The Great Pyramid of Giza

Great Pyramid of Giza
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Great Pyramid of Giza, (sometimes spelled Gizeh) is one of the Seven Wonders of the World and the most famous pyramid in the world. It served as the tomb of the 4th dynasty Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu (also known under his Greek name Cheops).

The estimated date of its completion is 2570 BC and it is the earliest and largest of the three great pyramids in the Giza necropolis on the outskirts of modern Cairo, Egypt.

Great Pyramid of Giza
19th century stereopticon card photoSouth-west of Khufu's Great Pyramid lies the pyramid of Khafre, one of Khufu's successors who also built the Sphinx, and further south-west there's the pyramid of Menkaure, Khafre's successor. Both of these are smaller than Khufu's pyramid, even though Khafre's appears taller on some photographs as it is somewhat steeper and built on higher terrain.

At construction the Great Pyramid was 146 metres (481 feet) tall, but due to erosion its current height is 137 metres (451 feet). It covers more than 5.5 hectares (13.5 acres) at the base, which is a square of over 235 metres (775 feet) on each side. For over 4 millennia it was the world's tallest building, not being surpassed until the 143 metres tall minster of Strasbourg was completed in 1439. The accuracy of work is such that the four sides of the base have only a mean error of 0.6 inch in length and 12 seconds in angle from a perfect square. The sides of the square are aligned quite precisely in North-South respectively East-West direction. The sides of the pyramid rise at an angle of 51 degrees and 51 minutes.

The pyramid was constructed of limestone, basalt, and granite stones from two to four tonnes in weight each, adding up to a total estimated weight of some 7 million tonnes, and a volume of 2,600,600 cubic metres. It is the largest Egyptian pyramid. (The Great Pyramid of Cholula, in Mexico is larger in volume.) When originally built, the pyramid had inset facing blocks of polished limestone, creating smooth sides; they have since fallen out, or been recycled for other building projects, leaving the underlying step-pyramid structure visible. (The smooth outer cover is still visible at the very top of Khafre's pyramid.)

The great pyramid differs in its internal arrangement from the other pyramids in the area. The greater number of passages and chambers, the high finish of parts of the work, and the accuracy of construction all distinguish it. The chamber which is most normal in its situation is the subterranean chamber; but this is quite unfinished, hardly more than begun. The upper chambers, called the king's and queen's, were completely hidden, the ascending passage to them having been closed by plugging blocks, which concealed the point where it branched upwards out of the roof of the long descending passage. Another passage, which in its turn branches from the ascending passage to the queen's chamber, was also completely blocked up. The object of having two highly-finished chambers in the mass may have been to receive the king and his co-regent (of whom there is some historical evidence), and there is very credible testimony to a sarcophagus having existed in the queen's chamber, as well as in the king's chamber.

On September 18, 2002, archaeologists used a remote-controlled robot to access a hitherto sealed chamber within the pyramid: the robot drilled a hole in a long-sealed door and poked a fiber-optic camera through. Unfortunately, all that was revealed was another closed door.

Construction
From surviving drawings etched in stone, including some attributed to workers on break, certain ideas about the construction of the Great Pyramid have emerged.

A comparatively small number of permanently employed, highly qualified and well-paid workers was augmented by large numbers of peasants from all over the empire who were conscripted during the flood period, when no agriculture was possible anyway. It was previously believed that slaves were used as labor, but that view is now rejected by almost all modern-day scholars. Construction took some 20 years.

The stone blocks were cut in a quarry nearby. They were moved with human power, drawn and pushed on sleds sliding on stone ramps which were made slippery with water. A stone ramp rose along the side of the growing pyramid; later this ramp would spiral around to the top. The most precisely cut stones were reserved for the outside. Once in place their corners were smoothened to give an almost shiny outer appearance of the pyramid.

