Lighthouse of Alexandria: The Pharos, a Wonder of the World

The Lighthouse of Alexandria, known as the Pharos, was a huge stone tower built on the island of Pharos at the entrance to Alexandria’s harbour and completed around 280 BC under Ptolemy II of Egypt. Counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it guided ships along a flat and dangerous coast for about 1,500 years. It was the tallest building of its age apart from the Great Pyramids, and its name became the word for lighthouse in many European languages.

Background: a harbour on a hidden coast

Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in 331 BC on a strip of land between the Mediterranean and Lake Mareotis. The coast of the Nile Delta is low and featureless, with sandbanks and reefs, and sailors approaching from the open sea had few landmarks to steer by.

Opposite the new city lay the long, narrow island of Pharos. Engineers joined it to the mainland with a causeway about seven stadia long (roughly 1.2 kilometres), called the Heptastadion, creating two harbours on either side. A tall tower on the eastern tip of the island could mark the harbour entrance by day and, with a fire at its summit, by night.

After Alexander’s death, his general Ptolemy made Alexandria the capital of his kingdom of Egypt. A monumental lighthouse served both a practical purpose, encouraging the trade that made the Ptolemies rich, and a political one, announcing the power of the new dynasty to every ship that arrived.

Construction

Work probably began under Ptolemy I Soter in the 290s BC and was finished under his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus, usually dated to around 280 BC. Pliny the Elder says the tower cost 800 talents, an enormous sum.

Ancient writers link the building to Sostratus of Cnidus. Strabo mentions an inscription by Sostratus of Cnidus, “a friend of the kings”, for the safety of sailors, and the later writer Lucian gives its fuller wording, naming Sostratus son of Dexiphanes and dedicating the tower to the Saviour Gods on behalf of those at sea. Whether Sostratus was the architect or a wealthy courtier and diplomat who paid for the dedication is debated; both views are found in modern scholarship.

The materials included large blocks of limestone and granite, some reportedly joined with molten lead to withstand the waves. No reliable account of the building process survives.

Design and how it worked

The best descriptions come not from Greek or Roman writers but from medieval Arab travellers who saw the tower while it was still standing. The Andalusian traveller Abu al-Haggag al-Andalusi measured it in 1165, and Ibn Jubayr described it in 1183.

Their accounts, together with Roman coins of Alexandria that show the lighthouse, suggest three stages:

• a tall, square lower section with a slightly tapering shape, containing many rooms and a ramp wide enough for pack animals to carry fuel upwards;
• an octagonal middle section;
• a cylindrical top section supporting the fire and, above it, a statue.

The identity of the crowning statue is uncertain. Zeus Soter (“Zeus the Saviour”), Poseidon and the Ptolemaic king have all been suggested. Statues of Triton blowing conch shells may have stood at the corners of the lowest stage.

Total height is usually estimated at about 100 to 140 metres. At night a fire burned at the top, and by day the smoke and the tower itself served as a landmark. Ancient claims that the light was visible from 300 stadia (about 50 kilometres) or more are probably exaggerated, but the tower could certainly be seen from far out at sea.

Life of the lighthouse

The Pharos was in use throughout the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. When Julius Caesar fought in Alexandria in 48 BC, as described in Alexandrian War, he seized the island of Pharos to keep control of the harbour entrance. Roman emperors placed the lighthouse on Alexandrian coins, which are some of the best visual evidence for its shape.

After the Arab conquest of Egypt in AD 641–642, the lighthouse remained in use and was repaired several times. Medieval writers record that the upper parts were rebuilt more than once, and at some point a small mosque was placed at the top.

The Pharos inspired imitations across the Mediterranean, and its shape may have influenced the design of early minarets, although this idea is debated.

Destruction and rediscovery

Earthquakes

The eastern Mediterranean is seismically active, and earthquakes gradually wrecked the tower. Damage is recorded in the 10th century, and major earthquakes in 1303 and 1323 caused severe destruction. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta visited in 1326 and could still enter part of the building; when he returned in 1349 he found it so ruined that he could not get inside.

