But from this digression we return to the Alexandrian Wonder.
The long narrow island of Pharos lay in front of the city of Alexandria, sheltering both its harbours—the Greater Harbour and the Haven of Happy Return ([Εὔνοστος])—from the fury of the north wind and the occasional high tides of the Mediterranean.
It was a strip of white and dazzling calcareous rock, about a mile from Alexandria, and 150 stadia from the Canobic mouth of the river Nile. Its northern coast was fringed with small islets, which, in the fourth and fifth centuries, became the resort of Christian anchorites. A deep bay on the northern side was called the “Pirates’ Haven,” because, in early times, it had been a place of refuge for the Carian and Samian rovers. An artificial mound, or causeway, connected the island with the mainland. From its extent (seven stadia, 4270 English feet, or three-quarters of a mile), it was called the Heptastadium. In its whole length two breaks occurred, to permit of the passage of the water, and these breaks were crossed by drawbridges. At the insular end stood a temple to Hephæstus, and at the other the great Gate of the Moon. The famous lighthouse stood on a kind of peninsular rock at the eastern end of the island; and as it was built of white stone, and rose to a great height, it was scarcely a less conspicuous object from the city than from the neighbouring waters.
Some remarkable discrepancies occur in the accounts of this noble edifice, which have been handed down to us, but after all allowance has been made for error and exaggeration, it remains obvious that the wondering admiration bestowed upon it by the ancients was not unjustified. The statements of the distance at which its light could be seen are, however, most undeniably fictitious. That of Josephus, who compares it to the second of Herod’s three towers at Jerusalem—called Phasael, in honour of his brother—is the least incredible; yet even he asserts that the fire which burned on its summit was visible thirty-four English miles at sea! Such a range for a lighthouse on the low shores of Egypt would require, says Mr. Alan Stevenson, a tower about 550 feet in height.
Pliny affirms that its erection cost a sum of money equal, at the present value, to about £390,000, and if this were true, we might not dispute some of the assertions of ancient writers in reference to its elevation and solidity. But the fact that it has entirely disappeared seems to disprove the dimensions they have assigned to it. We are wholly unable to decide whether the help it afforded to mariners was from a common fire or from a more complete system of illumination. The poet Lucan, in his “Pharsalia,” asserts that it indicated to Julius Cæsar his approach to Egypt on the seventh night after he sailed from Troy; and he makes use of the significant expression “lampada,” which could hardly be applied, even poetically, to an open fire. Pliny expresses a fear lest its light, which, seen at a distance, had the appearance of flames, should, from its steadiness, be mistaken for a star (“periculum in continuatione ignium, ne sidus existimetur, quoniam è longinquo similis flammarum aspectus est”[8] ); but assuredly he would not have spoken in such terms of the wavering, irregular, and fitful light of an ordinary fire. We conclude, therefore, that its lighting apparatus was more complete than has generally been supposed.
When was this great monument destroyed?
The most probable supposition seems to be that it fell into decay in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and that its ruin was hastened or completed by the iconoclastic and barbarian hands of the Turkish conquerors of Egypt. That it existed in the twelfth century, we know from the graphic description of Edrisi; a description which will enable the reader to reproduce it before his “mind’s eye” in all its pristine glory:—
ANCIENT PHAROS OF ALEXANDRIA.