FROM THE DEEP
Bronze Ring Bearing Lost Lighthouse Recovered From Sunken Palace Off Alexandria
Divers working among the drowned ruins of Antirhodos have found what is said to be the first known signet ring depicting the vanished Wonder of the ancient world.
ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT — Nearly 2,000 years after a royal palace slipped beneath the Mediterranean, archaeologists have brought up a small bronze ring engraved with the image of a monument that no longer stands. According to The Debrief, the engraving depicts the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The ring was found on Antirhodos, an island that once formed part of the city's royal quarter. The excavation is conducted by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology, led by French archaeologist Franck Goddio, in collaboration with Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
Dr. Hisham El-Lithi, Secretary-General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, called the find exceptional, being the first time the lighthouse has been seen engraved on a seal ring. He said it may indicate the palace, described by the geographer Strabo on a visit between 29 and 25 BC, was used for administrative purposes until the second century AD, possibly including management of the lighthouse.
Signet rings, the report explains, were pressed into wax or clay to authenticate documents and identify property. The engraving resembles the lighthouse as shown on Roman coins of the second century AD, which suggest a square lower tower, an octagonal middle section and a cylindrical top.
The article is careful to add caveats. Researchers have not identified the ring's owner or established whether it served an official purpose, and no definitive date has been fixed for it. Given the lighthouse's fame, the report notes, the ring could just as easily have been a personal ornament.
The season's work has also yielded pottery, glass vessels, amphorae and household objects spanning the fourth century BC to the fourth century AD, with investigations around the Temple of Isis and the Timonium, a complex associated with Mark Antony. The lighthouse itself, built in the third century BC, was brought down by earthquakes, and its stone was later reused in a fifteenth-century fortress.