One of the few places in Alexandria where it is possible to get any sense of the city as it was 2,000 years ago is this small but densely packed museum. Its exhibits illustrate a fascinating period in Egyptian history, when pharaonic traditions and gods were being wedded to those of the occupying Ptolemaic Greeks and the Romans who followed them.

Appropriately enough, on entering and turning left into Room 6, the first exhibits you see are three heads of Alexander the Great, the city’s founder. Two busts of a shaggy-haired man with a flowing beard of coils represent the god Serapis. In this wholly Alexandrian creation, Egyptian elements in the form of Osiris were combined with the Greek god Dionysus to create a deity that the city’s two peoples could worship together.

Further evidence of ancient Alexandria lies southeast of the museum. Kom al-Dikka, which translated as mound of rubble, is a large city-centre excavation of the ancient Panion, or Park of Pan, a Greco-Roman-era pleasure garden. Pride of the archaeologists is a small but beautifully preserved.