carved into limestone and shadow.
But something changed.
As the decades passed, the tomb expanded — level upon level, new passageways, burial niches, ceremonial halls. The original chamber became just one part of a vast underground necropolis, stretching deeper, housing more and more of the departed. What began as a monument to individual sorrow slowly transformed into a city beneath the city — one that whispered of changing values, growing cosmopolitanism, and a blurring between personal grief and public memory. The private became communal. One family’s tomb became a mirror of Alexandria itself — layered, mixed, proud, and strangely unified in death.
This wasn’t just a tomb. It was a monument to Alexandria’s identity — a city caught between worlds. Where no single culture owned the afterlife, so they built a palace of death with all of them, layered in stone.
Experience it
Rituals and the Afterlife
Step deeper into Kom el-Shoqafa, and you’ll find spaces not just for the dead — but for the living who refused to let go.
One chamber, often called the banqueting hall, was once filled with stone couches where families would gather for funerary feasts, dining in honor of their ancestors in quiet communion between worlds. Oil lamps flickered. Bread was broken. The past was invited to sit beside the present.
Then there’s the most mysterious space of all: the Hall of Caracalla.
Here, bones were discovered — but of what kind? Some early archaeologists claimed they were horse bones, perhaps the ceremonial burial of cavalry steeds. Others reported human remains, and not just any — possibly young men and women, slain in a brutal purge ordered by Emperor Caracalla after unrest in Alexandria around 215 CE.
The truth remains frustratingly elusive.
The early 20th-century excavators lacked modern tools, and today, forensic clarity is out of reach. The inscriptions are silent. The bones may be lost or degraded. And so, we’re left with a room echoing with rumors of massacre… or perhaps ritual… or both.
This ambiguity is part of what makes Kom el-Shoqafa so haunting: it isn’t just a tomb. It’s a puzzle — where death, culture, and memory are layered not just in stone, but in silence.
Experience it
Echoes of the Underworld
In the catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa, death does not belong to one people. Greek, Roman, and Egyptian beliefs intertwine — as if Alexandria itself tried to make sense of mortality through every lens it had. A Greek-style figure with an Egyptian headdress. A Roman banquet held in honor of the departed. Gods from three worlds sharing the same tomb.
This was Alexandria: a crossroads not only in life, but in death.
Today, visitors descend the spiral staircase and find themselves in a space where time folds. Walls carved by hands long gone. Symbols that speak of grief, love, and belief. There is no single voice here — only a choir of cultures, harmonized by centuries of coexistence.
And still, the catacombs speak.
To archaeologists, they offer clues. To poets, a metaphor. To ordinary travelers, a strange sense of being watched — or welcomed — by something ancient. Kom el-Shoqafa is not just a burial site. It’s a mirror of Alexandria’s soul, preserved in stone.
In a world that often forgets its dead, this place remembers.
We invite you to experience this moment for yourself.
Join our private, curated journeys through Egypt, where expert guides, seamless service, and privileged access bring history to life—one temple, one sunrise, one story at a time.
Abu Simbel awaits.