History
It started as a small fishing town during Ancient Egyptian times and the reign of Alexander The Great and was named Amunia. There are ruins of a temple of Rameses II (1200 B.C.). Mersa Matruh became known as Paraitonion in the Ptolemaic era. When Roman occupation came to Egypt, the town became an important harbor for trade and shipping goods and crops to Rome. It was named Paraetonium by the Romans. During World War II, the British Army's Baggush Box was located to the east. Starting with the completion of an extension from the previous railhead at Fuka in February 1936, Mersa Matruh was the terminus for a single-track railway, which passed through El Alamein.
Read more about this topic: Mersa Matruh
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)
“History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.
In Beverly Hills ... they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows.
Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.”
—Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876)
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)