The lighthouse was probably a Greek invention, although the Romans adopted it with enthusiasm and surrounded their empire with a network of impressive structures. Homeric legend credits Palamadis, of the city state of Nafplio (in the Peloponnese), with the original invention of the lighthouse. (He is also reputed to have invented weights and measures.) And we know that the Athenian politician Themistocles was responsible for the construction of a fire beacon on a raised stone column at the entrance to Piraeus, the port in Athens, in the fifth century BC. Elevating the fire meant that it lit the immediate area more efficiently and could be seen from further out at sea.
The best-known ancient lighthouse is the Pharos of Alexandria, which is remembered as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Alexander the Great founded the city on an isthmus opposite the small island of Pharos. The gap between the city and island was filled with a mole – a huge breakwater made of stones. The mole was known as the Heptastadion, meaning ‘seven stadia’. A stadium was a unit of length of approximately 180 metres (600 feet). This created a massive enclosed harbour for the city.
In the period after the death of Alexander, a giant lighthouse was constructed on the island. Work commenced in 280 BC and the structure was complete in 247 BC. The limestone tower was 106 metres (348 feet) high, and consisted of a massive square base on which a second octagonal section supported a circular final section at the top. This last tower contained a burning furnace that could reportedly be seen from as many as 160 kilometres (100 miles) away. During the day, a giant mirror was positioned to reflect the sun’s rays out to sea for the same purpose.
The purpose of the lighthouse was to guide shipping safely into the harbour. However, its magnificence also made it a gigantic status symbol, which would become famous around the world. The name of Pharos soon came to be used for the lighthouse itself rather than the island on which it stood. Several modern languages have words for lighthouses that derive from it: pharos in Greek, faro in Italian, phare in French, far in Romanian, and in Russian, the related word for headlight, is fara/фара.
The lighthouse survived intact for over a millennium. It was damaged by earthquakes in AD 956, 1303 and 1323, and the last remnants were converted into a fort on the same site in 1480. There is also an apocryphal story that the initial damage was caused in the tenth century when a Byzantine spy won the trust of the Egyptians and was given permission to dig for secret treasure on the island. His excavations are reputed to have been so cunningly carried out that the foundations of the massive lighthouse were fatally undermined.
The Lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt, is estimated to have been 100 metres tall (constructed in 280 BC, destroyed in 1480 AD).