The Seven Wonders of the World

The Seven Wonders of the World actually refers to the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World but the ancient part is usually dropped. The list was compiled by the Greeks for the first time as long ago as the 5th century BC however the recognized list today has been made up from many different Greek lists written over the period of hundreds of years.

The Greeks loved to compile lists about the greatest monuments and structures in their world, this explains the omission of the so called 'forgotten wonders' such as Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China and the Taj Mahal and many others, the Greeks simply did not know they existed.

Many people ask, why the number seven? The reason for this is that the number seven is deeply embedded in Mediterranean culture, tradition, mythology and religion and was considered a very important by the Greeks who were writing the lists.

Although there is no specific 'best wonder' on the list, historians do tend to agree on a few things. Obviously the Pyramids best stood the test of time, the Lighthouse was the only wonder known to have had a practical use and the Temple of Artemis is generally regarded as the most beautiful wonder.

I have presented the detailed information about each wonder below in chronological order.


The Pyramids of Egypt

The pyramids were built somewhere between 2700 and 2500 BC. They are located at Giza, Egypt, on the west band of the River Nile south of Cairo. They are the oldest wonder, and the only wonder still standing today.

There are ten pyramids at Giza but not all of them are particularly special and it is true that not all of them made the list. It is often mistakenly thought that the three largest pyramids are the wonder, but only the central, largest one, known as the Great Pyramid is actually on the list.

The Great Pyramid was constructed for the Pharoah Khufu and approximately 450 feet tall, covering an area of 13 acres. When it was built, the pyramid was in fact taller, but over the years it h 747k1013h as lost around 30 feet from the top to the weather and thieves.

Egyptologists believe that 100,000 labourers would have had to work for 20 years to complete the pyramid for Khufu which consists of around 2 300 000 limestone blocks. Each side is 756 feet in length at the base, and despite the limited tools of the builders no side is more than eight inches different in length to another and the whole pyramid is aligned perfectly to the points of the compass. Until the 19th century the Great Pyramid was still the tallest building in the world.

The shape of the pyramids was important in the ancient Egyptian religion. They worshipped the Sun god, Ra and the slanting sides of the pyramids could have been to symbolise the rays of the Sun. The sides could also have been a path to heaven for the dead Pharaoh's soul as he started his journey to join the gods.


The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

The hanging gardens were built around 600 BC in Babylon, which was near the locations of modern-day Baghdad in Iraq. There is no proof that the gardens ever actually existed but they are still included on the list of wonders.

The gardens are said to have been laid out on a brick terrace by King Nebuchadnezzar II for one of his wives, Amyitis. Amyitis was from a green, mountainous country and so she was not homesick her king made her an artificial mountain with a rooftop garden. Measurements found in writings by a Babylonian priest claim they covered an area of 160 000 square feet and were also at least 80 feet off the ground.

Due to the height of the gardens, a special and ingenious method of watering them was required. The aforementioned Babylonian priest details slaved who worked in shifts turning Archimedes screws to lift water from the Euphrates River to irrigate the contents of the garden.

In reality the Hanging Gardens probably did not actually 'hang'. This came from an inexact translation of the Greek word 'kermastos' or the Latin word 'pensilis' which both mean 'overhanging' as in the case of a balcony.


The Statue of Zeus

The statue was built around 457 BC in the ancient Greek city of Olympia. This was the location of the first Olympic games, every four years games were held at Olympia to celebrate and pay tribute to Zeus, the spectators would come not only to watch the games but also to admire the statue.

The statue was commissioned because many believed that a regular Doric-style temple was not good enough for Zeus. The Athenian sculptor Phidias created the seated Zeus from ivory and draped him in a gold robe. Zeus had a wreath around his head and held a smaller statue of Nike, his messenger in the right hand, a sceptre being in his left.

The statue was eventually moved to a palace in Constantinople, which was lucky to begin with as fire gutted the Olympia temple soon after but the luck ran out when fire destroyed that palace, along with the great Statue of Zeus in 462 AD.


The Temple of Artemis (Diana) at Ephesus

The Temple of Artemis was built around 550 BC in the Greek City of Ephesus, which was on the west coast of modern-day Turkey. Artemis, sometimes called Diana was the Greek goddess of the hunt but the Ephesus Goddess of fertility.

The first shrine to Artemis was built around 800 BC but it was destroyed and rebuilt several times. By 600 BC, Ephesus was a major port or trade and an architect named Chersiphron, with the help of his son designed a new temple. This temple was destroyed by King Croesus of Lydia as he invaded and conquered Ephesus.

Croesus, however, funded the construction of a new temple designed by Theodorus. The new temple dwarfed previous versions at 300 feet in length by 150 feet wide. It has over 100 stone columns supporting its roof. This temple was destroyed on purpose by a young man named Herostratus who was trying to get his name to go down in history, he burned the magnificent temple to the ground.

A new temple, the largest and final temple of Artemis at Ephesus was commissioned shortly after, designed by Scorpas of Paros. Piny the Elder, a Roman historian claimed that the temple was a "wonderful monument of Grecian magnificence, and one that merits our genuine admiration."

The temple was made entirely from marble, a first in ancient times. Piny recorded the size of this new temple to be 425 feet in length by 225 feet wide. It had nearly 130, 60-foot columns supporting an even larger roof. This temple was around twice the size of the Parthenon of Athens, which lays in ruins today.

During the construction of this temple, there was a major problem. One of the major roof beams that had been installed above the door refused to lie flat. The architect was desperately worried about this situation unit he had a dream about the Goddess Artemis who told him she had moved the stone and sorted the problem herself. The following morning he found that his dream had come true and construction was completed successfully.