Paranormal interest and encoded numbers
As a structure of impressive construction and mystery, the great pyramid has attracted the attention of occultists (as have many other aspects of ancient Egyptian culture). The great pyramid and the Sphinx are often alleged to have been built with mysterious ancient forces rather than human labor and/or by Atlanteans, extraterrestrials, or other mysterious creators.

It has been alleged that the dimensions and details, properly interpreted, provide prophecies of events in modern times. This theory was first proposed in the 1800s by John Taylor, who believed the pyramid had actually been constructed by the biblical Noah. Charles Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, later elaborated in his book Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid. No scientific evidence has been found to support these allegations to date. Edgar Cayce was apparently sympathetic to the idea, though his convoluted language makes it difficult to be certain.

Some of those who have examined the great pyramid have made speculations regarding the ratios amongst the dimensions and angles present in the structure; one popular assertion is that the ratio of the pyramid's perimeter to its height times two ( P / ( 2 × H) gives a close approximation of the mathematical value p. The great pyramid is peculiar in this respect, as it is one of the few pyramids to have the necessary slope to express such a ratio, but variations in the accuracy of measurement, combined with the deteriorating condition of the structure, make such a claim difficult to verify. In particular: Others, who don't think the ancient Egyptians wanted to encode the number p, rather assume the great pyramid was planned to have a slope of 14:11 (c. 127.3%, or 51°50'40"), so the ratio P / ( 2 × H ) should be 22/7, the traditional ancient approximation of p. This fraction is little more than 0.04% larger than p (0.04% of 235 metres is less than 10 cm).

Smyth also claimed that the measurements he obtained from the great pyramid indicate a unit of length, the pyramid inch, equivalent to roughly 1.01 British inches, that could have been the standard of measurement by the pyramid's architects. From this he extrapolated a number of other measurements, including the pyramid pint, the sacred cubit, and the pyramid scale of temperature. These derivations are frequently regarded by skeptics as having no scientific merit, and of being merely an artificial device for attributing numerical significance to the great pyramid's dimensions.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

Hanging Gardens of Babylon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Gardens of Semiramis, 20th century interpretation
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (also known as the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis) and the walls of Babylon were considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. They were both supposedly built by Nebuchadnezzar around 600 BC (present Iraq). However, there is doubt as to whether they ever physically existed.

The Hanging Gardens are extensively documented by Greek historians such as Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, but otherwise their is little evidence for their existence. Some (circumstantial) evidence gathered at the excavation of the palace at Babylon has been accrued, but does not completely substantiate what look like fanciful descriptions.

The Statue of Zues at Olympia

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia carved by the Greek sculptor Phidias (5th century BC) in 433 BC, in what is presently Greece, was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. In 394 AD, it was probably taken to Constantinople (modern Istanbul) where it is said to have been destroyed by raging fires.

The statue occupied the whole width of the aisle of the temple that was built to house it. According to a contemporary source, it was about 12 metres tall. Zeus was carved from ivory and was seated on a magnificent throne made of cedarwood and inlaid with ivory, gold, ebony and precious stones. In Zeus' right hand there was a small statue of Nike, the goddess of victory, and in his left hand a shining sceptre on which an eagle perched.

The Temple of Artemis

Temple of Artemis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Lady of Ephesus
The Great Goddess whom Greeks identified
as Artemis, in the archaic form she retained
at Ephesus, even as late as
the 2nd century AD (the date of this marble)The Temple of Artemis or Artemisium (440 BC, at Ephesus (present day Turkey)), figured in the classic lists of the Seven Wonders of the World drawn up in Alexandria. It took 120 years to build, and was started by King Croesus of Lydia. Scarcely anything remains at the site.

