A Guide To The Seven Wonders Of Ancient World

Scholars, writers, and artists have been praising the seven wonders of the ancient world since at least 200 B.C. These architectural wonders, like Egypt's pyramids, were examples of how far people have come. They were built by empires in the Mediterranean and Middle East with only simple tools and hard work. Only one of these ancient wonders is still around today.

 

•    This Great Pyramid was built around 2560 B.C. and is the only one of the seven ancient wonders that still stands today. When it was completed, the pyramid's outside was smooth and it stood 481 feet tall. According to Archaeologists it took as long as 20 years to build the Great Pyramid, built to honor the Pharaoh Khufu.

 

•    The Lighthouse of Alexandria was built around 280 B.C. and was about 400 feet tall. It stood guard over the ancient Egyptian port city. It was thought to be the tallest building in the world for a long time. The building slowly fell apart as time went on and as many earthquakes hit the area. In 1480, parts of the lighthouse were used to build the Citadel of Qaitbay on Pharos Island, which is still there today.

 

•    In 280 B.C., the Greek city of Rhodes built this bronze and iron statue of the sun god Helios as a war memorial. The statue was nearly 100 feet tall and stood near the city's harbor. It was about the same size as the Statue of Liberty. In 226 B.C., an earthquake blew it away.

 

•    The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was built around 350 B.C. in what is now the city of Bodrum in the southwest of Turkey. It was built for a Persian king and his wife and was first called the Tomb of Mausolus. Between the 12th and 15th centuries, a series of earthquakes tore down the building. It was the last of the seven wonders of the ancient world to fall.

 

•    In honor of Artemis, the Greek goddess of hunting, the Temple of Artemis was built near what is now Selcuk in western Turkey. Historians don't know when the temple was first built on the site, but they do know that it was destroyed by flooding in the 7th century B.C. From about 550 B.C. to 356 B.C., Its replacement, which was built soon after, was destroyed by invading Goths in 268 A.D.

 

•    The sculptor Phidias made this statue of gold, ivory, and wood around 435 B.C. It was over 40 feet tall and showed the Greek god Zeus sitting on a cedar throne. During the 5th century, the statue was either lost or destroyed, and there are not many pictures of it from that time.

 

•    The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are said to have been in what is now Iraq. However, not much is known about them. They may have been built by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon around 600 B.C. or Sennacherib of Assyria around 700 B.C. But archaeologists haven't found any solid proof that the gardens were ever there.

 

If you look online, you'll find a list of modern wonders of the world that seems to go on and on. Some are about natural wonders, while others are about man-made buildings. In 1994, the American Society of Civil Engineers made what may have been the most important attempt.

 

Their list of the seven modern wonders of the world is a tribute to the great engineering achievements of the 20th century. It includes the Channel Tunnel, which connects France and the U.K., the CN Tower in Toronto, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Itaipu Dam between Brazil and Paraguay, the Netherlands North Sea Protection Works, and the Panama Canal.