Countless examples of architectural and
cultural greatness in humanity’s ancient past are permanently lost to the modern
world, reduced to dust throughout long centuries or destroyed in upheavals both natural
and anthropogenic in nature, or sometimes both. The ‘seven wonders of the ancient world’
are perhaps the greatest examples of such lost beauty. Located in the eastern Mediterranean,
these legendary wonders have long captivated and inspired the imagination. Welcome to our
video giving an overview of the Seven Wonders. And what better sponsor can there be for
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content pack via the link in the description! The first of our marvels is the most mysterious
of them all - the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Our classical sources on the great gardens, such
as Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Josephus, themselves drew from older writings which are
now lost. In one of those vanished sources, a Babylonian priest of Marduk known as Berossus wrote how King Nebuchadnezzar II once wed a
princess Amytis of the Median Empire. This was probably a diplomatic arrangement and Amytis
seems to have grown understandably homesick, a fact which Nebuchadnezzar attempted
to remedy in spectacular fashion by constructing elevated gardens and filling
them with trees from his wife’s place of origin. Although widespread in many
of the ancient sources, this tale and the Gardens of Babylon are almost
certainly a legend without any historical basis, passed down and distorted over time.
Nevertheless, it does contain the truth that ornate royal gardens were used by ancient kings
to display their wealth, ability to create lush beauty within arid environments, and for luxury.
A prime feature of such gardens, for example, were trees possessing leaves which sheltered
people of note from the scorching sun. There is no evidence of elaborate garden
constructions of this kind at Babylon. However, it is speculated by historians such as Stephanie
Dailey that the ‘Hanging Gardens’ did exist, but not in Babylon. Instead, she began the
now-dominant hypothesis that they were constructed in the Neo-Assyrian capital of Nineveh by King
Sennacherib, who reigned over vast swathes of the Near East from 705 to 681BC. If these ‘Hanging
Gardens of Nineveh’ were indeed a reality, then their destruction would’ve likely come in
612BC, the year in which Assyria’s long-subjugated empire rose up against it, descended on the
imperial capital, and put it to utter ruin. After two Persian invasions in the first
decades of the fifth century were defeated, the golden age of Classical Greece, and
particularly Athens, began in earnest. New and more sophisticated forms of culture were pioneered
in this civilisational blossoming, including the iconic Greek play, philosophical concepts
which remain with us today and, crucially, grander styles of architecture and sculpture. To
enhance the hallowed shrine of Zeus at Olympia, in the Peloponnese, the governing council there
chose to build a large temple inside which an already existing image of the god existed, and
could be protected from the elements. However, the Classical Age’s awe-inspiring tastes demanded
something beyond a small cult object, and so an exiled Athenian sculptor was hired to create an
ideal image of the King of the Gods - Pheidias. According to the retelling of later Roman authors,
the sculptor’s inspiration for this great project was Homer, and specifically verses 528 to 530
in the Iliad. In these particular passages, he ‘talks of an austere Zeus, the movement of whose
head caused the whole of Mount Olympus to shake.” Using techniques developed first during his work
in Athens, Pheidias completed a spectacular 42 foot tall representation of Zeus sitting on a
godly throne. In his right hand the figure holds an icon of the goddess Nike, and in the left is
grasped a sceptre crowned by an eagle. So huge did the work sit in its temple that if the god were
to stand, it would definitely destroy its housing. For almost 1,000 years following its construction,
the statue amazed and awed visitors who held Zeus divine. However, when the Roman Empire instituted
Christianity as its state religion in 391, Theodosius I implemented laws which
led to the sanctuary’s decline. The statue itself was eventually carted
off to adorn a palace in Constantinople, where it was destroyed by fire in 462AD... Three more of the ancient wonders could be visited
across the Bosphorus on Asia Minor’s western coast, one of which historian Edward Gibbon
described in poetic fashion. “The arts of Greece and the wealth of Asia had conspired to erect
that sacred and magnificent structure. Successive empires, the Persian, Macedonian and Roman
revered its sanctity and enriched its splendour.” This particular praise is reserved for none
other than the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. First constructed in the sixth century BC reign
of, and patronised by the prodigious wealth of, Lydian King Croesus, the Temple was an intricately
decorated, glittering rectangular structure surrounded by 127 beautiful, 60 foot
high fluted columns in the Ionic style. To further emphasize its importance, the main
platform was elevated slightly above ground level, reached by any potential suppliant
