Why was the Alexandria Lighthouse needed? In the 3rd century BC, a lighthouse was built in Alexandria, Egypt, so that ships arriving in the city’s bay could successfully navigate the coastal reefs. This structure consisted of three marble towers, the highest of which resembled

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Unfortunately, the earthquake almost completely destroyed the building, but despite this, there were no fewer people wanting to see the lighthouse.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The lighthouse is also called Faros lighthouse, due to its location on the island of Faros on the coast of Alexandria in Egypt. The city received its name from Emperor Alexander the Great. He approached the location of the city very thoughtfully. At first it will seem unusual that Macedonsky did not choose the Nile Delta, where two of the most important strategic routes pass. However, if Alexandria were built on the Nile River, harmful sands and silt would clog its harbor. Thus, the best option was chosen, because high hopes were placed on the city.

Macedonian planned to create the largest trading city here, where goods from all over the world would be delivered. Well, of course, such an important center required a harbor. Many famous designers of that time created a project according to which a dam was built connecting the island and the mainland. Thus, two harbors were obtained, receiving ships from both the Nile and the sea.

The emperor’s dream came true only after his death, when Ptolemy I ascended the throne. It was he who made Alexandria the largest trading port city in all of Greece. With the growth and development of navigation, the island increasingly needed a lighthouse. Its construction would secure the navigation of ships at sea, and also attract more sellers and buyers.

Among the sparse landscape, the lighthouse would stand out with its lights, creating a powerful landmark for the lost. According to historians, Alexander the Great also planned to turn the lighthouse into a defensive structure in case of attacks from the sea. Therefore, the plans were to build a huge patrol point.

Construction of the Alexandria Lighthouse

Of course, the construction of such a large-scale facility required large financial and labor resources. Finding them in such a difficult time was not easy. But Ptolemy solved this problem by bringing a huge number of Jews from conquered Syria who became slaves at construction sites. At this time, several other important events for the state take place. Ptolemy signs a peace agreement with Demetrius Poliorcetes and celebrates the death of his blood enemy Antigonus.

In 285 BC. Led by the architect Sostratus of Knidos, the construction of the Pharos begins. To perpetuate his name, the architect creates an inscription saying that he is building this building for sailors. At the top, the inscription was covered with tiles with the name of Ptolemy. However, the secret has now been revealed.

Lighthouse structure

The Alexandria lighthouse had three tiers of a rectangular shape with a side of 30.5 meters. The edges of the lower tier were clearly turned to certain cardinal directions. Its height was 60 meters. The lower tier was decorated with tritons on the sides and was used by workers for personal purposes. Supplies of fuel and food were also stored here.

The middle tier was built in the shape of a polygon, the edges of which were directed towards the winds.

The third tier resembled a cylinder and directly served as a luminary. At the top there was a seven-meter sculpture of Isis-Faria, which sailors revered as their guardian. According to some sources, there was a statue of Poseidon at the top, but this fact has not been proven. Here a complex design of mirrors was created, which significantly increased the range of light. Fuel was supplied to the lighthouse via special ramps carried by mules. It was for ease of movement that the dam was built. The Alexandria lighthouse, in addition to its direct responsibility, served as the defense of the city. There was a military garrison here. For complete safety, thick walls and small towers were erected around the lighthouse.

In general, the entire structure was 120 meters high, becoming the tallest in the world.

The fate of the lighthouse

After a millennium, the structure began to collapse. This happened in 796 during a powerful earthquake. All that remains of the majestic structure are 30-meter-high ruins.

The ruins were later used to build the military fort of Kite Bay, which now houses several museums inside? Museum of Marine Biology and History Museum.

After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, a city was founded, named Alexandria in his honor. The city began to actively develop and prosper and became a major center of maritime trade. Soon, an urgent need arose for the construction of the Alexandria Lighthouse.

Alexandrian lighthouse. Information and interesting facts

The island of Pharos, located 1290 meters from Alexandria, was chosen as the location for the lighthouse. The construction of the Pharos lighthouse, which later became the seventh wonder of the world, was led by the architect Sostratus, the son of Dexiphanes from Cnidus.

To ensure the supply of building materials to the island, a dam was built. The construction itself was completed at lightning speed by the standards of the ancient world, taking only six years (285-279 BC). The new building immediately “knocked out” the walls of Babylon from the list of classical wonders of the world, and has taken a place of honor there to this day. The height of the Alexandria Lighthouse, according to contemporaries, reached 120 meters. The light projected from the tower of the Alexandria Lighthouse was visible up to 48 kilometers away.

