La ›Tumba de Melqart‹ del Herákleion de Gadir

Abstract

Arabic sources describe with precision (and some Oriental fantasy) a lighthouse or beacon
on the island of Sancti Petri (Cádiz) in the vicinity of the Herakleion, a structure preserved
until A.D. 1145 when it was destroyed by Al-Maimún. It was a grand tower or πύργος (Porph.
de abstinentia I, 25), 67 m high with three bodies topped by a tall pyramidion that had a
gilded sculpture of Melqart of more than 3 m at the summit. This permits the structure to
be identified as the ›Tomb of Melqart‹. The monument, a symbol of Phoenician Gadir and
of the lands of the West, would have been the tallest building in the Mediterranean after
the Lighthouse of Alexandria. It may have been inspired either by the ›Tomb of Melqart‹ in
Tyre (perhaps renovated by Alexander the Great when he conquered the city and proclaimed
himself king, as the descendent of Herakles-Melqart) or by the tomb of Alexander built by
Ptolemy IV in Alexandria in 215 B.C. Its construction can be attributed to Hannibal as a
Herculi votum to his protecting divinity Melqart when he visited the Gadir Herakleion after
capturing Saguntum in 219 B.C. (Liv. 21, 21, 9; Sil. 3, 14), prior to his Italian expedition, and
would have been part of Hannibal’s Hellenistic propaganda policy modeled on Alexander.