The Lighthouse of Alexandria
The Lighthouse of Alexandria, on the northwest coast of the Nile's delta, was the most recent monument to complete the canonical list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was named after the island opposite the port of Alexandria on which it was built, and later became a generic term for all the lighthouses built in the world.
Pharos Island is a limestone outcrop: a good base amidst the sands and alluvial marshes formed by the Nile. It was Homer in the Odyssey who mentioned Pharos as an island, and placed it a day's sail from Egypt, a concept later reiterated by Pliny. Homer's sources were obviously rather uncertain. Legend told the story of the beautiful Helen who arrived in Egypt with Paris, but in that island there was nothing to see and whose only inhabitants were seals bored her. Ten years later she returned there, this time accompanied by her husband Menelaus, who was returning home from Troy and who, pushed off course by a storm, had landed on that land.
Menelaus - legend has it - met an old man and asked him:
"What island is this?"
The old man replied that the island belonged to the Pharaoh. Menelaus, who had not understood well, asked again
"Pharaoh?"
to which the old man replied affirmative, repeating the word "Pharaoh" with the ancient Egyptian pronunciation, which transformed it into "Prouti".
Menelaus misinterpreted the answer: this time he understood "Proteus", a name he knew was that of the marine deity to whom Poseidon had granted the gift of prophecy. Thus the unclear pronunciation of an old man and the qui pro quo of Menealus made the island known to the world under the name of Pharos, a land protected by the god Proteus. Furthermore, back in Greece, Menelaus added some embroidery to the story, so much so that the seals, despised by Elena, changed into nymphs who crowded the beaches. Menelaus misinterpreted the answer: this time he understood "Proteus", a name he knew to be that of the marine deity to whom Poseidon had granted the gift of prophecy. Thus the unclear pronunciation of an old man and the qui pro quo of Menealus made the island known to the world under the name of Pharos, a land protected by the god Proteus. Furthermore, back in Greece, Menelaus added some embroidery to the story, so much so that the seals, despised by Elena, changed into nymphs who crowded the beaches.
In the 332 B.C. Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, "liberated" Egypt from the Persian rulers, who themselves succeeded in 343 B.C. to the last of the pharaohs, Nectanebo II of the Third Dynasty. Alexander remained in Egypt for only a few months, before resuming his pressing attack on the Persian Great King, Darius. But he left an imprint on Egypt that was reflected in all of Western civilization. When Alexander touched Egypt, the island of Pharos was known only as the home of the sea god Proteus. It was located a little offshore, in front of the western mouth of the delta, and there was a single fishing village, called Rachotis, on a narrow spit of land between the sea and a large inland lake, Mareotide.
In the autumn of 332 Alexander moved from Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt (now just south of Cairo), along the western arm of the Nile towards Canopus, a long-standing port on the great river, and then to the oasis of Siwa, in the western part of the desert, passing through Rachotis. Alexander's infallible eye immediately realized the potential importance of that miserable village in that particular location, and ordered that a new city, Alexandria, be founded on that area. It was the first of several cities to bear his name, but it always remained the most powerful of all. He then proceeded to his destination, the oasis of Siwa, where stood the great oracle of Ammon. Here, it is said, Alexander was the protagonist of a decisive experience for him when, inside the sanctuary, the officiating priest greeted him as son of the god.
Plutarch wrote that the priest did his best to address Alexander in Greek with the words "O páidion", "O my son", but the conqueror understood "O pài Diós", that is, "O son of Zeus"; which left an indelible impression on Alexander. Since then he considers himself the son of Zeus-Amon, and saw in his war against Persia a sort of crusade, a holy war. The Egyptians accepted Alexander as pharaoh and raised no objection to the fact that he was the son of a god, as this was part of the ancient Egyptian concept that royal blood was the fruit of the conception of a deity. On certain coins minted after his death, Alexander is represented with ram's horns above the Macedonian royal garland: the ram's horns symbolized Zeus-Amon, to whom this animal was especially sacred. The new city founded by Alexander was designed by the architect Dinocrates of Rhodes on the basis of the latest grid plan schemes, conceived a century earlier by Hippodamus of Miletus, the "inventor" of the road network.