The lighthouse had three tiers.

The first tier had a square shape with sides of 30.5 meters, oriented to the cardinal points. The total height of this tier was 60 meters. The corners of the tier were occupied by statues of tritons. The room itself was intended to house workers and guards, storerooms for fuel and food.

The middle tier of the Faros lighthouse had an octagonal shape with edges oriented according to the prevailing winds here. The upper part of the tier was decorated with statues, some of which functioned as weather vanes.

The upper tier of a cylindrical shape played the role of a lantern. It was surrounded by eight columns covered with a cone dome. The top of the dome of the Faros lighthouse was decorated with a seven-meter statue of Isis-Faria (guardian of seafarers). The powerful lamp was projected using a system of concave metal mirrors. There has been a long-standing debate about the delivery of fuel to the top of the Alexandria Lighthouse. Some suggest that delivery was carried out using lifting mechanisms along an internal shaft, while others say that the ascent was carried out using mules along a spiral ramp.

The lighthouse also had an underground part where supplies of drinking water for the garrison were located. It is worth mentioning that the lighthouse also served as a fortress guarding the sea route to Alexandria. The Faros lighthouse itself was even surrounded by a powerful fence with bastions and loopholes.

In the 14th century, the wonder of the world, the Faros lighthouse, was destroyed by an earthquake. Currently, the appearance of the seventh wonder of the world is evidenced only by images on Roman coins and the remains of ruins. For example, research in 1996 made it possible to find the remains of the Alexandria lighthouse at the bottom of the sea.

Lighthouse on Roman coins

A hundred years after the destruction, Sultan Qait Bey built a fort in its place. And now there are initiators who want to reconstruct the Faros lighthouse, in the place where it was originally located - on the island of Faros. But the Egyptian authorities do not yet want to consider these projects, and the Qait Bay fortress continues to guard the site of the former great structure of antiquity.

Kite Bay Fortress

Only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world had a practical purpose - the Lighthouse of Alexandria. It performed several functions at once: it allowed ships to approach the harbor without any problems, and the observation post located at the top of the unique structure made it possible to monitor the expanses of water and notice the enemy in time.

Local residents claimed that the light of the Alexandria lighthouse burned enemy ships even before they approached the shore, and if they managed to approach the coast, the statue of Poseidon, located on the dome of an amazing design, emitted a piercing warning cry.

At a time when the height of buildings usually did not exceed three floors, the lighthouse, about a hundred meters high, could not help but amaze the imagination of both local residents and visitors to the city. Moreover, at the time of completion of construction it turned out to be the tallest building of the ancient world and remained so for an extremely long time.

The Alexandria lighthouse was located on the eastern coast of the small island of Pharos, located near Alexandria - the main seaport of Egypt, built by Alexander the Great in 332 BC.

The great commander chose the location for the construction of the city extremely carefully: he initially planned to build a port in this region, which would be an important trading center.

It was extremely important that it be located at the intersection of both water and land routes of three parts of the world - Africa, Europe and Asia. For the same reason, it was necessary to build at least two harbors here: one for ships arriving from the Mediterranean Sea, and the other for those sailing along the Nile.

Therefore, Alexandria was not built in the Nile Delta, but a little to the side, twenty miles to the south. When choosing a location for the city, Alexander took into account the location of future harbors, paying special attention to their strengthening and protection: it was very important to do everything to ensure that the waters of the Nile did not clog them with sand and silt (a dam was subsequently built specifically for this purpose, connecting the continent with an island).

After the death of Alexander the Great, some time later the city came under the rule of Ptolemy I Soter - and as a result of skillful management it turned into a successful and prosperous port city, and the construction of one of the seven wonders of the world significantly increased its wealth.

Purpose

The Alexandria lighthouse made it possible for ships to sail into the port without any problems, successfully avoiding underwater rocks, shoals and other obstacles in the bay. Thanks to this, after the construction of one of the seven wonders, the volume of light trade increased sharply.

The lighthouse also served as an additional reference point for sailors: the landscape of the Egyptian coast is quite diverse - mostly just lowlands and plains. Therefore, signal lights before entering the harbor were very useful.

A lower structure could have successfully fulfilled this role, so the engineers assigned another important function to the Lighthouse of Alexandria - the role of an observation post: enemies usually attacked from the sea, since the country was well defended on the land side by the desert.

