Divers working in the sunken royal quarter of Alexandria brought up a small bronze signet ring whose bezel carries an engraved image of the Pharos, the lighthouse that counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Hisham El-Leithy, secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, called it the first known seal ring found with a picture of the tower.
The ring surfaced on Antirhodos, an island that once belonged to the royal district of the Portus Magnus, in the Eastern Harbour. The announcement came on Wednesday, October 7, 2026, a few days after the object was recovered.
Antirhodos and the Palace Dig
The excavation is a joint mission of the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology, known by its French initials IEASM, and Egypt’s General Department of Underwater Antiquities. Franck Goddio, the institute’s director, heads the field work. According to the Archaeology Magazine report, the Eastern Harbour project is working at four locations: the Temple of Isis, the palace and western hill on Antirhodos, the remains of an obelisk, and the Timonium, the palace associated with Mark Antony.
Tourism and Antiquities Minister Sherif Fathy visited the mission’s research vessel on Monday to inspect the work, and The National reports that he and his assistant Ahmed Rehema looked at the ring during that visit. The Hilti Foundation, which has backed Goddio’s underwater research since 1996, describes the same partnership with the Egyptian ministry in its account of the Temples of Ancient Alexandria project, where the team rediscovered a royal palace and a temple of Isis on Antirhodos.
El-Leithy’s Claim of a First
The superlative in the announcement belongs to the Egyptian authorities. Arkeonews quotes the ministry describing the object as the first known representation of the Pharos found on a seal ring, and El-Leithy as saying no lighthouse image had previously been identified on one. None of the reports tests that claim against museum collections.
The wording matters because other lighthouse images exist. La Brujula Verde, citing the lighthouse scholar Andrew Michael Chugg, points to a Roman blue glass seal in Vienna and a Byzantine gemstone in the British Museum, neither of which is described as a ring. Whether the new find is the first depends on how a signet ring is defined, which is a narrower claim than first image of the tower, and the officials have made only the narrower one.
The tower on the bezel is the most famous building that no longer exists. It was completed around 280 BCE under Ptolemy II on the island of Pharos, and it is thought to have stood more than 100 meters tall; the La Brujula Verde write-up cites ancient sources that put it near 120 meters, against 55 meters for the Tower of Hercules, the surviving Roman lighthouse in Spain. Artists have worked from coins, mosaics and written descriptions for centuries, so a miniature drawn by an engraver who may have lived within sight of the real structure is of obvious interest, whatever its exact date.
Dating a Ring Without a Date
No firm date has been given. The lighthouse picture resembles those on coins of the second century AD, and The National stresses that its report does not say the ring itself belongs to that century. Ring size, inscription and owner are all unreported. Arkeonews adds that no sealed document or inscription has turned up to show how the ring was used.
Goddio said, in the words carried by The National, that the discovery is “even more important as it has been excavated in the legendary palace” on Antirhodos. He suggested the palace housed administrative offices, possibly including functions tied to the lighthouse. El-Leithy put it more cautiously, saying the palace may have kept administrative uses into the second century AD. The reports note this stops short of proof that the ring’s owner had anything to do with the tower.
Finds of this kind rarely arrive with paperwork.
The ring’s context has some firmer anchors. Pottery from the same excavation runs from the fourth century BCE to the fourth century AD, according to Archaeology Magazine, and the geographer Strabo, who visited Egypt between 29 and 25 BCE, described the Antirhodos palace in writing. La Brujula Verde adds that other accounts describe occupation into the early third century and a final sinking in the fourth, which would put the ring inside a palace that was still in use when the lighthouse stood.
After the Eastern Harbour season ends, the same mission is due to move to Abu Qir Bay, where Goddio’s team located the sunken city of Thonis-Heracleion in 2000. The open item for the ring is a plain one: the ministry has yet to publish a date, a measurement or a description of the engraving’s style, and those details will decide how far the first-of-its-kind label travels.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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