by D. Vogt

Created on: March 13, 2010

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were a list of the most impressive human structures in the Mediterranean world made by Ancient Greek sight-seers during the 2nd century B.C.: the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Zeus statue at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus in present-day Turkey, the Colossus statue at Rhodes, and the great Lighthouse of Alexandria. Today, only the Great Pyramids still survive. More recently there have been attempts to make an updated Seven Wonders of the (Modern) World, all of which still survive, such as the Great Wall in China, the Colosseum in Rome, and the Taj Mahal in India.

The seven structures on this particular set of wonders were listed by a pair of Greek travel writers and philosophers, Antipater of Sidon and Philon of Byzantium. In both cases, these travellers were able to take advantage of the spread of Hellenic influence across the Mediterranean following the massive wars of expansion of Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great two centuries before. There are historical references to similar lists by the great Greek historian Herodotus, author of the Histories, and of the Cyrenian Callimachus, but neither survive. They would likely have been destroyed during the burning of another great structure which did not make the list, the Great Library of Alexandria.

- Colossus of Rhodes -

The Colossus statue at Rhodes was said to be an enormous statue of Helios (or Hyperion, later known as the god of light Apollo), the Greek god of the sun, which was supposedly so huge that it actually stood astride the harbour entrance, one foot on each side. That is how modern paintings for some reason illustrate the Colossus, anyways. In reality it was much smaller, though still impressive: a 100-foot-tall marble and bronze structure commissioned after the death of Alexander the Great.

Sadly, this was one of the shortest-lives of the Ancient Wonders: in an earthquake in 226 B.C., just half a century after it was built, the Colossus came toppling down. The government of Rhodes chose to preserve the remains as they lay on the ground, and did so until they were eventually sold for scrap metal in the 7th century A.D. Even that is only a story, however. Neither the remains nor the actual construction site of the Colossus has ever been found. The number of ancient testaments indicates it must have existed in the Rhodes of the time, but archaeologists are not entirely sure precisely

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