Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Lighthouse of Alexandria

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

When Alexander the Great died, one of his generals and best friends, Ptolemy, took Alexander’s corpse and went to Egypt to establish a new pharaonic dynasty. One of the things he did during his reign was to begin construction on what would become one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  It stood for over a thousand years and was unlike the world had ever seen. Learn more about the Lighthouse of Alexandria and what eventually happened to it on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Previous Episodes Referenced https://everything-everywhere.com/the-library-of-alexandria/ https://everything-everywhere.com/the-tomb-of-alexander-the-great/ https://everything-everywhere.com/the-ancient-city-of-alexandria/ https://everything-everywhere.com/the-seven-wonders-of-the-ancient-world/ Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast. Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When Alexander the Great died, one of his generals and best friends, Ptolemy, took Alexander's corpse and went to Egypt to establish a new pharaonic dynasty. One of the things he did during his reign was to begin construction on what would become one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. It stood for over a thousand years and was unlike anything the world had ever seen. Learn more about the lighthouse of Alexandria and what eventually happened to it on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. As I've discussed in previous episodes, the city of Alexandria was one of the most important cities in the ancient world. It was established by Alexander the Great, who named it after himself. It sat in an extremely strategic location where the Nile River met the Mediterranean Sea. While Alexander founded the city, it was one of his top generals, Ptolemy and his successors, who established the city as the seat of a new Egyptian kingdom. When the city was founded, it didn't

have the Great Harbor that it eventually became known for. The city was built on an isthmus, and it had several small islands off its shore. The Alexandria Harbor, and the 3rd century BC looked very different than it does today. Today, a great deal of land has been reclaimed to create the modern harbor. But back then, small islands off the shore were dangerous to ships that were arriving in Alexandria. The largest of the islands off of Alexandria was known as Ferros Island. The word Ferros later became the name given to the lighthouse. A small community of people lived on the island, and they made their living by wrecking.

And wrecking is just salvaging cargo from ships that wreck against the rock. on an island. Ancient navigation was difficult and dangerous. In the Mediterranean, sailors would seldom sail out of sight of land unless they absolutely had to. The preference was to stay within sight of the shore so they could easily navigate. So long as you knew where the shore was, you could easily figure out both direction and location. The problem was, there was always a risk of running aground, especially at night. There could be rocks, shoals, or small islands which were hazardous to ships. When Ptolemy came to power around 305 BC, he knew that if Alexandria was to become an important port city, which was the key to becoming an important city overall,

he needed to shore up the situation in the harbor. To that end, he hatched the idea of a lighthouse. The lighthouse would serve as a literal beacon to ships to both identify and navigate to Alexandria at night. This lighthouse wasn't just going to be an ordinary lighthouse, however. It was to be the biggest in the world by a wide margin. It would serve as a symbol of the greatness of the city and help establish the port of Alexandria into what it was to become. There are many structures in the ancient world that we don't have much information about, and we don't really know what they look like. A good example are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. We know very little about the hanging gardens, and some people even doubt if it ever existed. In the case of the lighthouse of Alexandria,

we actually know quite a bit. Because Alexandria was a center of learning and one of the world's important cities, plenty of writers wrote about the lighthouse. Also, because the lighthouse lasted so long, we have a collection of people from across time and cultures who are able to describe it. Contemporary images of the lighthouse have also appeared on coins and other drawings, which is something that we don't have for the other structures. While Ptolemy I conceived of the idea of the lighthouse, it was his son Ptolemy the second who began construction, sometime around 286 BC. Estimates of the time it took to build the lighthouse range from 12 to 33 years. The architect of the lighthouse was believed to have been a man called Sostratus of Netus,

who was a Greek architect and engineer. There are stories that he actually had his name embedded into the lighthouse in metal letters with the approval of Ptolemy II. The total cost of the construction was estimated to be 800 talents of silver. A talent was the heaviest unit of silver in the ancient world, and the size varied from culture to culture, but it was approximately 27 kilograms or 60 pounds of silver at that time. The structure itself was built in three different sections,

and most of the stones used in the construction were limestone or granite. The base was a large four-sided square structure, with walls that probably sloped gently inward. The base held government offices and stables, and it also had a spiral ramp on the inside, which could be used by horses and wagons to carry fuel up to the top of the first section. On top of the square section was a small, tower in the shape of an octagon. And on top of the middle octagon section was a circular tower.

At the top of the circular tower was the lighthouse beacon. There was a giant bronze mirror at the top, and at night, fires would be kept lit from dusk until dawn. The reason for the large ramp that could accommodate horses was to transport the constant supply of fuel that the lighthouse needed. During the day, the giant bronze mirror could actually be used to reflect sunlight. At the very top of everything was a statue of either Zeus or Prowellus. Poseidon. The structure's total height is estimated to have been between 103 to 118 to 187 meters, or 338 to 387 feet. For its entire lifespan, it was the second tallest human-built structure in the world just behind the Great Pyramid. While the lighthouse was built on an island,

it was difficult to constantly transport fuel and equipment to the island for its operation. That necessitated the construction of a causeway between the island and the mainland. The causeway was known as the Heptostadion, named after the fact that it was seven stadia in length, a Greek unit of measurement. The total length of the causeway in modern units was approximately 1,200 meters, or three-fourths of a mile. The Heptas Stadium effectually created a double harbor. To the east of the Heptas Stadium was the Grand Harbor, or Portis Magnus. To the west was the Portis Eunostos, or old harbor. There were gaps in the Heptus stadium with bridges over them, which allowed the ships to go from one harbor to the other without having to sail into open water.