The limestone profile that outcropped offshore, and constituted the island of Pharos, together with the rocks at the western end, had provided a port since prehistoric times.
A port that Homer evidently knew and described in the Odyssey:
... There is an island in the very wavy sea in front of Egypt, they call it Pharos. [...]
In it there is a port, with excellent landing places, from which they push into the sea the hovering ships, after they have drawn dark water.(Homer, Odyssey IV 354 ff., 358 ff)
Strabo tells us that:
“Pharos is an oblong island, very close to the mainland, and with it forms a port with two mouths, since the coast of the continent forms an inlet, pushing off two promontories, and the island is situated in the middle and closes the bay with its arrangement parallel to the shore. [...] The tip of the island is rocky and sea-beaten all around. It carries a tower admirably built in white marble, with many floors and with the same name as the island ”.
The writer goes on to describe a coast with no ports and low on both sides with shallows and cliffs, so that navigators, arriving from the open sea, needed a very clear signal to guide them safely to port. The island was inhabited: there was a fairly dense indigenous population and some tombs from the Ptolemaic era (305-30 B.C.). Strabo continues noting that in his time the island had been destroyed by Julius Caesar, as the population had resisted him, in his assault on Alexandria, and he had preferred to side with his own countrymen and Queen Cleopatra VII.
A pier was built between the island of Pharos and the mainland, two sheltered ports were formed, the western and the eastern, one of which, depending on the direction of the wind, would always be available for disembarkation and embarkation. Behind these harbors the city grew up on both sides of the broad road of Canopus, which directly connected the eastern and western parts. Five neighborhoods divided it, each named with the first five letters of the Greek alphabet. Strabo offers a detailed description of the city underlining the advantage of having the sea in front of him and Lake Mareotide behind him, connected with the canals derived from the Nile, a flourishing warehouse of goods, at the beginning even richer than its counterpart on the coast; He listed the buildings, including the Museum, the royal palaces and tombs, and finally the Lighthouse.
“The city has the shape of a military cloak; the two long sides are those washed by the two waters [of the sea and of the internal lake]; the diameter is about 30 stadia [c. 5400 meters] [...]. The whole city is criss-crossed by roads passable both by those riding on horseback and by those who drive chariots [...], it has beautiful public areas, and beautiful are the royal palaces which make up a quarter, if not even a third of the entire perimeter [...]. But these places are all communicating with each other and with the port, even those that are outside the port itself. The Museum is also part of the royal quarters [...], and also within the latter is the so-called Sema. This was the enclosed area which housed the tombs of the king and that of Alexander; since Ptolemy son of Lago managed to steal the sovereign's body from Perdiccas while he was transporting it from Babylon [...] The body of Alexander, kidnapped by Ptolemy, was buried in Alexandria, where it still lies - although not in the same sarcophagus as once, since the current one is made of glass [perhaps alabaster? See the much older sarcophagus of Seti I, 1318-1304 B.C., made of thin, graffitied and transparent alabaster], while the one that contained Ptolemy's remains was made of gold [...]. Entering the large port on the right, here is the island and the tower of Pharos. ”(Strabo, Geography XVII 1.7-10)
Other large buildings of this era (towards the 20 B.C.) included the Caesarium (Cesareum), the Emporium, the Eptastadio, the Gymnasium, the Hippodrome and the famous Serapeum, a temple dedicated to the cult of the Greek-Roman god Serapis. Usually Serapis is represented with a bushel on his head: the bushel is a small measure for grain, and a special attribute of him, since Serapis was the god of grain supply, and Egypt had become Rome's granary. The Museum, or temple of the Muses, was essentially a monastic institution, where culture flourished and where esteemed scholars enjoyed the privilege of not paying taxes while receiving free lodging and food at the same time. The other major Alexandrian institution was the library, one of the most famous in the ancient world: the other was in Pergamum, in Asia Minor. Finally, about five hundred thousand rolls were kept there (the books of the time being written on rolls of papyrus or parchment: papyrus was the most common material in Egypt for this purpose, and also constituted a good source of income for the country).
