ABSTRACT
The Pharos lighthouse of Alexandria was the last of the standard Seven Wonders to be established on the list. Strabo says the Pharos island had on it, in his own day, a tower of white stone with many storeys, named after the island. Likewise long lost are the palaces with their magnificent gardens and the Museum which Strabo mentions and also the wonderful Library, which unaccountably since he did so much work in it himself he does not. The lighthouse, with its mirrors and its beacon fire was itself a pioneering piece of Alexandrian engineering and technology, the inspiration behind the Romans more systematic installation of lighthouse chains from the first century of the Common Era on till the end of their empire. In Alexandria, little remains of Graeco-Roman times: certainly not the tomb of Alexander himself which was once the focus of the city's very existence.
