Today in History: On July 21, 365, the city of Alexandria, Egypt, and surrounding villages and towns were devastated by a tsunami caused by what is known as the 365 Crete earthquake.
Scientists believe the earthquake in the Eastern Mediterranean was actually two tremors in succession. Today, geologists estimate the undersea earthquake to have been a magnitude of 8.0 or higher. The quake sent a wall of water across the Mediterranean Sea toward the Egyptian coast.
The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus described the earthquake and tsunami in detail.
"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, so that the abyss of the depths was uncovered and many-shaped varieties of sea-creatures were seen stuck in the slime; the great wastes of those valleys and mountains, which the very creation had dismissed beneath the vast whirlpools, at that moment, as it was given to be believed, looked up at the sun's rays. Many ships, then, were stranded as if on dry land, and people wandered at will about the paltry remains of the waters to collect fish and the like in their hands; then the roaring sea as if insulted by its repulse rises back in turn, and through the teeming shoals dashed itself violently on islands and extensive tracts of the mainland, and flattened innumerable buildings in towns or wherever they were found. Thus in the raging conflict of the elements, the face of the earth was changed to reveal wondrous sights. For the mass of waters returning when least expected killed many thousands by drowning, and with the tides whipped up to a height as they rushed back, some ships, after the anger of the watery element had grown old, were seen to have sunk, and the bodies of people killed in shipwrecks lay there, faces up or down. Other huge ships, thrust out by the mad blasts, perched on the roofs of houses, as happened at Alexandria, and others were hurled nearly two miles from the shore, like the Laconian vessel near the town of Methone which I saw when I passed by, yawning apart from long decay."
Approximately 5,000 people lost their lives in Alexandria; another 45,000 died outside the city. The shoreline was permanently changed, and the buildings of Alexandria's Royal Quarter were overtaken by the sea following the tsunami.
In 1995, archaeologists discovered the ruins of the old city off the coast of present-day Alexandria.
The quake also caused widespread destruction in the Diocese of Macedonia (modern Greece), Africa Proconsularis (northern Libya), Egypt, Cyprus, Sicily, and Hispania (Spain). On Crete, nearly all towns were destroyed.