by perfectly crafted marble steps. In addition to the splendour
of its oriental construction, mixed with the Hellenic spirit in
which it was so clearly infused, the so-called ‘Artemisium’ is rightly
famed for the myriad historical figures: According to legend, king Croesus was about to
be sacrificed by the soldiers of Cyrus the Great, but then the skies suddenly opened up and
rain began to fall, the Persians relented, and Croesus was saved. The temple’s patron goddess
failed utterly to intervene in a similar manner when Herostratus, who notoriously desired fame
immortal by any means necessary, burned the sanctuary down in 356, supposedly on the very
evening Alexander the Great was born. Plutarch justifies her absence by explaining how the
goddess was dealing with just this special birth. It was tenaciously rebuilt soon after, but
in the midst of Rome’s Imperial Crisis, Ephesus’ Artemisium was destroyed
by piratical Gothic raiders in 262. Although it was semi-rebuilt in
the respite of the early fourth century, Early Church Father St John Chrysostom
completely levelled the pagan structure in 402. Almost exactly 100 miles south of the grand
temple of Artemis sat the great Carian city of Halicarnassus. At that time, this Greek realm was
a powerful satrapy-kingdom within the Achaemenid Empire, so its ruler Mausolus was a Persian
satrap as well as monarch of his own realm. He moved his capital from the old
Carian royal seat at Mylasa to the ancient harbour city of Halicarnassus,
refounding it after a period of neglect. There, Mausolus also wed his sister Artemisia,
who along with her husband began work on a lavish tomb for the dynasty. When the Carian
ruler did eventually perish in 353BC with the work unfinished, Artemisia ensured it
was completed before her death two years later. Constructed using a skillful
synergy of Hellenic, Persian, and Egyptian architecture, this Mausoleum, as
it became known in reference to its patron, comprised a huge 440 foot circumference podium
topped with Ionic columns and a pyramidal roof. Decorating the intricate work were a number of
statues and reliefs, the most notable of which was one in the image of Mausolus riding a Herculean
chariot, placed atop the mausoleum’s roof… As one of the longer lasting ancient wonders,
Mausolus’ tomb remained standing proudly throughout the Macedonian and Roman Empires,
and further into the crusader age. Consigned to irrelevance long before, the colonnade
and upper section of Mausolus’ resting place was collapsed by an earthquake at some point in
the early second millennium. However, like so many other artefacts of the ancient past, the Mausoleum
was condemned to oblivion by the crusaders. Seeking to refortify their nearby fortress at
Bodrum in 1494, the Knights of St John used a significant amount of the remaining Mausoleum
stone to bolster the fortifications, including a number of slabs depicting the ‘Amazonomachy’ -
the mythical battle between Greeks and the warrior woman Amazons. The inner chamber was also looted
in the aftermath, but a number of treasures were eventually carted off to the British Museum during
later excavations, where they remain to this day. To conclude our journey around the Anatolian
seaboard, we go to the island of Rhodes. At the very tip overlooking one of the great
Rhodian harbours for hundreds of years, was a massive statue of the Greek sun god
Helios - patron deity of the island and city. Its name, as almost everyone knows, was the
Colossus of Rhodes. The great statue’s history begins with Alexander the Great’s death and the
conflicts between the Macedonian generals and nobles known as the Diadochi Wars. This continued
until a deadly, unstable balance of power began to emerge. Among those powers, the Antigonids -
Antigonus I the ‘one-eyed’ and his son Demetrius were unquestionably the most powerful, opposed by
a coalition informally led by Ptolemy, in Egypt. In 307, at the very zenith of Antigonus’ power,
Rhodes refused to join in his war against Ptolemy due to economic relations with the latter, leading
eventually to the Siege of Rhodes by Demetrius in 305BC. Despite Demetrius’ skill, Rhodes survived
the siege and then sold Demetrius’ siege engines for funds to create a grand monument to their
victory - the Colossus. After a significant time of preparation, Rhodes’ appointed sculptor
- Chares of Lindos, and his bronze casters constructed the giant 30 metre tall statue between
294 and 282BC, when it was finally completed. Unlike the Colossus’ literary clone in Game
of Thrones, the Rhodian real thing did not bestride the harbour entrance. Unfortunately,
the metal and stone giant did not stand for long. In 226, it and the city in which it stood
was wracked by a massive earthquake which broke Helios at the knee and sent him
tumbling down, destroying many houses. Ptolemy III - ruler of Egypt at the
time, offered to bankroll a restoration, but the Rhodians declined due to the ban
of an oracle. So, in its collapsed state, the Colossus lay where it fell for 900
years until the Arabs plundered it in 654AD. Across the Mediterranean coast in the primeval
kingdom of Egypt, our penultimate wonder goes a long way to prove the assertion that
Alexander the Great had some involvement in almost every lofty occurrence after his time.