It was also necessary to install such an observation post at the lighthouse because there were no natural hills near the city where this could be done.

Construction

Such large-scale construction required enormous resources, not only financial and labor, but also intellectual. Ptolemy I solved this problem quite quickly: it was at that time that he conquered Syria, enslaved the Jews and took them to Egypt (he later used some of them to build a lighthouse).

It was at this time (in 299 BC) that he concluded a truce with Demetrius Poliorcetes, the ruler of Macedonia (his father was Antigonus, the worst enemy of Ptolemy, who died in 301 BC).

Thus, the truce, a huge amount of labor and other favorable circumstances, gave him the opportunity to begin construction of a grandiose wonder of the world (although the exact date of the start of construction work has not yet been determined, researchers are convinced that this happened somewhere between 285/299 AD). BC.).

The presence of a dam, built earlier and connecting the island with the continent, greatly facilitated the task.

Initial appearance

The construction of the Alexandria lighthouse was entrusted to the master Sostratus from Cnidia. Ptolemy wanted only his name to be inscribed on the building, indicating that it was he who created this magnificent wonder of the world.

But Sostratus was so proud of his work that he first carved his name on the stone, then put a very thick layer of plaster on it, on which he wrote the name of the Egyptian ruler. Over time, the plaster crumbled, and the world saw the architect's signature.

Exact information about what exactly one of the seven wonders of the world looked like has not been preserved, but some data is still available:

• The lighthouse was surrounded on all sides by thick fortress walls, and in case of a siege, supplies of water and food were stored in its dungeons;
• The height of the ancient skyscraper ranged from 120 to 180 meters;
• The lighthouse was built in the form of a tower and had three floors;
• The walls of the ancient structure were made of marble blocks and fastened with mortar with a small addition of lead.
• The foundation of the structure had an almost square shape - 1.8 x 1.9 m, and granite or limestone was used as the building material;
• The first floor of the Alexandria Lighthouse was about 60 m high, with the length of the sides being about 30 m. Outwardly, it resembled a fortress or a castle with towers installed in the corners. The roof of the first tier was flat, decorated with statues of Triton and served as the basis for the next floor. Here there were residential and utility rooms in which soldiers and workers lived, and various equipment was also stored.
• The height of the second floor was 40 meters, it had an octagonal shape and was lined with marble slabs;
• The third tier had a cylindrical structure, decorated with statues acting as weather vanes. Eight columns were installed here that supported the dome;
• On the dome, facing the sea, stood a bronze (according to other versions - gold) statue of Poseidon, the height of which exceeded seven meters;
• Under Poseidon there was a platform on which a signal fire burned, indicating the way to the harbor at night, while during the day its functions were performed by a huge column of smoke;
• In order for the fire to be visible from a great distance, a whole system of polished metal mirrors was installed near it, reflecting and intensifying the light of the fire, which, according to contemporaries, was visible even at a distance of 60 km;

There are several versions of how exactly the fuel was lifted to the top of the lighthouse. Adherents of the first theory believe that between the second and third tiers there was a shaft where a lifting mechanism was installed, with the help of which fuel for the fire was raised upward.

As for the second, it implies that the platform on which the signal fire was burning could be reached by a spiral staircase along the walls of the structure, and this staircase was so flat that loaded donkeys carrying fuel to the top of the lighthouse could easily climb to the top of the building .

Crash

The Alexandria lighthouse served people for quite a long time - about a thousand years. Thus, he experienced more than one dynasty of Egyptian rulers and saw Roman legionnaires. This did not particularly affect its fate: no matter who ruled Alexandria, everyone made sure that the unique structure stood for as long as possible - they restored parts of the building that had been destroyed due to frequent earthquakes, and updated the facade, which was negatively affected by wind and salty sea water.

Time has done its work: the lighthouse stopped working in 365, when one of the strongest earthquakes in the Mediterranean Sea caused a tsunami that flooded part of the city, and the number of dead Egyptians, according to chroniclers, exceeded 50 thousand inhabitants.

After this event, the lighthouse significantly decreased in size, but stood for quite a long time - until the 14th century, until another strong earthquake wiped it off the face of the earth (a hundred years later, Sultan Qait Bey built a fortress on its foundation, which can be seen Nowadays).

In the mid-90s. the remains of the Alexandria lighthouse were discovered at the bottom of the bay with the help of a satellite, and after some time, scientists, using computer modeling, were able to more or less restore the image of the unique structure.