Lighthouse of Alexandria
Continuing on my “wonders of the ancient world” kick I will now take a general look at the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Like many of the other wonders of the ancient world, this one is amazingly cool. It is astounding to think that this was build with little more than an extreme amount of manual labor.
The Lighthouse at Alexandria no longer exists in its vertical glory. However, we do believe that it once existed, and at that time it may have been 440 feet tall. Despite all the hypotheticals in the previous sentence, if this estimate is correct this building would easily have been one of the largest man made structures on earth at the time. It was built in the third century BC and lasted an amazingly long time. It is thought to have been largely destroyed in the 14th century by two earthquakes in 1303 and 1323. As with the mausoleum of Maussollos some of the stone from the ruin was used in the making of a fortification in the area. In the case of the lighthouse some of the stone was used in a fort built by the sultan of Egypt, Al-Ashraf Sayf al-Din Qa’it Bay (who’s story is also quite amazingly), in the same place that the lighthouse stood.
The below depiction of the lighthouse was made based upon accounts of the lighthouse and what archeological evidence we have. For dramatic effect this drawing also has a boat in a storm in the foreground to make the lighthouse look more dramatic.
There are other stories about the lighthouse that are not widely believed, but are fun to tell anyway. For example there are stories that the lighthouse was used as a defensive weapon against ships coming to attack the city. As the story goes the mirror that was used during the daytime to reflect sunlight was used to focus light on the ships so that they would burst into flames…and then the people would cheer. While this is possible with a big enough mirror, it is not thought that those who used and built the lighthouse had enough mastery of optics to pull that one off. This thing was built in the 3rd century BC.
As an ending note, in 1994 divers in the area believe to have found remnants of the amazing structure.