Artemis was the Greek goddess, the virginal huntress and twin of Apollo, who supplanted the Titan Selene as Goddess of the Moon. Of the Olympian goddesses who inherited aspects of the Great Goddess, Athene was more honored than Artemis at Athens. At Ephesus a goddess whom the Greeks associated with Artemis was passionately venerated in an archaic, certainly pre-Hellenic icon (illustration, right). The original was carved of wood, with many breasts denoting fertility, rather than the virginity that Hellene Artemis assumed. Most like Near Eastern and Egyptian deities and least like Greek ones, her body and legs are enclosed within a tapering pillar-like term, from which her feet protrude. On the coins minted at Ephesus, the many-breasted Goddess wears a mural crown (like a city's walls), an attribute of Cybele). She rests either arm on a staff formed of entwined serpents or of a stack of ouroboroi the eternal serpent with its tail in its mouth. Like Cybele, the goddess at Ephesus was served by eunuch priests— called Megabyzi, and by maidens (korai).

A votive inscription mentioned by Bennett (see link), which dates probably from about the 3rd century BCE, associates Ephesian Artemis with Crete: "To the Healer of diseases, to Apollo, Giver of Light to mortals, Eutyches has set up in votive offering (a statue of) the Cretan Lady of Ephesus, the Light-Bearer."

The Greek habits of syncretism assimilated all foreign gods under some form of the Olympian pantheon familiar to them, and it is clear that at Ephesus, the identification the Ionian settlers made with Artemis was slender.

The sacred site at Ephesus was far older than the Artemisium. Pausanias understood the shrine of Artemis there to be very ancient. He states with certainty that it antedated the Ionic immigration by many years, being older even than the oracular shrine of Apollo at Didymi. He said that the pre-Ionic inhabitants of the city were Leleges and Lydians.

The temple was a widely respected place of refuge, a tradition that was linked in myth with the Amazons who took refuge there, both from Heracles and from Dionysus.

The temple of Artemis at Ephesus was destroyed in 356 BC in an act of arson committed by Herostratus. According to the story, his motivation was fame at any cost, thus the term herostratic fame. The legend affirms that Artemis herself did not protect her temple, because she was too busy tending to the birth of Alexander the Great, which took place that same night. The reconstruction of the great Temple of Artemis was again destroyed during a raid by the Goths in 262 CE, in the time of emperor Gallienus "Respa, Veduc and Thuruar, leaders of the Goths, took ship and sailed across the strait of the Hellespont to Asia. There they laid waste many populous cities and set fire to the renowned temple of Diana at Ephesus" reported Jordanes in Getica (chapter xx, 107)

More details of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus can be found in Pliny, Natural History xxxvi:14; Pomponius Mela, i:17; Ptolemy, 5; Plutarch's Life of Alexander (the burning of the Artemisium).

The temple's location was rediscovered in 1869 by an expedition sponsored by the British Museum, and several artifacts and sculptures from the reconstructed temple, though not the lost Wonder of the World, can be seen there today.

Mausoleum of Mausolus

Mausoleum of Maussollos
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Mausoleum of Maussollos, the Persian satrap of Caria (351 BC, at Halicarnassus (present Budrum), Turkey), was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The word mausoleum came to be used generically for any grand tomb.

This enormous white marble tomb was built to hold the remains of Mausolus (Mausollos), a provincial king in the Persian Empire, and his wife, Artemisia . Greek architects Satyrus and Pythius designed the approximately 135-foot-high tomb, and four famous Grecian sculptors added an ornamental frieze (decorated band) around its exterior.

When the Persians expanded their ancient kingdom to include Mesopotamia, Northern India, Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor, the king could not control his vast empire without the help of local governors or rulers -- the Satraps. Like many other provinces, the kingdom of Caria in the western part of Asia Minor (Turkey) was so far from the Persian capital that it was practically autonomous. From 377 to 353 BC, king Mausolus of Caria reigned and moved his capital to Halicarnassus. Nothing is exciting about Mausolus life except the construction of his tomb. The project was conceived by his wife and sister Artemisia, and the construction might have started during the king's lifetime. The Mausoleum was completed around 350 BC, three years after Maussollos death, and one year after Artemisia's.