And the reason for this was that one harbor or the other might be preferable to dock in depending on the direction of the wind. The lighthouse and the Heptostadian were the key components of creating the exceptional Alexandria Harbor, which was critical to Alexandria becoming one of, if not the most important cities in the ancient world. The strategic importance of the lighthouse was not lost on those wishing to control the city. Julius Caesar wrote in his commentaries on the Civil War, quote, Now because of the narrowness of the strait, there can be no access by ship to the harbor without the consent of those who hold the

pharaohs. In view of this, Caesar took the precaution of landing his troops while the enemy was preoccupied with fighting, seized the pharaohs, and posted a garrison there. The result was that safe access was secured for his corn supplies and reinforcements, end quote. FYI, Caesar always wrote in the third person, something that Gary would never do. The lighthouse was in use for a very long time. However, what eventually did it in was earthquakes. Alexandria is within 500 kilometers of two different fault lines.

The first earthquake to do major damage was in the year 796. By that time, the lighthouse had been in service for over a thousand years. There were then earthquakes in 951 and 956. The 956 earthquake did major structural damage to the lighthouse and knocked the statue off the top, but it was still serviceable. The final earthquakes which sealed the fate of the lighthouse took place in 1303 and 1323. At this point, 1,500 years after its construction, the lighthouse was no longer able to function as a lighthouse because the damage was so severe. The great Islamic traveler Ibn Batuta, on whom I previously did an episode, visited Alexandria in 1326, and said that one of the faces of the tower was in ruins, but there were still small offices inside.

However, when he returned in 1349, he reported that you couldn't even climb into the door anymore because the rubble was so high. The lighthouse was nothing more than a ruined stub of what it once was. It wasn't until 1480 that the last remnants of the lighthouse were removed by the Sultan of Egypt to construct a fort in its location at the mouth of the harbor. The fort, known as Fort Kite Bay, was made out of many of the stones from the lighthouse, and it still exists today. Most people aren't aware that the last remains of the lighthouse of Alexandria were still standing just a dozen years before Columbus sailed to the new world. Of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the lighthouse of Alexandria was the third longest

surviving behind the Great Pyramid of Giza and the mausoleum and Halle Carnassas. While the lighthouse was gone by the start of the 16th century, as it turned out, bits of it were still around. As the lighthouse was standing right on the seashore, when part of it collapsed, the material fell into the water. No one ever bothered to look for the remains of the lighthouse in the sea until the 20th century. In 1968, a UNESCO underwater archaeology team found pieces of the original lighthouse on the seafloor just a few meters away from the fort. It wasn't until 1994, however, that a French team finally did an extensive audit of what was still there. They

discovered and photographed several enormous granite blocks weighing between 50 and 60 tons. They also discovered between 30 sphinx statues and five obelis, some of which date back well before the construction of the lighthouse. In 2009, I actually went diving in the Alexandria Harbor and was able to see the blocks and sphinx statues for myself. I did it in February, which is a very cold time to go diving, but I assume that the water would be much warmer if I did it pretty much any other time of the year. The dive isn't very deep. I think the deepest we went was about nine meters, but the water was very murky with poor visibility. That being said, I could clearly see the big granite blocks and a few sphinx statues. I don't recall seeing any of the obelists, however. If you're scuba

certified and you ever find yourself in Alexandria, Egypt, I highly recommend doing the lighthouse dive. Most of the things I've done during the course of my travels, I've met other people who've done the same thing. However, I can't say I've ever met another person who's also done the lighthouse dive. It's one of the only places in the world where you can do an honest-to-goodness archaeology dive that isn't just a shipwreck. Today, when most people think of ancient Alexandria, they probably think of the library of Alexandria. However, in the ancient world, the lighthouse was really the star attraction of the city. Most people would never set foot in the library or the museum. However, everyone who sailed into Alexandria couldn't help but see the

lighthouse. It was the lighthouse, not the library or the tomb of Alexander, which was the symbol of the city. The cultural influence of the lighthouse can still be felt today. The Greek word for lighthouse is pharos. It's believed that the minarets in many early Egyptian moss were modeled after the lighthouse. In 2015, the Alexandrian and Egyptian governments proposed the construction of a new lighthouse on the harbor of Alexandria to go with the new library, but to date no firm plans have ever been put in place. The lighthouse of Alexandria was basically a 40-story building that managed to survive for 1,500 years. Given the lifespan of most structures throughout history,

the fact that it survived that long, while still serving its original purpose for most of that time, is remarkable. The Ferros Lighthouse in Alexandria was more than deserving of its inclusion on Philo of Byzantium's list of the greatest wonders in the world. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams, The associate producers are Thornton and Peter Bennett. I just wanted to extend a big thank you to everyone who is supporting the show over at patreon.com.

I have show merchandise available there, including hoodies, t-shirts, and stickers. Plus, it really just helps me get this show out every single day, including, of course, weekends and holidays. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you too can have it read on the show.