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:
“The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)