Seven Wonders of the World!

What happened to them?

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The ancient Greeks listed seven monumental constructions that they believed were the “wonders” of the world. Only one of these wonders still stands today and that’s the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Even that magnificent engineering achievement - about four and a half thousand years old - has taken a battering over the millennia.

So - what exactly happened to the Seven Wonders of the ancient world? Why can we only see the Great Pyramid and not the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or the Colossus of Rhodes?

Well, let’s find out…

The Great Pyramid

The Great Pyramid is by far the oldest of the seven wonders listed by the Greeks in the third century BC. And somehow it’s survived.

It was already over two thousand years old by the time it was included among the seven wonders. From the fourth century AD, after the Roman Empire had adopted Christianity, the pyramids were wrongly assumed to be massive granaries constructed by the Old Testament figure Joseph when he was working as pharaoh’s adviser.

In the 9th century, the Islamic caliph Al-Ma’mun ordered a tunnel to be dug into the side of the Great Pyramid to gain access to the centre. This was how I entered on my first visit 15 years ago and it’s a very claustrophobic experience. The passage gets narrower and narrower until you have to crawl on your stomach to arrive at the inner chamber - which is an incredible space.

The region is prone to earthquakes and yet the pyramids survived a series of large tremors in the 10th century AD. But their outer casing, which gave the Great Pyramid and the others smooth surfaces, fell away after a major quake in the year 1303. The stones were carted off by the sultan to repair mosques and buildings in medieval Cairo.

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

Halicarnassus today is the Turkish seaside resort of Bodrum. I visited about six years ago and tried to find this wonder of the ancient world. It once dominated the skyline -a huge tomb to the local ruler, built in the fourth century BC. You wander through some side streets and eventually chance upon a rather sad and sorry spectacle.

It’s basically a heap of rubble with some underground chambers still intact. Hard to believe that a 150 feet high tomb stood there for about 1700 years. However, throughout the medieval period it was undermined by a number of earthquakes and then along came the Knights Hospitaller.

This crusading order was very similar to the more famous Knights Templar. Their main base was the island of Rhodes but they wanted to build fortifications on the Turkish mainland to defend their position in the area.

Previously, they’d come under attack from Mongol armies but by the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire was the power to be reckoned with. The knights, terrified by the advancing Ottomans, hurriedly built a large and well fortified castle….out of the remains of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.

The castle is still standing - the Mausoleum very definitely is not.

The Colossus of Rhodes

Over to the island of Rhodes then…

One of the most short lived wonders of the ancient world. A truly gigantic, naked statue of the Greek sun god Helios that bestrode the entry to the harbour on the island of Rhodes. Apparently, the Statue of Liberty in New York was intended to be a kind of reconstruction of the colossus and was believed to be on more or less the same scale.

The colossus took twelve years to build and was greeting bemused mariners by 280BC. Unfortunately, one of those pesky earthquakes made the god literally tremble at the knees and come crashing down. There was an immediate plan to rebuild him until an oracle warned that there had been a clear message from the heavens not to do that.

Temple of Artemis

This was the temple at Ephesus to the goddess Artemis - or Diana if you prefer to be more Roman about it. Otherwise known as the Artemiseon. A vast columned structure that predated the birth of Christ by about 800 years. An architect from Knossos in Crete - centre of the Minoan civilisation - built a temple in 550BC that was burnt down by an arsonist in 356BC. Allegedly the very day that Alexander the Great was born - an ill omen!

The people of Ephesus then embarked on the grandest version that was listed as a wonder by Herodotus and Antipater of Sidon - two noted Greek scribblers. Antipater thought the temple far exceeded the Pyramids and other wonders in beauty. Work continued on this temple throughout the life of Alexander the Great and it stood intact until the year 268AD.

This was the year in which a band of raiding Goths crossed the Black Sea and plundered their way through Roman Anatolia. They were taking advantage of a turbulent period for the Roman Empire sometimes called ‘the crisis of the third century’. The temple was badly damaged but not levelled.

The culprit for its final destruction is Christianity. Now, a lot of Christians like to blame the Goths. It was those barbarians, not us nice peace-loving types, they say. But pulling down pagan places of worship was sanctioned by the state and bishops after the Roman Empire converted to the Christian faith. Look up what happened to the Serapeum - a massive temple in Egypt - at the hands of fanatical monks.

Many Christians had long prayed for the Artemiseon to fall. They got their way. Today, it’s a very sad ruin. As a postscript, there was a story that stones from the Artemiseon ended up in the Hagia Sofia, the domed basilica built by the emperor Justinian, in what is now Istanbul. While it’s not unfeasible - it’s dismissed by most modern historians.

Statue of Zeus at Olympia

Another act of Christian destruction was committed under the Byzantine emperor Theodosius II. He ordered the pulling down of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia in Greece. It was clearly unacceptable for the king of the old Gods to be venerated when now there was only one God recognised.

This was where the Olympic Games were held until those un-athletic and pagan-hating Christians put a stop to it :)

Within the temple was the wonder itself. That was a truly enormous seated figure of Zeus carved by the Greek sculptor Phidias around 435BC. It was alleged that in the fifth century AD, the statue was carted off to Constantinople to be burned in public by order of the emperor.

The Pharos (lighthouse) of Alexandria

The Pharos of Alexandria was probably the most practical of the seven wonders of the ancient world. A lighthouse to guide shipping into the harbour of the greatest city in the eastern Mediterranean. That city being Alexandria - named after Alexander the Great who conquered Egypt in the fourth century BC.

When Alexander died, his empire was divided up among his generals. A man called Ptolemy took over Egypt ruling as Ptolemy I Soter. His son then inherited the throne as Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The Ptolemaic dynasty would continue for three hundred years until Cleopatra committed suicide and the Romans moved in.

Ptolemy II built the lighthouse that would become a listed wonder. It’s estimated to have been about one hundred metres high. Incredibly, this tall beacon stood for about a thousand years before being damaged by earthquakes in 796AD, 951AD, the infamous 1303AD earthquake that also affected the pyramids and 1323AD.

After the fall of the Roman Empire in western Europe, Alexandria was part of the eastern Roman or Byzantine empire before being conquered by the Islamic caliphate.

There are various tales of Muslim sultans digging under the Pharos in the belief that Alexander the Great had hidden treasure beneath the huge blocks of stone. This weakened the structure and led to its collapse.

Another story has a Byzantine spy - a eunuch - pretending to convert to Islam and getting permission to investigate the Pharos and then burrowing deliberately dangerous tunnels beneath it causing the lighthouse to topple.

It’s more than likely that the Pharos was a pitiful sight by the 15th century. And that’s when Sultan Abu Al-Nasr Sayf ad-Din Al-Ashraf Qaitbay of Egypt decided to build a fortress on the lighthouse platform.

Hanging Gardens of Babylon

And lastly - the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. This is the one wonder that nobody is entirely sure where it was located or if it even existed. My guess - for what it’s worth - is that it did exist. Why? Because there’s no reason for it not to - is my simple, crass answer. But in short - why go and invent a mythical wonder after listing six factual ones?

These were tiered, exotic displays of trees, shrubs and vines over a palatial building constructed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II in the sixth century BC. This monarch is most famous for having destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem and leading the city’s population into captivity deep within his empire.

Not a trace of this remains - a tragedy for all of you green-fingered types out there!