The library burned due to a fortuitous accident, when Julius Caesar conquered Alexandria; and a second time in 391 A.C. was set on fire by jubilant Christians. These two Alexandrian institutions, the Museum and the library, represented a metaphorical beacon in the ancient world of culture. The light signal in the strict sense must have been provided by the lighthouse, intended to give the building its name and its specific use, i.e. to shed light, in many languages. Descriptions of the Lighthouse recur in the writings of various classical authors at the beginning of the Christian era, above all in Diodorus Siculus (active between 60 and 30 B.C.), in Strabo (64 B.C. - 21 B.C.) and in Pliny the Elder.
The exact date of the construction of the lighthouse and its author are still debated today. Apparently, the building would have been started under Ptolemy I Soter (305 -282 B.C.), childhood friend of Alexander the Great and famous general, who, after Alexander's death in Babylon in323 B.C. took possession of Egypt. Ptolemy also "hoarded" Alexander's body as it was slowly being carried to the vault of the royal cemetery at Vergina, Macedonia, where the tomb of his father Philip II has recently come to light. When the body stopped in Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt, Ptolemy carried out a real seizure of the body, and stole the remains to Alexandria, where he intended to bury it in a grandiose mausoleum in the Sema, the enclosure of the royal tombs. Despite numerous searches, Alexander's body was never found. Most likely it now lies at the bottom of the sea, since from ancient times to today the Alexandrian coast has subsided a lot. Certainly the possession of those remains would have been a very strong attraction for a city of merchants and scholars.
The construction of the lighthouse probably began in 297 B.C., although in a later period the chronicler Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea (263-339 AD), who had been a prisoner in Egypt, mentions in his Chronicle the construction of the Lighthouse in the year 283 or 282 B.C. What appears certain is that it was not built by Ptolemy, as repeatedly suggested. On the other hand, the name of Sostrato is connected to the Lighthouse either as an architect or as a financier. Sostrato was a rich Alexandrian courtier, who also held diplomatic offices.
Strabo notes (Geography XVII 1.6) that the dedication actually written on the Lighthouse said:
«Sostratus of Cnidus, friend of the sovereigns, dedicated this building to the safety of sailors»
Luciano (115-80 A.C.) gives this version:
« Sostratus son of Dexiphanes, Cnidio, dedicated this building to the savior gods, for the benefit of those who navigate the seas»
The "savior gods" could either be a reference to Ptolemy I Soter (meaning Saviour) and his wife Berenice, both of whom appear as gods on the gold eight-drachma coins minted by Ptolemy II. On the other hand, even the Dioscuri, the divine twins Castor and Pollux, who became patron gods of navigation and had the specific task of saving sailors, are frequently mentioned with this name, even if their presence appears very unlikely in an Egyptian context. Posidippus, author of an epigram for the construction or completion of the Lighthouse (and who is therefore the most reliable of all contemporary authors) invokes Proteus, marine god, born on the same island, and mentions Zeus Soter, Zeus Savior, as sailor's goal. Indeed it was Zeus Soter who, at the top of the Lighthouse, served as a beacon on that long, low, indistinct coastline.
The statue of Zeus Soter appeared erected on top of the Lighthouse from the beginning, and the Lighthouse was dedicated to him. The Arab historian al-Mas'udi, in the tenth century A.C., states that the writing was inserted in lead letters one cubit high (the cubit corresponds to half a metre). Located on the west side of the lighthouse, the inscription could easily be seen by anyone entering or leaving the port.
