Ancient Sources
Introduction
Isabelle Hairy, CNRS, Direction of the ‘Pharos’ Project”
The “Pharos” project aims to reconstruct the Lighthouse of Alexandria based on archaeological data and ancient sources, the collection and study of which belong to the first phase of the research presented here. Ancient iconography and medieval texts provide the most reliable documents for examining what the tower looked like at the various stages of its “life.” For the sake of relevance, we have chosen to set aside documents that seemed too far removed from a possible reality—notably the mirabilia of medieval Arabic sources1—to focus primarily on documents we have termed “trustworthy,” foremost among which are accounts produced by direct observers.
For sixteen centuries, the Lighthouse of Alexandria was seen, described, and represented in its full elevation, with its specific features and transformations. After its collapse, it still appears in a few accounts; the last of these is by Cyriacus of Ancona in 1435, who noted that in place of the towering building, there were only ruins2. Later, after sinking beneath the Mediterranean, its dismembered remains became the final tangible witnesses of its position, offering ultimate proof for debating the reliability of ancient sources.
The documentation on the Lighthouse, due to its longevity and notoriety, is rich and abundant. As part of our study, a selection was made based on a criterion essential to the successful completion of the reconstruction project: the degree of reliability of the source, which determines the confidence that can be placed in the document. Was the author Alexandrian or did they pass through Alexandria? Did they see or visit the Lighthouse, or are they reporting what they were told? What was their objectivity regarding the Lighthouse? The analysis of these criteria depends on our knowledge of the author, the context of their presence or visit to Alexandria, and, for Arabic texts, the exploration of the corpus of travel narratives to detect potential plagiarism.
Ancient Testimonies
While Greek and Latin texts from the ancient period are essential aids for confirming the location of the Lighthouse within Alexandria, they provide little information about its form and architecture. They primarily focus on its grandeur and its function as a beacon positioning the city on the Egyptian coast or assisting ships in making landfall in the city’s two great harbors. It was in these terms that Posidippus of Pella, a poet at the court of Ptolemy II, first mentioned it in an epigram3. Throughout Antiquity, authors would record the admiration they held for it4.
Given the rarity and brevity of written testimonies before the 7th century, analyzing the form of the Lighthouse and its environment during Antiquity relies essentially on the interpretation of iconographic documentation, for which two corpora have been assembled. One groups together coins featuring the Lighthouse5, and the other, representations other than those found on coinage6. Their study is conducted via a database using a precise nomenclature7; its objective is to identify the characteristic elements of the Lighthouse within reliable, plausible, and unambiguous historical propositions.
Coins featuring the Lighthouse constitute the most abundant corpus describing the monument: nearly 1,000 such coins have been inventoried. The engravers were Alexandrian, which supports a certain degree of objectivity: they rendered onto the coin’s surface the image of the Lighthouse they had before their eyes. In these schematic representations, the study has identified permanent architectural elements and their possible variations. While the objectivity of these documents is recognized, the degree of precision in the representation is more difficult to evaluate. To take a few examples: does the number of “windows” correspond to reality? If the three stacked sections of the tower in the representations stem from a consistent interpretation by the engraver—thus accepting the idea that this layering of large volumes characterizes the actual silhouette of the Lighthouse of Alexandria—does their relative proportion carry meaning?
Other iconographic documents from the ancient period also provide their share of information:
- Tesserae and intaglios, similar to coins in their mode of representation, sometimes with a wider frame;
- Narrative glassware (historiated glass) offering more detailed depictions;
- Mosaics with their very specific medium;
- And finally, terracotta models of the Lighthouse, which paint a more schematic image synthesizing the geometry of its three sections and its function as a beacon, thus summarizing the cultural model of the time.
The transfer of information onto small-scale media, such as coins, tesserae, and intaglios, aims to identify the building through its form, specificities, or functions. The analysis of ancient representations has thus made it possible to identify and describe a number of specific architectural elements of the Lighthouse. These elements are now included in a HBIM (Heritage Building Information Modeling8) currently under development, where they are redefined as “components” of the structure.
Medieval Sources
Descriptions by travelers and chroniclers of the medieval period—foremost among them Arabic texts of the realia type—allow for a more precise exploration of the tower’s dimensions, the distribution of its interior spaces, the materials used in construction, the various restoration and transformation interventions, and, through small “windows” of insight, its operation as a beacon or semaphore9.
