The
Pharos (Lighthouse) of Alexandria
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Abstracts:
One of the Seven Wonders of the World, The world's first lighthouse, the Pharos lasted
for 1500 years rendering guidance to sailors coming to the harbor. Built about 270 B.C. and upon
completion, the Alexandria lighthouse - commonly estimated to have been
about 400 feet high - was one of the tallest structures on Earth. The
Greek architect Sostratus designed it during the reign of King Ptolemy II.
Destroyed by earthquakes in the 14th century A.D. Recently,
some divers in1996 claimed to have found the ruins of the fabled
lighthouse of Pharos while investigating the waters of the Mediterranean
Sea.
History of the Pharos:
The history of the Pharos (Lighthouse)
begins in the third century BC, when Ptolemy II built the lighthouse on an idea
of his father Ptolemy I.. It rose some 100 meters in a kind of courtyard of
colonnades, set on a square base surrounded by an octagonal level, then a third
cylindrical level. At its top there was a lantern crowned with a statue of
Poseidon. From the fourth to 14th centuries AD, however, the mighty structure
was destroyed by a series of earthquakes. When the Arab traveller Ibn Battuta
visited Pharos in 1349, he found it "in such a state of ruin that it was
impossible to enter". Over a century later, the Mamluke Sultan Ashraf
Quaitbay built a fort on the site.
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What happened to the lighthouse?
Certain parts were recuperated and integrated with the fort. But there was
little interest, until recently, in knowing more about the main building and the
statuary which lay underwater.
It was only in the 1990s that the
lighthouse resurfaced. While shooting underwater scenes for a film on
Hellenistic Alexandria, the Egyptian director Asmaa El-Bakri noticed a concrete
dike being built on top of the ruins to protect Fort Quaitbay. The subsequent
press campaign led the SCA to suspend work and give the green light to an
archaeological mission to save the vestiges. Begun in 1994 under the direction
of Jean-Yves Empereur, head of the Alexandria Study Centre, the mission has thus
far classified over 2,000 pieces. Funds were contributed by the Institut
français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO) and Gedeon – a multimedia company which
has produced a documentary in cooperation with the Louvre Museum, the cultural
foundation of Elf Aquitaine and Electricité de France.
The profusion of objects superposed
from different periods – Pharaonic, Ptolemaic and Roman – complicate the job.
But a computerized analysis of maps of the site and examination of each block
has enabled them to distinguish two categories of findings. According to
Empereur and Jean-Pierre Corteggiani, an IFAO Egyptologist, the presence of
sphinx and hieroglyphic inscriptions can be explained by the Ptolemaic practice
of reusing Pharaonoic vestiges, generally taken from Heliopolis (near Cairo).
Some of these, mixed with Hellenistic and Roman elements were probably thrown
into the sea at the end of the Roman period and at the time of the Mamlukes to
protect the port of Alexandria from enemy attack.
The other category of findings consists
of much heavier blocks of granite – 49 to 69 tons. The fact that some were
broken into two or three pieces indicates that they fell from a great height.
Empereur’s team is convinced that these are remnants of the lighthouse. Several
dozen pieces have already been raised, restored and are currently on view in the
open-air amphitheatre of Kom el Dikka, in Alexandria.
The discoveries opened new perspectives
for Egyptian archaeologists. Just few months ago, the CSA created a department
of underwater archaeology.
The Discovery of the Ruins:
Strange
figures were noticed under the waters around Pharos, off the coast of
Alexandria, Egypt. Dive down six or eight meters and you’ll find yourself face
to face with sphinxes and colossal statues of men and women. A stone torso of a
woman from the third-century B.C. Pharos of Alexandria - a lighthouse that was
one of the seven wonders of the ancient world - has been salvaged from the
Mediterranean Sea. A number of sculptures in the sea around a fifteenth-century
fortress built by the Mamluke sultan Qait Bay had been reported in a 1974
article in Nautical Archaeology, which suggested that the Pharos might have
stood on the site. In 1993, when the Egyptian government began building a
concrete breakwater around the base of the fortress to protect it from storm
damage, there was an outcry from archaeologists who feared the operation might
destroy any surviving remains of the Pharos and other nearby ancient buildings.
The project was temporarily halted, and scholars from the Egyptian Supreme
Council of Antiquities and the French Centre d'Études Alexandrines, led by
Jean-Yves Empereur, began searching the waters around the fortress. According to
Chris Scarre of Cambridge University, "Their finds confirm that one side of the
Pharos collapsed into the sea, and that much material from this amazing structure still lies scattered on the seabed. Only
now can we begin to appreciate the true extent and importance of the remains."
In addition to the torso, Empereur's team has recovered some 30 other sculptures
not from the Pharos, including sphinxes, granite columns and capitals, a
fragment of an obelisk with a hieroglyphic inscription, and a headless statue of
the pharaoh Ramesses II (ca. 1290-1224 B.C.). How and when the construction of
the breakwater will resume has not yet been settled.
The world's first lighthouse, the Pharos was built to
warn sailors of the treacherous sandbars off Alexandria, one of the busiest
ports of the ancient world. It consisted of a three-stage tower, decorated with
sculptures of Greek deities and mythical creatures, atop which stood a lantern
with a giant bonfire whose light may have been focused by mirrors, perhaps made
of polished bronze, into a beam visible 35 miles out to sea. More than 300 feet
tall, it was among the tallest man-made structures until the completion of the
1,050-foot Eiffel Tower in 1889. The lighthouse was still functioning when the
Arabs conquered Alexandria in A.D. 642, but an earthquake damaged the lantern
about 50 years later. The Pharos was hit by another earthquake in 1303, and by
1349 it was in ruins; in 1480 Qait Bay's fortress was built on the site.--
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