A lighthouse was a necessity. The coast of Egypt is, in its western
section, both flat and rocky, and ships needed a landmark to show them
where Alexandria lay, and a guide through the reefs that block her
harbours. Pharos was the obvious site, because it stood in front of the
city; and on Pharos the eastern promontory, because it commanded the
more important of the two harbours—the Royal. But it is not clear
whether a divine madness also seized the builders, whether they
deliberately winged engineering with poetry, and tried to add a wonder
to the world. At all events they succeeded, and the arts combined with
science to praise their triumph. Just as the Parthenon had been
identified with Athens, and St. Peter’s was to be identified with Rome,
so, to the imagination of contemporaries, “The Pharos” became Alexandria
and Alexandria the Pharos. Never, in the history of architecture, has a
secular building been thus worshipped and taken on a spiritual life of
its own. It beaconed to the imagination, not only to ships, and long
after its light was extinguished memories of it glowed in the minds of
men. Perhaps it was merely very large; reconstructions strike a chill,
and the minaret, its modern descendant, is not supremely beautiful.
Something very large to which people got used—a Liberty Statue, an
Eiffel Tower? The possibility must be faced, and is not excluded by the
ecstasies of the poets.
The lighthouse was made of local limestone, of marble, and of
reddish-purple granite from Assouan. It stood in a colonnaded court that
covered most of the promontory. There were four stories. The bottom
story was over two hundred feet high, square, pierced with many windows.
In it were the rooms (estimated at three hundred) where the mechanics
and keepers were housed, and its mass was threaded by a spiral ascent,
probably by a double spiral. There may have been hydraulic machinery in
the central well for raising the fuel to the top; otherwise we must
imagine a procession of donkeys who cease not night and day to
circumambulate the spirals with loads of wood upon their backs. The
story ended in a cornice and in statues of Tritons: here too, in great
letters of lead, was a Greek inscription mentioning the architect:
“Sostratus of Cnidus, son of Dexiphanes, to the Saviour Gods: for
sailors”—an inscription which, despite its simplicity, bore a double
meaning. The Saviour Gods were the Dioscuri, but a courtly observer
could refer them to Ptolemy Soter and his wife, whose worship their son
was then promoting. For the building of the lighthouse (279 B.C.) was
connected with an elaborate dynastic propaganda known as the
“As-good-as-Olympic Games,” and with a mammoth pageant which passed
through the streets of Alexandria, regardless of imagination and
expense. Nothing could be seen in the pageant, neither elephants nor
camels nor dances of wild men, nor allegorical females upon a car, nor
eggs that opened and disclosed the Dioscuri; and the inscription on the
first story of the Pharos was a subtle echo of its appeal.
The second story was octagonal and entirely filled by the ascending
spirals. The third story was circular. Then came the lantern. The
lantern is a puzzle, because a bonfire and delicate scientific
instruments appear to have shared its narrow area. Visitors speak, for
instance, of a mysterious “mirror” up there, which was even more
wonderful than the building itself. Why didn’t this mirror crack, and
what was it? A polished steel reflector for the fire at night or for
heliography by day? Some writers describe it as made of finely wrought
glass or transparent stone, and declare that when they sat under it they
could see ships at sea that were invisible to the naked eye. A
telescope? Is it conceivable that the Alexandrian school of mathematics
and mechanics discovered the lens and that their discovery was lost and
forgotten when the Pharos fell? It is possible: the discoveries of
Aristarchus were forgotten, and Galileo persecuted for reviving them. It
is certain that the lighthouse was equipped with every scientific
improvement known to the age, that it was the outward expression of the
studies pursued in the Museum across the straits, and that its architect
could have consulted not only Aristarchus, but Eratosthenes, Apollonius
of Perga, and Euclid.
Standing on the lantern, at the height of five hundred feet above the
ground, a statue of Poseidon struck the pious note, and gave a Greek air
to Africa seen from the sea. Other works of art are also reported: for
example, a statue whose finger followed the diurnal course of the sun, a
second statue who gave out with varying and melodious voices the various
hours of the day, and a third who shouted an alarm as soon as a hostile
flotilla set sail from any foreign port. This last must belong to an
even more remarkable building, the Pharos of legend, which we will
measure in a moment. The lighthouse was the key of the Alexandrian
defences, and Cæsar occupied it before attacking the city. It was also
the pivot of a signalling system that stretched along the coast. Fifteen
miles to the west, on a ridge among masses of marigolds, the little
watch-tower of Abousir is still standing, and it reproduces, in its
three stories, the arrangements of Sostratus.