Seven Wonders Book

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Auriville Cha

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Aug 3, 2024, 4:04:01 PM8/3/24

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While the entries have varied over the centuries, the seven traditional wonders are the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Temple of Artemis, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Using modern-day countries, two of the wonders were located in Greece, two in Turkey, two in Egypt, and one in Iraq. Of the seven wonders, only the Pyramid of Giza, which is also by far the oldest of the wonders, still remains standing, while the others have been destroyed over the centuries. There is scholarly debate over the exact nature of the Hanging Gardens, and there is doubt as to whether they existed at all.

Alexander the Great's conquest of much of the western world in the 4th century BC gave Hellenistic travellers access to the civilizations of the Egyptians, Persians, and Babylonians.[1] Impressed and captivated by the landmarks and marvels of the various lands, these travellers began to list what they saw to remember them.[2][3]

The first reference to a list of seven such monuments was given by Diodorus Siculus.[5][6] The epigrammist Antipater of Sidon,[7] who lived around or before 100 BC,[8] gave a list of seven "wonders", including six of the present list (substituting the walls of Babylon for the Lighthouse of Alexandria):[9]

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.

Another ancient writer, who, perhaps dubiously, identified himself as Philo of Byzantium, wrote a short account entitled The Seven Sights of the World.[3] The surviving manuscript is incomplete, missing its last pages. Still, from the preamble text, we can conclude that the list of seven sights exactly matches Antipater's (the preamble mentions the location of Halicarnassus, but the pages describing the seventh wonder, presumably the Mausoleum, are missing).[10]

The Colossus of Rhodes was the last of the seven to be completed after 280 BC and the first to be destroyed by an earthquake in 226/225 BC. As such, it was already in ruins by the time the list was compiled, and all seven wonders existed simultaneously for less than 60 years.

The list covered only the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions,[11] which then comprised the known world for the Greeks. The primary accounts from Hellenistic writers also heavily influenced the places included in the wonders list. Five of the seven entries are a celebration of Greek accomplishments in construction, with the exceptions being the Pyramids of Giza and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

The seven wonders on Antipater's list won praises for their notable features, ranging from superlatives of the highest or largest of their types, to the artistry with which they were executed. Their architectural and artistic features were imitated throughout the Hellenistic world and beyond.

The Greek influence in Roman culture, and the revival of Greco-Roman artistic styles during the Renaissance caught the imagination of European artists and travellers.[16] Paintings and sculptures alluding to Antipater's list were made, while significant numbers of adventurers travelled to the actual sites to personally witness the wonders. Legends circulated to further complement the superlatives of the wonders.

Of Antipater's wonders, the only one that has survived to the present day is the Great Pyramid of Giza. Its brilliant white stone facing had survived intact until around 1300 AD, when local communities removed most of the stonework for building materials. The existence of the Hanging Gardens has not been proven, though theories abound.[17] Records and archaeology confirm the existence of the other five wonders. The Temple of Artemis and the Statue of Zeus were destroyed by fire, while the Lighthouse of Alexandria, Colossus, and tomb of Mausolus were destroyed by earthquakes. Among the surviving artefacts are sculptures from the tomb of Mausolus and the Temple of Artemis, currently kept in the British Museum in London.

The listing of seven of the most marvellous architectural and artistic human achievements continued beyond the Ancient Greek times to the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and to the modern age. The Roman poet Martial and the Christian bishop Gregory of Tours had their versions.[1] Reflecting the rise of Christianity and the factor of time, nature and the hand of man overcoming Antipater's seven wonders, Roman and Christian sites began to figure on the list, including the Colosseum, Noah's Ark, and Solomon's Temple.[1][3] In the 6th century, a list of seven wonders was compiled by St. Gregory of Tours: the list[18] included the Temple of Solomon, the Pharos of Alexandria, and Noah's Ark.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the oldest known list of this type, documenting the most remarkable human-made creations of classical antiquity; it was based on guidebooks popular among Hellenic sightseers and as such only includes works located around the Mediterranean rim and in the ancient Near East. The number seven was chosen because the Greeks believed it represented perfection and plenty, and because it reflected the number of planets known in ancient times (five) plus the Sun and Moon.[1]

