Wonders of the World – Introduction

After much deliberation, I finally decided on the Wonders of the World for my next non-fiction series. There is a plethora of lists of wonders – natural wonders, underwater wonders, engineering wonders, new wonders, city wonders, solar system wonders – to name but a few.

Seeing as I have a love of ancient history, I’m choosing to go with the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Scholars have debated for years over who compiled the first list of wonders – or as the Greeks called them, theamata, which translates as "things to be seen". It has been suggested that Callimachus of Cyrene drafted the list in the third century B.C. or Herodotus, who lived from around 484 to 425 B.C.

It’s generally agreed that Antipater, a Greek author living in the Phoenician port of Sidon came up with the original list in a poem where he lists the most remarkable creations of mankind:

I have gazed on the walls of impregnable Babylon along which chariots may race, and on the Zeus by the banks of the Alpheus, I have seen the hanging gardens, and the Colossus of the Helios, the great man-made mountains of the lofty pyramids, and the gigantic tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the sacred house of Artemis that towers to the clouds, the others were placed in the shade, for the sun himself has never looked upon its equal outside Olympus.
– Antipater, Greek Anthology IX.58

Somewhere around the 8th century AD the walls of Babylon were dropped off the list, to be replaced by the Lighthouse of Alexandria.

Of the original seven wonders, only the Great Pyramid still exists. The others are in unrecognizable ruins, and the Hanging Gardens might not even have existed at all. What we know about the wonders comes from written accounts of ancient tourists and modern archaeological research. Much of our information about the monuments is conjecture or questionable second hand accounts.

These monuments may not have physically stood the test of time, but they thrive in our imaginations as some of the most magnificent manmade structures of the ancient world.

the Great Pyramids of Giza, Egypt.
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece.
the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.
the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
the Colossus of Rhodes.
the Lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt.

Join me next week when I start with the Great Pyramids of Giza.