The Seven Wonders
Definition
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were:
- the Great Pyramid at 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 at Alexandria , Egypt
The Seven Wonders were first defined as “themata” (Greek for 'things to be seen’ which, in today’s common English, we would phrase as 'must sees’) by Philo of Byzantium in 225 BCE, in his work 'On The Seven Wonders ’. Other writers on the Seven Wonders include Herodotus , Callimachus of Cyrene and Antipater of Sidon .
The Seven Wonders were hardly an objective agreed-upon list of the greatest structures of the day but were, rather, very like a modern-day tourist pamphlet informing travelers on what to see on their trip. Herodotus disagreed with Philo’s original list and felt the Egyptian Labyrinth was greater than them all. Antipater replaced the Lighthouse with the Gate of Ishtar and Callimachus, and others listed the great Walls of Babylon . Philo’s list, however, has long been accepted as the 'official’ definition of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Written by Joshua J. Mark , published on 02 September 2009 under the following license: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike . This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms.