Ancient Ring Bearing Lost Wonder Found in Cleopatra’s Sunken Palace

Clear Facts

• Archaeologists discovered a bronze signet ring engraved with the Lighthouse of Alexandria inside the submerged royal harbor of ancient Alexandria.
• The ring was recovered from the site of a royal palace on the island of Antirhodos, once connected to Cleopatra VII, Mark Antony, and Julius Caesar.
• The Lighthouse of Alexandria was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and stood for centuries until earthquakes destroyed it.

Archaeologists have recovered a rare bronze signet ring from the submerged harbor of ancient Alexandria. The ring bears the image of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The find was announced this month by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology. The ring came from the ruins of a royal palace on the now-submerged island of Antirhodos.

“The discovery of the ring-signet is even more important as it has been excavated in the legendary palace of the Island of Antirhodos, that once was a center of power,” Franck Goddio, president of the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology, said in a press release.

The ring is the first known signet bearing the lighthouse. Officials say the engraving matches imagery found on some second-century Roman coins.

“This lighthouse has now been shrunk down to sit on someone’s finger and used to sign official paperwork,” Alexandra F. Morris, an ancient history lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast, told Fox News Digital.

“It’s basically showing that the lighthouse became the symbol of Alexandria, long after it was built.”

The palace itself may once have been used by Cleopatra. Later it may have served as administrative offices overseeing the lighthouse, Morris noted.

“This could be a representation of that,” she said, referring to the ring’s possible connection to the lighthouse’s administration.

The lighthouse guided ships into Alexandria’s harbor for centuries before earthquakes finally brought it down in the fourteenth century.

“I think this ring is really interesting because it provides us potentially with something [through] replicas or models that people can actually hold, as the city is so hard to access because it is underwater,” Morris added.

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