In 377 B.C., the city of Halicarnassus was the capitol of a small kingdom along the Mediterranean coast of Asia Minor. It was in that year the ruler of this land, Hecatomnus of Mylasa, died and left control of the kingdom to his son, Mausolus. Hecatomnus, a local satrap to the Persians, had been ambitious and had taken control of several of the neighboring cities and districts. Mausolus in his time, extended the territory even further so that it finally included most of southwestern Asia Minor.

Mausolus, with his queen Artemisia, ruled over Halicarnassus and the surrounding territory for 24 years. Mausolus, though he was descended from the local people, spoke Greek and admired the Greek way of life and government. He founded many cities of Greek design along the coast and encouraged Greek democratic traditions.

Mausolus decided to build a new capitol, a city as hard to capture as it was magnificent to look at. He chose the town Halicarnassus. If Mausolus' ships blocked a small channel, they could keep all enemy warships out.

Mausolus started making Halicarnassus a fit capitol for a warrior prince. His workmen deepened the city's harbor and used the dredged up sand to make protecting arms in front of the channel. On land, they laid out paved squares, streets, and houses for ordinary citizens, and on one side of the harbor they built a massive fortress-palace for Mausolus, positioned so that there were clear views out to sea and inland to the hills--the places that enemies might attack.

The workmen built walls and watch towers on the land ward side and put up a Greek style theater and a temple to Ares, the Greek god of war.

Mausolus and his queen Artemisia spent their huge amount of tax money on beautifying the city. They bought statues, temples, and buildings of gleaming marble. In the center of the city Mausolus planned to place a resting place for his body after he was dead. It would be a tomb that would forever show how rich he and his queen were.

Then in 353 B.C. Mausolus died, leaving his queen Artemisia, who was also his sister (It was the custom in Caria for rulers to marry their own sisters), broken-hearted. As a tribute to him, she decided to build him the most splendid tomb in the known world. It became a structure so famous that Mausolus's name is now associated with all stately tombs through our modern word mausoleum. The building was also so beautiful and unique it became one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Artemisia decided that no expense was to be spared in the building of the tomb. She sent messengers to Greece to find the most talented artists of the time. This included Scopas, the man who had supervised the rebuilding of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Other famous sculptors such as Bryaxis, Leochares and Timotheus joined him as well as hundreds of other craftsmen.

The tomb was erected on a hill overlooking the city. The whole structure sat in an enclosed courtyard. At the center of the courtyard was a stone platform on which the tomb itself sat. A staircase, flanked by stone lions, led to the top of this platform. Along the outer wall of this were many statues depicting gods and goddess. At each corner stone warriors, mounted on horseback, guarded the tomb.

At the center of the platform was the tomb itself. Made mostly of marble, the structure rose as a square, tapering block to about one-third of the Mausoleum's 140 foot height. This section was covered with relief sculpture showing action scenes from Greek myth/history. One part showed the battle of the Centaurs with the Lapiths. Another depicted Greeks in combat with the Amazons, a race of warrior women.

On top of this section of the tomb thirty-six slim columns, nine per side, rose for another third of the height. Standing in between each column was another statue. Behind the columns was a solid block that carried the weight of the tomb's massive roof.

The roof, which comprised most of the final third of the height, was in the form of a stepped pyramid. Perched on top was the tomb's penultimate work of sculpture: Four massive horses pulling a chariot in which images of Mausolus and Artemisia rode.

Soon after construction of the tomb started Artemisia found herself in a crisis. Rhodes, an island in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Asia Minor, had been conquered by Mausolus. When the Rhodians heard of his death they rebelled and sent a fleet of ships to capture the city of Halicarnassus. Knowing that the Rhodian fleet was on the way, Artemisa hid her own ships at a secret location at the east end of the city's harbor. After troops from the Rhodian fleet disembarked to attack, Artemisia's fleet made a surprise raid, captured the Rhodian fleet, and towed it out to sea.