In 332BC, during the Macedonian invasions, Alexander annexed Egypt, including the offshore
island of Pharos, from the Persian Empire. Marching north from the old pharaonic capital
of Memphis, Alexander came across a small fishing village known as Rhacotis, located on
a brilliant site. As the new pharaoh of Egypt, he ordered that a mighty city be constructed there
from which he could look across the sea to his homeland. It was the first and most famous of
many cities to bear the king’s name - Alexandria. To accomplish the task in appropriately
grandiose fashion, the king appointed his talented court architect Dinocrates of Rhodes,
who eagerly got to the task. Plans for the city’s layout were drawn up in the latest Hellenistic
grid-style developed by Hippodamus of Miletus. With those blueprints to work on,
the construction of this so-called Queen of Cities began immediately. As
Alexandria slowly but surely came into being under Ptolemy’s supervision during the Diadochi
Wars, a wealthy Ptolemaic courtier and diplomat known as Sostratus provided, at least in part,
the 800 silver talents necessary to fund his city’s most famous piece of artistic genius
mixed with practical usage - the Lighthouse, or ‘Pharos’ of Alexandria, named so because
of the island upon which it was constructed. Just over 100 metres tall in total, the Pharos
was almost certainly a three-tiered structure decreasing in scale from bottom to top. The
first was a rectangular segment of 60 metres, above which was a cylindrical tower of a further
30 metres. The weight of the upper structure was held by a similar cylinder structure within
the lower tier. The lighthouse was capped with a summit crowned by both a great beacon
and statue of Zeus Soter - Zeus the Savior. The resilient Pharos and its brilliant seaward
light survived relatively intact until the later part of the first millennium AD, when it
was badly damaged by a series of earthquakes. Arab traveller Ibn Battuta visited Alexandria
in 1349 and according to him Pharos was in such a bad state that ‘it was not possible to
enter it or climb it up to the doorway’ … The final wonder in our list - Khufu’s Great
Pyramid - is the oldest and only one to survive. The Great Pyramid was the culmination of
centuries’ worth of research and advancements in architecture during the Old Kingdom. Its
predecessors were the rectangular, mud brick ‘mastaba’, and the following ‘step pyramid’, the
most famous of which housed the sacred remains of Third Dynasty Pharaoh Djoser at Saqqara.
Constructed by the Pharaoh’s vizier Imhotep, this structure was the very first to
be constructed entirely out of stone. Sophisticated construction techniques and
innovations continued to advance apace as the third dynasty came to an end, with
the notable advent of the pyramid ‘complex’, consisting of the magnificent tomb itself,
adjacent mortuary temples, causeways, sphinxes and other related buildings
and tributes to the dead God King. The second monarch to rule over the Fourth
Dynasty - Khufu, or ‘Cheops’ as his name is Hellenised - commissioned his vizier Hemon
to construct a royal tomb for him as well, selecting the site of Giza near the edge of the
Libyan desert. His smooth-sided construct was the first and grandest pyramid to occupy the area, but
far from the last. Dedicated Egyptian officials and workers undertaking corvee labour had the
site levelled to provide an open section of ground for the work. Then, probably using
nothing but astronomical observation, the orientation for each side was obtained. Contrary
to modern expectations, this archaic method was in fact incredibly accurate, and the alignment
error on each side is only a fraction of a degree. Hemon oversaw the building process, a
process which we are still not certain of 4,500 years later. Historians consider two main
possibilities: either that the Egyptians used ramps to encircle the grand structure as it
gradually rose, or that they had a long ramp stretching out into the desert, extended
as necessary as the pyramid ascended. However it was done, the movement of stone blocks
at minimum 5 tonnes in weight must have been a titanic effort. When that stone was in place, the
entire pyramid was layered with uniform blocks of shimmering white limestone giving Khufu’s tomb
an appropriately divine appearance. The labour of Hemon and all of his myriad technicians, engineers
and workers is so enduring that 4,500 years later, we can still visit Giza and see the complex in its
mostly intact state. So unfathomably ancient is the structure that an Arab proverb states that
“Man fears Time, yet Time fears the pyramids.” We always have more stories to tell,
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