But let's go back to the problem of who built the lighthouse. There is a specific reference by Pliny the Elder (Naturalis historia XXXVI 83) to the "magnanimity" shown on this occasion by King Ptolemy, allowing the architect Sostratus of Cnidus to "engrave his name on the building itself". A Sostratus is known as Ptolemy II Philadelphus's envoy to Delos over the years 270 B.C., and it is legitimate to assume that this Substrate and the other, whose name is linked to the Lighthouse, are a single person; it is in fact a rich man of the court and diplomat. The construction of the Lighthouse probably began during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter (305-282 B.C.), and completed under Ptolemy II Philadelphus (284-246 B.C.). Apparently, a certain Sostratus of Cnidus, a wealthy courtier and diplomat (or perhaps merchant), had paid the expenses and consecrated him; finally, the architect's name remains unknown to us.
Let us now look at the construction itself. It is certainly one of the oldest known buildings in Alexandria; and certainly its construction was in progress at the time when the mausoleum, the Sema, was being built, prepared to receive the remains of Alexander the Great.
Since the Lighthouse was the first building to have an architectural design oriented and specific to a maritime lantern, it is obvious that it served as a model, direct or indirect, for other lighthouses throughout the Greco-Roman world, as evidenced by representations received through mosaics and, mainly, through the reliefs of the sarcophagi. But what we actually know about the Lighthouse, its specific physical image derived both from written sources and questionable illustrations, is very little. Handed down over time, the legends about the lighthouse increased in fascination. According to Epifanio it was 559.6 meters tall! Josephus Flavius in the Judaic History states that its light could be seen from the sea at a distance of 300 stadia, i.e. about 55 kilometres; while Lucian of Samosata (115 A.D. - about 180) reports of 300 miles. Regardless of distance visibility, all agree that the light was provided by a gigantic fire at the base, reflected by mirrors to the top of the structure.
Pliny notes that at his time (half of the 1st century A.D.) other fires were similarly lit in many localities, for example in Ostia and Ravenna. The lighthouse of Ostia is depicted in the famous bas-relief of the Ostiense port preserved in the Torlonia Museum in Rome: high flames sprout from the top of the building. The same figure is provided by a bimetallic medallion of the emperor Commodus (177-92 A.D.): the emperor, standing upright, welcomes the annual fleet of grain in the port of Ostia, in front of a three-high lighthouses. That he hails the Egyptian corn fleet is sure, since at the helm of the large galley on the left the Greek-Egyptian god Jupiter-Serapis can be clearly seen with a bushel of wheat on his head. Like many other lighthouses of a later period, the one in Ostia repeated in its generic structure the Alexandrian prototype still standing and in operation.
Pliny goes on to say that
«the danger of the system lies in the possibility that, as they burn continuously, these fires may be mistaken for stars, because from afar the appearance of the flames is similar .'
This still applies to the modern lighthouses glimpsed on the distant horizon.
Another interesting point concerns only the logistical aspect of the operation of it, that is, to keep a perennial fire, an enormous quantity of fuel, wood or coal, would have been necessary. Egypt is not a country particularly known for its wealth of wood. In fact, wood was very scarce in ancient Egypt (and still is in modern Egypt). The indigenous trees were then only acacia and tamarisk, more bushes than trees. A possible solution could have been animal dung, still widely used today in the homes of the natives, but, once again, the simple quantity required presents problems. It is to be assumed that the intensity of the light was produced more by the glare than by the fire itself. To reflect the flames, sheets of shiny metal must have been used, probably of burnished bronze, as in most of the mirrors of antiquity. During the day a much stronger reverberation could be obtained using the sun's rays.
It is known that in the early Middle Ages the Lighthouse transmitted heliographic messages from incoming ships to the city of Alexandria. And since sailing at night was avoided in ancient times, the need for light during the dark was less important than a signal that, during the day, indicated the course towards the port of Alexandria.