This temple was destroyed during a Gothic raid in 262 AD and never restored by the later Roman occupants of the city. 19th century archaeological expeditions to the area in search of the temple lead by John Turtle Wood and later D G Hograth returned fragments of the fine sculptures of the final temple, these can now be found in The British Museum, London.


The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

In 277 BC the rule of Halicarnassus and its kingdom was passed down to Mausolus, who extended the kingdom further, building on what his late father had already achieved. The area was in modern-day southwestern Turkey.

Mausolus's reign lasted for 24 years and during that time; he introduced and encouraged many Greek practices and designs to his kingdom including the Greek style of government, democracy.

Mausolus died in 353 BC leaving his queen, Artemisia, who was also his sister, as it was the custom in Caria for a ruler to marry their own sister. Artemisia was inconsolable and to celebrate he dead husband she had a giant Greek style tomb built, which was designed by Greek architects Satyrus and Pythius and stood approximately 135 feet tall. The tomb became so famous that the word mausoleum is now a general word for a stately tomb.

Shortly after the tomb was finished, Artemisia found herself in trouble. The people of Rhodes, an island in the Aegean Sea, next to Greece, rebelled on hearing of the king's death. They mounted a full naval assault on the city of Halicarnassus but Artemisia had a cunning plan. She hid her own fleet at the east end of the cities harbour and allowed the Rhodians to make landfall and disembark. She then sailed her ships in and towed the empty Rhodian ships out to sea before putting her own soldiers on them. Artemisia then instructed her soldiers to go and attack Rhodes, fooling the Rhodians into thinking it was their own navy returning home so the they put up no defense and Rhodes was easily captured, quelling the rebellion.

The Mausoleum survived the conquering of Halicarnassus by Alexander the Great in 334 BC and attacked by pirated in 62 and 58 BC. It went on to stand above the city, and then it's ruins for 17 centuries before being destroyed by a series of earthquakes and by 1404 only the very base of the Mausoleum was still standing.


The Colossus of Rhodes

Rhodes is an island located where the Aegean Sea meets the Mediterranean with a capitol city of the same name built in 408 BC at the location of the island's best natural harbour on the northern coast.

Alexander the Great conquered Rhodes in 332 BC but he died at an early age and three of his generals, Ptolemy, Seleucus and Antigous, divided up his vast kingdom between themselves. This lead to a problem however, although he took Egypt in the deal, the Rhodians still supported Ptolemy. This angered Antigous who now ruled Rhodes and he sent his son Demetrius to punish the Rhodians.

Although Demetrius sailed into Rhodes with an army of 40 000, more than the entire population of the island, he was stopped by a flooded ditch and heavy mud outside the city walls. He laid siege to Rhodes for almost a year before a fleet of ships from Egypt arrived to assist the people of Rhodes. Demetrius withdrew, leaving the massive siege tower behind.

To celebrate their victory and therefore their freedom, the Rhodians set upon building a giant statue of their patron god, Helios.

They used the bronze from various things Demetrius left behind and used his siege tower as scaffolding. Construction started in 304 BC and lasted 12 years,

The Colossus was one hundred and ten feet high, almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty in New York and stood upon a fifty-foot pedestal near the harbour entrance. Many illustrations show the Colossus with one leg on either side of the harbour so that ships could pass underneath however it was actually on one side in a very Greek pose wearing only a spiked crown and a cloak.

The Colossus at Rhodes stood for 56 years but was destroyed by an earthquake leaving the huge bronze sections strewn around the harbour for centuries. An Egyptian king is reported to have offered to pay for its reconstruction but the Rhodians, fearing that they had angered Helios, prompting him to send an earthquake to destroy the Colossus, refused.


The Pharos (Lighthouse) of Alexandria

Alexander the Great founded the city of Alexandria in 332 BC. It was one of 17 cities he started named Alexandria in different location around his vast kingdom, the majority of them disappeared but Alexandria in Egypt was a huge city and is still there today.

Learning from previous examples, Alexander the Great chose not to build his new city on the Nile Delta because harbours there had become blocked with silt from the river, instead he chose a site twenty miles along the coast to the west. Since he still wanted his city to have easy shipping access to the River Nile for trading purposes, Alexander the Great constructed a canal between Lake Mareotis, south of Alexandria and the Nile giving the city two harbours, one leading to the River Nile and one on the Mediterranean Sea and he would have no problems with either one of them getting blocked.

Alexander the Great died less than 10 years later and Ptolemy took over the building of the city, which he made rich and prosperous. The busy shipping meant that the seas around the harbour were treacherous and needed a system to guide ships safely into Alexandria so Ptolemy commissioned the building of the lighthouse on the island of Pharos, the building soon acquiring the name Pharos for itself. The Pharos became the world second tallest building after the Great Pyramid and the word 'Pharos' became so widely known that it became the root of the word for lighthouse in many Latin derived languages.

The architect behind the Pharos was Sostrates of Knidos. Naturally he wished to carve his own name into the foundation of his work, but Ptolemy II, son of Ptolemy insisted that his name be the only one on the whole building. This didn't put Sostrates off; he came up with a scam to get what he wanted. He chiselled his own name into the stone foundations and then quickly plastered over it before inscribing the king's name into the plaster. Over time the plaster fell away revealing Sostrate's original inscription.

It was possible for civilians to ascend the Pharos and look out over the sea as they enjoyed a meal from the lighthouse restaurant, a rarity in ancient times. Like many of the other wonders, earthquakes destroyed the lighthouse. It was damaged by tremors in 365 and 1303 AD and after 1,500 years of guiding ships with a mirror in the daytime and a fire at night the Pharos collapsed into the Mediterranean Sea in 1326 AD.