What are the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?

The map at the left shows the close proximity to one another of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Whenever conversation flags, I am apt to ask my older sister, Sue, what are the seven wonders of the ancient world? Sometimes we manage to name them all from memory, and sometimes we don't. If we name the seven wonders correctly, we generally progress to the names of the Nine Muses, which we never remember in total. Unless we're in a really masochistic frame of mind, that's the end of our quiz.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were prominent examples of what is called monumental architecture. They were tombs, temples, palace gardens, victory statues, and an enormous lighthouse, whose light could reputedly be seen 50 miles away. One thing they all had in common was that they were big. Another thing is that they were all built around the Mediterranean basin, from Greece to Turkey to Egypt, and the Greeks had a hand in nearly all of them, directly or indirectly. There have been various lists of the so-called seven wonders of the world, including those of Herodotus and Philo of Byzantium. The list of monuments below is the same list given by Antipater of Sidon. By the end of the Middle Ages, all of the listed structures were gone except the Great Pyramid, which survives to this day.

The Great Pyramid of Giza (ca. 2560 B.C.) This enormous structure, the tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops), was built on the plateau of Giza near Cairo at a time before the wheel was invented and without iron tools. The base of the pyramid is a perfect square, and its triangular walls converge to form a point. It was built of enormous limestone blocks and deep inside is the burial chamber of Khufu. The Great Pyramid is still in existence today, although it was stripped of its smooth facing of polished limestone slabs, which were later reused for other building projects. The controversial glass pyramid in front of the Louvre, designed by I.M. Pei, is modeled on the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (ca. 600 B.C.) There is a fair amount of controversy about whether the Hanging Gardens of Babylon ever existed at all. They were supposed to be incredible gardens built on the heights of his palace in Babylon, in ancient Mesopotamia, by King Nebuchadnezzar II. The stories say that Nebuchadnezzar had the gardens contructed as a wedding gift for his wife, Amytis of Media. If the gardens existed, they were probably not as large and lush as they are usually represented. Situated in the desert environment of what is now Iraq, it would have been extremely difficult to get water up to them. According to accounts, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were destroyed by an earthquake about a century after their construction.

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (ca. 550 B.C. ) Artemis was, among other things, the Greek goddess of fertility. She is sometimes depicted as having many breasts. Ephesus (now in modern Turkey) was the site of a fertility cult associated with Artemis. There an enormous temple to Artemis was contructed. Although only a few ruins remain, this temple was thought to look much like the Parthenon in Athens, only much bigger. The temple was destroyed by arson in 350 B.C. This was possible because the marble temple had a wooden interior framework. When that burned through, the roof collapsed.

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia (ca. 432 B.C.) This seated representation of the chief of the gods, Zeus, was designed and executed by the sculptor Phidias for the temple of Zeus at Olympia, the site of the Olympic Games. It was made of ivory and allegedly stood over 40 feet high. The statue was destroyed. It either perished in the burning of the temple of Zeus in 425 A.D. or was taken to a palace in Constantinople as war booty and subsequently lost in a fire in 475 A.D. No one knows exactly what the statue looked like, but there have been many representations of it over the centuries. The statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. is modeled on the statue of Zeus at Olympia.

The Tomb of Mausolus (Mausoleum) at Halicarnassus (ca. 350 B.C.) was the monumental tomb of the Persian satrap Mausolus and his wife Artemisia. The word mausoleum is derived from this structure. Mausolus ruled a powerful fortified city which is now Bodrum, in Turkey. Inspired by Khufu's pyramid, Mausolus had a huge tomb constructed for himself. This enormous structure, designed by a Greek architect, embodied a mixture of styles and was decorated with many statues, including a huge chariot drawn by four horses that stood at the peak of the tomb's roof. Today, a similar statute of a chariot stands atop the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Mausolus died before the tomb was completed, but his wife finished it after his death, and both of them were buried there. The tomb was destroyed by a series of earthquakes ca. 1400 A.D. Many existing buildings have been modeled on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, but they do not have the extensive exterior decoration. One example is the Masonic Temple in Washington, D.C.

The Colossus of Rhodes (ca. 280 B.C.) - Rhodes is a Greek island located in the Aegean sea not far from the coast of Turkey. After the breakup of the Greek empire following the death of Alexander the Great, Rhodes withstood a great siege and built a huge bronze image of the sun god, Helios, in the harbor of the city of Rhodes as a sign of its victory. This cast bronze statue was said to be more than 100 feet tall. The statue, known as the Colossus of Rhodes, was destroyed by an earthquake in 226 B.C. However, its ruins were a great tourist attraction for a long time therafter. A modern, but much more durable, version of the Colossus of Rhodes is the Statue of Liberty, which stands on an island in New York harbor. Designed by Auguste Bertholdi, the statue was erected in 1886. Its interior framework of steel was designed by French engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, best known for the Eiffel Tower in Paris. With interior support much like the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty is much more stable than the Colossus of Rhodes, which collapsed only 56 years after its completion.

The Pharos of Alexandria (ca. 247 B.C.) Of all the seven wonders, this is the one that interests me the most, perhaps because it was the most practical one. The Pharos was an enormous lighthouse built in the harbor at Alexandria. It was reputed to be about 400 feet high. It was used as a navigational aid, but, of course, it was also a prominent symbol of the power of Alexandria. The Pharos was seriously damaged by earthquakes in the 14th century A.D., then the ruins were used to build a fortress (Fort Qaitbey) in 1480 A.D. Stones from the base of the Pharos are visible in the surviving fortress. Remnants of the Pharos have also been discovered on the sea bottom in the harbor of Alexandria. Since 1994, underwater archaelogists have been plotting, measuring, and weighing the underwater ruins of the Pharos, and some of the remnants have been recovered.

So now, if anyone asks you, you can list the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.