{"id":33445,"date":"2024-02-06T09:35:07","date_gmt":"2024-02-06T08:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=258937"},"modified":"2024-02-06T17:11:42","modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T16:11:42","slug":"wanderlust-the-seven-wonders-of-the-ancient-world","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/wanderlust-the-seven-wonders-of-the-ancient-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Wanderlust: the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were daring and dazzling constructions that have burned bright in the human imagination right up to the modern day. Bettany Hughes follows in the footsteps of the ancients to tell their remarkable stories… <\/p>

By Bettany Hughes\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Tuesday, 06 February 2024 at 08:35 AM<\/p>

\n\n

Crawling underneath Egypt\u2019s Great Pyramid<\/a>, 70 metres down, is an unforgettable experience. On hands and knees in the sand, as the descending tunnel gets narrower and deeper, the bedrock of the Giza Plateau presses in so close you can actually taste it. The rock is salty, because 50 million years ago this was all sea.<\/p>\n

I am not the first to have had this visceral, time-travelling experience. As well as the Greek and Roman tourists who left graffiti here, this subterranean tunnel, and the chamber which it led to, was described by the \u2018father of history\u2019 Herodotus, and some 2,300 years later was explored by the Italian tomb-raider Giovanni Battista Caviglia.<\/p>\n

Other passages in the Great Pyramid \u2013 a huge burial place for Egypt\u2019s King Khufu \u2013 were charted by medieval Arabic scientists and desecrated by off-duty Napoleonic soldiers. Built more than 45 centuries ago, this pyramid, the oldest of the famous Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, has always been a catalyst for awe.<\/p>\n

\"A\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>
Tourists climbing the Great Pyramid of Giza with help from local guides, Egypt. (Photo from Pump Park Vintage Photography\/Alamy)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

And it is not alone. Across time, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World \u2013 the Pyramids at Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon<\/a>, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria<\/a> \u2013 have really mattered.<\/p>\n

They mattered so much that, in the epoch after Alexander the Great<\/a>\u2019s death, a bespoke catalogue, the Laterculi Alexandrini<\/em>, was generated to group them together. Written in papyrus about 150 BC, it is our oldest extant evidence for a catalogue. We are not sure who created the list, but we do know that it was copied and shared, and that it has inspired poetry, prose and works of art for millennia.<\/p>\n

The precise entries vary a little: in some versions, the walls or an obelisk of Babylon are included; later, the Colosseum is mentioned; the Lighthouse has sometimes been left out. The Laterculi Alexandrini<\/em> also lists the seven greatest rivers, the seven best mountains, the seven finest artists and the seven best lakes.<\/p>\n

The fact the Wonders deserved to be listed in a group of seven proved that not only were these exemplars of their age, projects of pioneering ambition that made extraordinary incursions into the landscape, but that they each encapsulated something special and important about the human experience.<\/p>\n

Marvellous news<\/h2>\n

The word wonder (from the Old German wuntar<\/em>) means \u2018something marvellous\u2019. Originally in the Greek, these attractions were described as thaumata<\/em> \u2013 works that needed to be seen. Crucially, and this is a fact that is too often overlooked, all seven were connected. In some cases, the same artists worked on them. They also reference one another\u2019s designs. Some of antiquity\u2019s greatest names, including Alexander the Great, visited many of the sites.<\/p>\n

Ahead of writing my new book on the Seven Wonders<\/em>, I set myself the task of travelling to the location where each once stood. This, I reasoned, was the best way to get a feel for what these creations meant to the women and men of antiquity who designed them, built them, worshipped in them, fought over them, wrote about them, maintained, cherished, loved and looted them, and made perilous journeys to visit and to tick them off their bucket lists.<\/p>\n

Following in their footsteps took me on a journey through both ancient and modern landscapes.<\/p>\n\n

1. The Great Pyramid at Giza<\/h2>\n

Egypt\u2019s giant resurrection machine<\/h3>\n
\"A\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>
The Giza pyramid complex includes the Great Pyramid, the only one of the Seven Wonders to still stand largely intact. (Photo by Dreamstime)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Built at least 4,500 years ago, the Great Pyramid is the oldest of all the Wonders, and yet still stands today almost intact. And it could be even older than previously thought: the 2013 discovery of 1,000 fragmented papyri documents on the Red Sea coast potentially pushes its date back a further 100 years.<\/p>\n

The pyramid was built over a span of 20\u201323 years as a giant resurrection machine for Khufu, the king of a united Egypt, helping to transport him to the afterlife. As such, it was conceived as a means for the ancient Egyptians to try to understand the place of humans in the cosmos and the possibilities of both mortality and immortality.<\/p>\n