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, some writers emulated the classical list by creating their own lists with names such as "Wonders of the Middle Ages", "Seven Wonders of the Middle Ages", "Seven Wonders of the Medieval Mind", and "Architectural Wonders of the Middle Ages".[2] It is unlikely that any of these lists actually originated in the Middle Ages since the concept of a "Middle Age" did not become popular until at least the 16th century and the word "medieval" was not invented until the Enlightenment era. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable refers to them as "later list[s]",[3] suggesting the lists were created after the Middle Ages.

Following in the tradition of the classical list, modern people and organisations have made their own lists of wonderful things, both ancient and modern, natural and artificial. Some of the most notable lists are presented below.

In November 2006, the American national newspaper USA Today and the American television show Good Morning America revealed a list of the "New Seven Wonders", both natural and human-made, as chosen by six judges.[14] The Grand Canyon was added as an eighth wonder on November 24, 2006, in response to viewer feedback.[15]

Similar to the other lists of wonders, there is no consensus on a list of seven natural wonders of the world, and there has been debate over how large such a list should be. One of many existing versions of this list was compiled by CNN in 1997:[16]

A similar contemporary effort to create a list of seven natural (as opposed to human-made) wonders chosen through a global poll, called the New 7 Wonders of Nature, was organized from 2007 to 2011 by the same group as the New 7 Wonders of the World campaign.

The list of "Seven Wonders of the Underwater World" was drawn up by CEDAM International, an American-based non-profit group for divers that is dedicated to ocean preservation and research. In 1989, CEDAM brought together a panel of marine scientists, including Eugenie Clark, to choose underwater areas which they considered worthy of protection. The results were announced at The National Aquarium in Washington, D.C., by actor Lloyd Bridges, star of TV's Sea Hunt:[21]

British author Deborah Cadbury wrote Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, a book telling the stories of seven great feats of engineering of the 19th and early 20th centuries.[22] In 2003, the BBC aired a seven-part docudrama exploring the same feats, with Cadbury as a producer.[23]

Seven Wonders of the World is a 1956 film in which Lowell Thomas searches the world for natural and artificial wonders and invites the audience to try to update the ancient Wonders of the World list.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were seven impressive structures famously listed by ancient writers including Philo of Byzantium, Antipater of Sidon, Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus, Strabo, and Callimachus of Cyrene, among others. The medieval historian Bede, and other medieval writers, also compiled their own lists. The standard list of the seven ancient wonders includes:

The Seven Wonders were first defined as themata for Hellenic sightseers (Greek for "things to be seen" which, in today's colloquial English, one would phrase as "must-sees") by Philo of Byzantium (l. 3rd century BCE) in 225 BCE, in his work On the Seven Wonders. Philo and Antipater of Sidon (l. 2nd century BCE) include the walls of Babylon in the list instead of the Lighthouse of Alexandria while Diodorus Siculus (1st century BCE) includes the seven above in his Bibliotheca historica ("Historical Library"). All seven of the wonders were standing at the same time for less than 60 years and, of the seven listed above, only the Great Pyramid exists today.

There is no standard, agreed upon, "authentic" list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Philo's list is understood to be based on earlier sources and may or may not have been compiled from his own experience. He was an engineer working at the Library of Alexandria, where he wrote his On the Seven Wonders, which was so popular it (or a copy) was brought to Byzantium, copied, and those copies sent to other urban intellectual centers, which is how the list survived up through the time of Bede (l. c. 673-735 CE), by which time all the wonders on the list were long gone except the Great Pyramid. Regarding the origin of the accepted Seven Wonder, scholars John and Elizabeth Romer write: