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Title: Egypt Approves Plan to Rebuild Ancient World Wonder Lighthouse of Alexandria
Source:
Breitbart
URL Source: http://www.breitbart.com/national-s ... nder-lighthouse-of-alexandria/
Published: May 10, 2015
Author: Breitbart News
Post Date: 2015-05-10 08:49:16 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 2230
Comments: 6
This story originally appeared in the Cairo Post: CAIRO: The Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World that was badly damaged by three earthquakes, will be rebuilt nearby its original location. In its meeting last week, “members of the Permanent Committee of the Egyptian Antiquities have approved an old project, submitted previously by the Alexandria governorate, aiming to revive the lighthouse,” Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities SCA Dr. Mostafa Amin told Youm7. He explained that members of the committee agreed on reconstructing the Lighthouse on an area of land located a few meters to the southwest of the landmark’s original location. A comprehensive study has been completed and submitted to Alexandria governorate for final approval, he added. The Lighthouse, also known as the Pharos, was badly damaged due to a series of earthquakes hit Alexandria and the Mediterranean area between the 3rd and 12th centuries, Greco-Roman archaeology professor Fathy Khourshid told The Cairo Post Tuesday. “A severe earthquake in 1303 caused a huge destruction of the monument before the Mamluk Sultan Qaitbay in 1480 reused the monument’s ruins to construct a fortress (currently standing and bearing his name) on the original location of the Pharos northwest of Alexandria,” according to Khourshid. 
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#1. To: cranky (#0)
Seems like a waste of money in a poor country.
Might bring in some tourists.
#3. To: cranky (#2)
It might. But the Pyramids are real and they already do that. A fake new lighthouse will be less interesting. Tourism is down in Egypt because of instability and the slaughter of a bunch of tourists a couple years' back. It's sort of like the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. One of the largest, I think perhaps THE largest, Gothic cathedral sits on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, near Columbia University. It was built in starting around the turn of the 19th-20th Century and is still being built. It's truly a massive thing, but it's just not as impressive as, say Notre Dame or Chartres. Why? Because it's not so wondrous to be able to build a massive gothic cathedral nowadays, in the age of steel rebar and reinforced concrete. Building one 800 years ago out of stacks of stones, and have it still be standing, well, that was a feat. The Pharos of Alexandria, in its day, was a marvel. Ancient shipping needed it, for ancient ships were fragile things of wood, without any especially good means of navigation. The Acts of the Apostles gives an exceptionally good feel for how precarious ancient shipping really was. There was a whole season in which the fragile craft of that day dared not sail, and they so easily were caught by currents and winds and put up on the rocks. Sailing ships of later days, of trans-Atlantic voyages in the Age of Sail, were sometimes lost, but they were much, much sturdier than the glorified rowboats that the ancients used in the Med. In those days, that lighthouse mattered. It was still USEFUL as a light in later days, through the 1300s, when it finally fell in an earthquake. But is it really worth it today to spend a huge amount of money to remake a modern version of an ancient wonder? Shipping doesn't need it. Tourists won't flock to see it. It'll be like that Noah's Ark in the Netherlands - a novelty. But can Egypt afford such a novelty? No. The same instinct grips public schools in decay. We have to do something…so…let's build buildings! Much easier to build buildings than to do the harder thing and work on PEOPLE. Egypt needs to work on its people. That won't leave a physical monument, but it will be better for future generations.
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#2. To: Vicomte13 (#1)
Seems like a waste of money in a poor country.
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