It was around 300 BC that two lights were simultaneously lit in ancient Alexandria.

One of these lights was a physical light in the form of the world's first lighthouse, designed to guide ships coming down the Mediterranean Sea into the Great Harbor of Alexandria. Prior to this there had been large bonfires on shore to help guide navigators, but this was the first lighthouse in the modern sense of the word. It was built on the eastern end of a long island that lies closely off the coast of Egypt. The island was named Pharos Island, and so the lighthouse became known as the Pharos Light. Since the western end of the island was closer to the mainland, a great causeway was built there connecting the mainland to the island. It was across this causeway that the great blocks of stone were carried for the construction of the lighthouse. The structure was build by every artifice known to man at the time to outlast the ages; it was never to disappear from the face of the earth. When completed it rose to a height equal to half that of the Empire State Building in New York City, the height of the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., the height of Diamond Head in Honolulu. Its great wood-burning light at the top could be seen some thirty-four miles out to sea. There has never since been built, in any part of the world, a lighthouse of such enormous height as that of the great Pharos Light.