As for the external appearance of the building, it is commonly believed that the structure was on three floors, for a total height of 100 meters: 60 meters the first floor, 30 the second, and others 15 meters up to the tip of the trident (or scepter) of Zeus Soter, which crowned the third floor. Both the ancient and the later Islamic sources all agree regarding the first two floors; but the Islamic version of the historian Ibn Tulun and that of the Fatimite restoration state that a domed mosque with its crescent, symbol of the Faith, was placed at the top of the third floor. When this sort of restoration took place is not known precisely. The entrance to the monument was not at ground level, but somewhat elevated, at the end of a flight of steps. Many bas-reliefs of Roman sarcophagi repeatedly show this style.
The closest and most precise contemporary testimony to the appearance of the Lighthouse is that which is offered to us by the Greek coins of the imperial era, minted by the mint of Alexandria in Roman times. The Lighthouse appears on the reverse of three important coins dating from the reign of Domitian (81-96 A.D.) to that of Commodus (177-92 A.D.). Alexandria, which served as a mint for the Roman Empire like many other cities of the Greek East, continued to mint coins of the Greek type, but with the effigy of the Roman emperor and with his appellations in Greek letters. The drawings on the reverse are very interesting: sometimes Egyptian, Greek and Roman iconography is mixed in a curious way. In the numismatic representations of the Lighthouse up to the entire reign of Hadrian, the access door is visible either at ground level or just slightly raised. During the reign of Antoninus Pius (138-61 A.D.) a change was noted: the access door seems to have been moved slightly higher up. No doubt this is an accurate reproduction, perhaps reflecting some structural modification made in the early days of the kingdom. This coin is known to have been issued for years 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9 of Antoninus' reign. A half-drachma coin from the year 9, not yet disclosed, offers a particularly fine and clear image of the Lighthouse, with round windows on the high first floor, and Tritons blowing trumpets suspended in the air at the upper corners; the entrance door is located at the top, the second and third floors are very squat and the last one is surmounted by the statue of Zeus Soter. Marcus Aurelius (161-80 A.D.) also has a few half-drachma coins, from the years 4 and 17; where upon the Lighthouse disappears from minting as a single effigy. Apparently, Isis Faria had a temple near the Lighthouse on the island itself. Since classical times a good deal of the island of Pharos, indeed of Alexandria itself, has been engulfed by the waves, as the coast has subsided.
Just beyond what had once been the island (it has been connected by a bridge to the mainland for centuries), some divers have found in recent years the testimony of a temple carved out of the rock. In 1963 fragments of large bronze letters were discovered, and in December 1963 the frogmen brought to the surface a colossal statue of Isis, almost as tall as 10 meters, which was obviously related to the temple of the goddess. The statue now lies at the entrance to the Serapeum area, near the column of Pompey.
The Lighthouse continued to form the subject of annotations in Arab historical sources, from which we learn that it suffered serious damage in an earthquake in 956 A.C., and then again in 1303 and 1323. The most complete description we have does not come from the classical authors already mentioned, but from the Arab traveler Abu Haggag Yosuf Ibn Mohammed el-Balawi el-Andalusi, who visited it in the year 1166 A.D. Of the island of Faro he says that it was situated a little out at sea, but he also observes that it had a wharf or wharf on which it was possible to walk, when the sea was not too heavy, without getting the feet wet.
Here is the description from him:
The Lighthouse stands at the end of the island. It is a square construction of 8 meters and a half each side, washed by the sea except on two sides: the eastern and the southern. This base measures, along the sides, from the top to the foot of the Lighthouse, 6 meters and a half, and by so much it rises above the sea level. Moreover, on the sea side, it is wider due to the construction and is very inclined, like the side of a mountain. Since the height of the base increases as it rises towards the walls of the Lighthouse, the width decreases until it reaches the dimensions mentioned above.On this side the construction is solid, the stones well shaped, well placed, long, but with a rougher surface than elsewhere in the building. The part I have just described is recent, because on this side the brickwork of the past needed to be replaced.