In the 1470s the Mamluk sultan Qaitbay built a fortress on the site, today the Citadel of Qaitbay, reusing stone from the ruins. The fort still stands at the tip of the old island, now joined permanently to the mainland by silt.

Underwater discoveries

Divers had long noticed massive blocks on the seabed off the fort. The pioneering underwater archaeologist Honor Frost studied the site in 1968. From 1994 a French team led by Jean-Yves Empereur, working with Egyptian authorities, surveyed and mapped thousands of architectural pieces, columns, sphinxes and colossal statues of Ptolemaic kings and queens.

Some of the large granite blocks, broken into pieces as if by a fall, are thought to come from the lighthouse. Other objects were brought from older Egyptian sites, such as Heliopolis, by the Ptolemies to decorate their capital. Several statues have been raised and are on display in Alexandria, while much remains underwater.

A Wonder of the World

The idea of a list of seven outstanding “sights” (theamata) developed among Greek writers in the Hellenistic period. Early versions of the list did not always include the Pharos: the poet Antipater of Sidon, writing in the 2nd century BC, named the walls of Babylon instead. The lighthouse appears in later lists and became fixed in the canonical seven that Renaissance scholars and artists popularised.

That canon combined monuments of very different ages. The Great Pyramid was already more than 2,000 years old when the Pharos was built, while the Colossus of Rhodes, a bronze statue of the sun god Helios, was raised at almost the same time as the lighthouse and fell in an earthquake only a few decades later. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus completed the list.

Unlike most of the other wonders, the Pharos was a working building rather than a tomb, temple or statue. Its fame rested on its usefulness as well as its size, and Greek and Roman writers often praised it as a gift to sailors.

Legacy

The tower’s name entered the vocabulary of Europe. The Greek word pharos and the Latin pharus came to mean any lighthouse, and the word survives as “phare” in French and “faro” in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. Roman lighthouses such as the one at Dover in Britain and the Tower of Hercules at A Coruña in Spain, still in use today, belong to the same tradition.

Renaissance artists, who had never seen the tower, imagined it in prints such as the series of the Wonders of the World engraved by Philip Galle after Maarten van Heemskerck in 1572. Modern reconstructions rely instead on Arabic descriptions, coins and the finds from the seabed, and they generally agree on the three-stage design.

The Egyptian government has at times proposed rebuilding the lighthouse as a tourist landmark, but no reconstruction has been built. The underwater site has been studied as a possible underwater museum.

Myths and facts

The burning mirror. Medieval stories claim the tower held a giant mirror that could spot ships far away or set enemy fleets on fire. The weapon story has no basis; a reflector to strengthen the light is possible but unproven.

Built on glass crabs. Some medieval legends said the tower rested on glass foundations. This is fantasy.

It vanished in antiquity. In fact the Pharos stood, at least in part, until the 14th century, outliving most of the other lost wonders. Only the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, whose ruins survived into the 15th century, and the Great Pyramid of Giza, which still stands, lasted longer.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 331 BC: Alexander the Great founds Alexandria.
• c. 297 BC: Construction probably begins under Ptolemy I Soter.
• c. 280 BC: The lighthouse is completed under Ptolemy II Philadelphus.
• 48 BC: Julius Caesar seizes the island of Pharos during the Alexandrian War.
• AD 641–642: Arab conquest of Alexandria; the tower stays in use.
• 1165: Abu al-Haggag al-Andalusi records detailed measurements.
• 1303 and 1323: Earthquakes cause severe damage.
• 1349: Ibn Battuta finds the tower in ruins.
• c. 1477–1480: Sultan Qaitbay builds his citadel on the site.
• 1994: Systematic underwater excavations begin off the citadel.

Why it matters

The Pharos was one of the great engineering achievements of antiquity and the model for every lighthouse that followed. It stood among the Seven Wonders because it combined size, beauty and usefulness, and it shows how the Ptolemies used architecture to project power. Its legacy survives in the very word for lighthouse in French, Italian, Spanish and other languages.