Massive blocks from the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria hauled up from the Mediterranean

Latest News

Reported by Live Science:

French and Egyptian researchers are making a "digital twin" of the Lighthouse of Alexandria in Egypt after lifting its ancient submerged blocks out of the Mediterranean Sea.

Workers at the Egyptian port city of Alexandria have recovered 22 massive stone blocks that were used thousands of years ago to build the city's famous lighthouse, one of the wonders of the ancient world.

The stone blocks were raised from the harbor floor at Alexandria, on the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and will now be studied and digitally scanned. The results will be added to digital records of more than 100 stones discovered underwater over the past decade, according to a statement from the Dassault Systems Foundation, one of the project's sponsors.

The research is led by French archaeologist and architect Isabelle Hairy and brings together the expertise of historians, archaeologists, architects and engineers to create a virtual 3D model of the ancient lighthouse, which had already been badly damaged by earthquakes when it collapsed in the 14th century.

The recently recovered stones include pieces of a huge doorway that weighed "70 to 80 tons," according to the statement. The workers also recovered parts of a massive Egyptian-style "pylon," or ceremonial gateway, that may have been a monument.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria — also known as the Pharos of Alexandria, after a small island at the mouth of the harbor where it stood — was built in about 280 B.C. on the orders of the Egyptian king Ptolemy II Philadelphus (who had been born in Macedonia) mainly to guide approaching ships safely to the harbor.

The city was founded by and named after the Macedonian king Alexander the Great, who seized Egypt from the Persian Empire in 332 B.C. Alexandria then became the Egyptian capital under the Hellenistic (Greek) Ptolemaic dynasty of pharaohs (the first, known as Ptolemy I Soter, had been one of Alexander's most trusted generals) and one of the wealthiest cities in the ancient world.

Read more here.