Mosaics dated between the late Roman period and the Middle Ages, as well as illuminations from the Islamic era, are the representations most subject to subjectivity. The stylization of the image involves techniques adapted to the medium. They are most often the reflection of a “distant” interpretation of the Lighthouse; the author is not an observer. They provide an interpretation of what they know of it.
The study shows that the most valuable documentation for our project comes from Arabic-speaking travelers (scholars, geographers, philosophers) who visited the Lighthouse and sometimes described it with rare precision. They also report on the work carried out on the tower. One thinks first of the remarkable testimony of Ibn al-Khayr (12th century)10, which follows the tradition of ancient descriptive discourse, the ekphrasis11, where the subject evoked is no longer a person, a place, or an event, but here, a piece of architecture. The author also positions himself as the precursor of a literary genre—architectural description—which flourished during the Renaissance, notably in the Italian illustrated novel, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (The Song of Poliphile), written in 1467, and slightly later in the work of Rabelais with his descriptive tour of the Abbey of Thélème12.
Perspectives of the First Phase
The objective of this study, based essentially on “trustworthy” ancient sources, has been to highlight—through a semantic reading—the components of the Lighthouse’s architecture, their consistency, and their transformations, deduced from its iconographic and literary representation from Antiquity until its final disappearance in the early 15th century. This extraction process has allowed for the understanding and interpretation, with varying degrees of precision, of its environment, geometry, style, structure, implementation, materials, and the distribution of its interior spaces—all of which have been meticulously analyzed.
The data from the first phase of the study are now gathered alongside archaeological data in a single system, the Pharos HBIM, whose nomenclature is based on the database used for the analysis of ancient sources. Within the HBIM, data are standardized as far as possible: the goal is to characterize the various elements of the Lighthouse through a morphological description (structure, form of decoration), dimensioning, identification of materials, and finally, the introduction of 4D or the temporal dimension, reflecting repairs and transformations.
In the final stage, a prelude to the 3D reconstruction of the beacon tower’s architecture, the data will be shared among all project stakeholders to be analyzed before being modeled in 3D. They will also be cross-referenced with physical evidence from the underwater archaeological site where the ruins of the Lighthouse lie, as well as the structures that stood alongside it on the eastern tip of Pharos Island. In this framework, the fourth dimension will serve to distinguish the different phases of its evolution, the changes in its silhouette, its functions, and its environment, from its construction to the final submersion of the ruins.
Références et notes
1 G. De Callataÿ, “The Lighthouse of Alexandria in Medieval Arabic Sources: from realia to mirabilia,” Curiosité d’Égypte. Entre quête de soi et découverte de l’autre, de l’Antiquité à l’époque contemporaine (EPHE), 2020, pp. 223-258.
2 Cyriacus of Ancona, Kyriaci Anconitani Itinerarium, Florence, 1742, p. 49.
3 For the translation of the epigram, see Fr. Chamoux, “L’épigramme de Poséidippos sur le Phare d’Alexandrie,” in Hommages à Claire Préaux, Brussels, 1975, pp. 214-222; and A. Van Wiechen, “Zeven vragen over het zevende wereldwonder, de Pharos van Alexandrië,” in Hermeneus 57/3, 1985, pp. 197-203; a good reproduction in J. Y. Empereur, “Le Phare d’Alexandrie,” in La gloire d’Alexandrie, Paris, 1998, p. 101.
4 Ancient texts were compiled by Laura Aguer, papyrologist and scientific member of the Ifao.
5 The corpus of coins featuring the Lighthouse was collected and analyzed by Héloïse Aumaître, numismatist.
6 Database creation and layout by Héloïse Aumaître and Isabelle Hairy.
7 Representations other than those on coinage were collected by Eleni Fragaki, art historian and archaeologist, visiting researcher at the University of Augsburg.
8 The HBIM is developed in collaboration with the CEAlex team and Ashraf Kessaissia, consulting engineer at 3DS.
9 The corpus of texts describing the Lighthouse was compiled by Oueded Sennoune, historian, and translations within the framework of the Pharos project were carried out by Hend Tarrad, Arabist.
10 First interpretation of the text in connection with archaeological data: I. Hairy, “Pharos, l’Égypte et Platon,” in Images et modernité hellénistiques : appropriation et représentation du monde d’Alexandre à César, Rome: École Française de Rome, 2007, pp. 61-89.
11 This refers to a precise and detailed description.
12 François Rabelais, Gargantua, 1535.
CEAlex suggests citing this page as follows: Isabelle Hairy, “Ancient Sources,” CEAlex Pharos Project, accessed 6 October 2026, at https://pharos.cealex.org/documentary-resources/