On the southern side, the one facing the sea, there is an ancient inscription which I am unable to read: it is not a real epigraph, because the letters are carved in hard black stone. The sea and the wind together have eroded the underlying stone and the letters protrude thanks to the hardness of the material they are made of. They measure a little more than 54 cm. The top of the M stands out like a large hole in a copper crucible. The other letters are roughly the same size.
The doorway of the Lighthouse is placed at the top. A ramp of approx 183 meters in length led to the top. It is a ramp laid over a series of curved arches; my companion got under one of these arches with his arms spread wide, but he could not touch the walls. There are sixteen of these arches, and each one gets higher and higher until it reaches the passageway; the last one is particularly high. [Must be the scale, see the coins].
The two travellers proceeded to explore the ruins of the island:
We passed the opening and proceeded for approx 73 meters of depth. On the left we found a closed door, which we do not know where it led to. About 110 meters further on we found an open door. We crossed it and found ourselves in a room communicating with another one, and then another, and so on for a total of eighteen rooms, all communicating with each other and aligned on a corridor. We realized then that Pharos Island was uninhabited. We continued for others 110 meters, counting another fourteen rooms to right and left. Other routes 44 meters, we still found seventeen rooms. Finally, 100 meters further on, we reached the first floor [of the Lighthouse]. There was no stairway, but a ramp that wound gradually around the cylindrical core of this immense building. To the right we had a not particularly thick wall, to the left the body of the building, whose rooms we had previously explored. We entered a wide corridor 1.6 meters, covered with smooth stones that formed the ceiling; two of my companions could not pass.When we reached the top of the first floor, we measured its height from the ground with a piece of string from which we hung a stone: they were 57 meters and 73 cm. The parapet was approx 1.83 meters. […]
Connected to the images visible on coins and other figurative means, this description and the measurements of the structure offer us a very clear picture of the true appearance of the Lighthouse. The lowest floor measured 57 meters tall and had a cylindrical inner core which supported the weight of the upper floors. The second floor was octagonal in shape approx 27.5 meters; the third shelf, cylindrical, was about 7.5 meters. On top of this last element of the tower the coins show us a gigantic statue of Zeus Soter, which was to add at least others 5 meters up to it. Still to be added are the 10 meters of the basement above the sea level, and thus we arrive at an overall height above the sea of approx 117 meters. The traveler Ibn Battuta describes the lighthouse as partially ruined in 1326; and when he saw it again twenty-three years later, in 1349, he found it "so ruined, that it was not possible to enter it or even climb up to the door".
A manuscript in the monastery of Montpellier gives the date of the ruin of the Lighthouse as 8 August 1303. The last possible depiction of the Lighthouse before its destruction is found in a mosaic from the vault of the chapel of San Zeno in San Marco in Venice, datable to around 1200. It shows the Lighthouse and a ship with the Evangelist at the helm, arriving at Alexandria to found the Coptic Christian church in Egypt. Here the saint died and was buried in Alexandria. The Venetian merchants, aware that their need for the relics of a saint was greater than that of the Alexandrians and Egyptians, who had by now passed over to the Muslim faith, kidnapped Marco's body in 868. It was taken to Venice, where he now lies under the high altar in that stupendous church which bears his name.
The subtraction of Marco's body was the second very important theft of a corpse in the history of Alexandria, after the one perpetrated by Ptolemy I with the body of Alexander the Great to be buried in that city. Marco's skull was recently returned to Egypt by the Venetians: it is now buried in the Coptic cathedral of San Marco in Cairo.
Today, on the site of the Lighthouse, stands the great Islamic fort of Qait Bey, built in the fifteenth century on and with the rubble of the collapsed Lighthouse. The land is a military zone and therefore difficult to access; after all, it doesn't offer much to see, except Islamic architecture.
In Alexandria, the memory of the Lighthouse is kept alive by a modern sculpture in white marble, which reproduces it together with Isis Faria, and welcomes tourists who enter the gardens to visit the catacombs of Kom-es-Shafur.
