What earlier Bartholdi proposal was planned for the Suez Canal entrance?

Bartholdi’s earlier proposal for the Suez Canal entrance was Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia. In the late 1860s, the French sculptor imagined a monumental robed woman holding a torch at Port Said, where the newly constructed canal met the Mediterranean.

The proposed figure was conceived as an Egyptian female fellah, or peasant, and was sometimes called Progress Carrying the Light to Asia. Bartholdi drew inspiration from ancient Egyptian colossal statues and the Colossus of Rhodes, which had stood near a harbor entrance and represented the sun god Helios.

The project was not built. Isma’il Pasha, the khedive of Egypt, and canal developer Ferdinand de Lesseps declined it, chiefly because of its cost. A lighthouse designed by François Coignet was built at Port Said instead in 1869.

Bartholdi later adapted important ideas from the unrealized scheme for Liberty Enlightening the World, the Statue of Liberty. The New York statue retained the monumental female form and raised torch, but its symbolism shifted toward liberty and the political ideals associated with the United States and France.