Page "Statue of Liberty" Paragraph 5

According to sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi, who later recounted the story, Laboulaye's comment was not intended as a proposal, but it inspired Bartholdi.

Given the repressive nature of the regime of Napoleon III, Bartholdi took no immediate action on the idea except to discuss it with Laboulaye.

Bartholdi was in any event busy with other possible projects ; in the late 1860s, he approached Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, with a plan to build a huge lighthouse in the form of an ancient Egyptian female fellah or peasant, robed and holding a torch aloft, at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal in Port Said.

Sketches and models were made of the proposed work, though it was never erected.

There was a classical precedent for the Suez proposal, the Colossus of Rhodes: an ancient bronze statue of the Greek god of the sun, Helios.

This statue is believed to have been over high, and it similarly stood at a harbor entrance and carried a light to guide ships.