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The Caesarium (or Caesareum) was a temple built by Cleopatra VII to commemorate the deification of her murdered lover Julius Caesar and to honor her husband Marc Antony. When Octavian, Caesar's heir, conquered Antony and occupied Alexandria he destroyed every statue of the last pharoah but preserved her monument, rededicating it to himself. So travelers entering Alexandria's harbor might notice the temple he set before it two fifteen-centuries-old pylons from the temple of Ra in Heliopolis, one of which now stands behind the Metropolitan Museum in New York's Central Park and the other in London's Thames Embankment. Until the middle of the 4th century the Caesarium was the center of a temple complex that included gardens, lecture halls, and satellites of the Great Library. Converted to a Christian church in the late 4th century, The Caesarium served as headquarters to Bishop Cyril who led a campaign to stamp out all non-Christian influences in Alexandria. The philosopher Hypatia was mur...

Don Dixon is a Fellow and founding member of the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA). His artwork has been honored by NASA and the New York Society of Illustrators and has been featured on the covers of Scientific American, Astronomy, Sky and Telescope, Bild der Wissenschaft, and dozens of books, ranging from physics compendiums to science fiction novels. His painting Red Mars, cover art for the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson's award winning trilogy, rode the Phoenix spacecraft to a successful landing in the arctic region of the Red Planet in 2008 as part of the Planetary Society's digital Martian Library. He began his artistic career animating NASA's early missions to the planets and has been a guest of NASA at...