1. Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt
The Great Pyramids, located at Giza are the only wonder of the ancient world that have survived to the present day. The pyramids were built between 2700 B.C. and 2500 B.C. as royal tombs. For more than 4,000 years, one of the pyramids reigned as the tallest building in the world. Although modern archaeologists have found some great treasures among the ruins, they believe most of what the pyramids once contained was looted within 250 years of their completion.
2. Hanging Gardens of Babylon
According to ancient Greek poets, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built near the Euphrates River in modern-day Iraq by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II around 600 B.C. The king allegedly built the towering gardens to ease his lover, Amytis’ homesickness for the natural beauty of her home in Media (the northwestern part of modern-day Iran).
Though there are multiple accounts of the gardens in both Greek and Roman literature, none of them are firsthand, and no mention of the gardens has been found in Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions. As a result, most modern scholars believe that the existence of the gardens was part of an inspired and widely believed but still fictional tale.
3. Statue of Zeus at Olympia
The famed statue of Zeus was crafted by the Athenian sculptor Phidias, completed and placed in the temple of Zeus at Olympia around the mid-fifth century B.C. The statue depicted the god of thunder seated bare-chested on a wooden throne. At over 12 metres, it was so tall that its head nearly touched the top of the temple.
According to legend, the sculptor Phidias asked Zeus for a sign of his approval after finishing the statue; soon after, the temple was struck by lightning. The Zeus statue graced the temple at Olympia for more than eight hundred years before Catholic priests persuaded the Roman Emperor to close the temple in the fourth century A.D. At that time, the statue was moved to a temple in Constantinople, where it is believed to have been destroyed in a fire in the year 462.
4. Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
There was actually more than one Temple of Artemis, but the most fabulous were two marble temples built around 550 B.C. and 350 B.C., respectively in Ephesus, a Greek port city on the west coast of modern-day Turkey. According to legend, the building burned on July 21, 356 B.C., the same night that Alexander The Great was born!
About six years later, the building of a new temple to replace it was begun only for it to destroyed again in A.D. 262, and it was not until the 1860s that archaeologists dug some of the ruins of the temple’s columns.
5. Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
Located in what is now southeastern Turkey, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was a tomb built by Artemisia for her husband, Mausolus, the King of Caria in Asia Minor, after his death in 353 B.C. Mausolus was also Artemisia’s brother, and according to legend, she was so grief-stricken at his passing that she mixed his ashes with water and drank them in addition to ordering the mausoleum’s construction.
The massive mausoleum was made entirely of white marble and is thought to have been over 41 metres high. The mausoleum was largely destroyed in an earthquake in the 13th century. In 1846, pieces of a part of the mausoleum were extracted from the castle and now reside, along with other relics from the Halicarnassus site in a British Museum.
6. Colossus of Rhodes
The Colossus was an enormous bronze sculpture of the sun god Helios built over a 12 year period in the third century B.C (300-200 BC). The statue was, at over 30 metres the tallest of the ancient world. It was completed around 280 B.C. and stood for sixty years until it was toppled in an earthquake. It was never rebuilt. Hundreds of years later, Arabs invaded Rhodes and sold the remains of the statue as scrap metal.
Because of this, archaeologists do not know much about the exact location of the statue or what it looked like. Most believe that it depicted the sun god standing naked while he lifted a torch with one hand and held a spear in the other. It was once believed that the statue stood with one leg on each side of a harbor, but most scholars now agree that the statue’s legs were most likely built close together to support its immense weight.
7. Lighthouse of Alexandria
The Lighthouse of Alexandria was located on a small island called Pharos near the city of Alexandria in Egypt.The lighthouse helped to guide Nile River ships in and out of the city’s busy harbor.
Although estimates of the lighthouse’s height have ranged from over 60 to 180 metres, most modern scholars believe it was about 116 metres tall. The lighthouse was gradually destroyed during a series of earthquakes from 956 to 1323. Some of its remains have since been discovered at the bottom of the Nile.