Artemisa put her own soldiers on the invading ships and sailed them back to Rhodes. Fooled into thinking that the returning ships were their own victorious navy, the Rhodians failed to put up a defense and the city was easily captured quelling the rebellion.

Artemisa lived for only two years after the death of her husband. Both would be buried in the yet unfinished tomb. According to the historian Pliny, the craftsmen decided to stay and finish the work after their patron died "considering that it was at once a memorial of their own fame and of the sculptor's art."

The Mausoleum overlooked the city of Halicarnassus for many centuries. It was untouched when the city fell to Alexander the Great in 334 B.C. and still undamaged after attacks by pirates in 62 and 58 B.C.. It stood above the city ruins for some 17 centuries. Then a series of earthquakes shattered the columns and sent the stone chariot crashing to the ground. By 1404 A.D. only the very base of the Mausoleum was still recognizable.

Crusaders, who had occupied the city from the thirteen century onward, recycled the broken stone into their own buildings. In 1522 rumors of a Turkish invasion caused Crusaders to strengthen the castle at Halicarnassus (which was by then known as Bodrum) and much of the remaining portions of the tomb was broken up and used within the castle walls. Indeed sections of polished marble from the tomb can still be seen there today.

At this time a party of knights entered the base of the monument and discovered the room containing a great coffin. The party, deciding it was too late to open it that day, returned the next morning to find the tomb, and any treasure it may have contained, plundered. The bodies of Mausolus and Artemisia were missing too. The Knights claimed that Moslem villagers were responsible for the theft, but it is more likely that some of the Crusaders themselves plundered the graves.

Before grounding much of the remaining sculpture of the Mausoleum into lime for plaster the Knights removed several of the best works and mounted them in the Bodrum castle. There they stayed for three centuries. At that time the British ambassador obtained several of the statutes from the castle, which now reside in the British Museum.

In 1846 the Museum sent the archaeologist Charles Thomas Newton to search for more remains of the Mausoleum. He had a difficult job. He didn't know the exact location of the tomb and the cost of buying up all the small parcels of land in the area to look for it would have been astronomical. Instead Newton studied the accounts of ancient writers like Pliny to obtain the approximate size and location of the memorial, then bought a plot of land in the most likely location. Digging down, Newton explored the surrounding area through tunnels he dug under the surrounding plots. He was able to locate some walls, a staircase, and finally three of the corners of the foundation. With this knowledge, Newton was able to figure out which plots of land he needed to buy.

Newton then excavated the site and found sections of the reliefs that decorated the wall of the building and portions of the stepped roof. Also a broken stone chariot wheel, some seven feet in diameter, from the sculpture on the roof was discovered. Finally, he found the statues of Mausolus and Artemisia that had stood at the pinnacle of the building.

The beauty of the Mausoleum is not only in the structure itself, but in the decorations and statues that adorned the outside at different levels on the podium and the roof. These were tens of life-size as well as under and over life-size free-standing statues of people, lions, horses, and other animals. The statues were carved by four Greek sculptors: Bryaxis, Leochares, Scopas, and Timotheus, each responsible for one side. Because the statues were of people and animals, the Mausoleum holds a special place in history as it was not dedicated to the gods of Ancient Greece.

For 16 centuries, the Mausoleum remained in good condition until an earthquake caused some damage to the roof and colonnade. In the early fifteenth century, the Knights of St John of Malta invaded the region and built a massive crusader castle. When they decided to fortify it in 1494, they used the stones of the Mausoleum. By 1522, almost every block of the Mausoleum had been disassembled and used for construction.

Today, the massive castle still stands in Bodrum, and the polished stone and marble blocks of the Mausoleum can be spotted within the walls of the structure. Some of the sculptures survived and are today on display at the British Museum in London. These include fragment of statues and many slabs of the frieze showing the battle between the Greeks and the Amazons. At the site of the Mausoleum itself, only the foundation remains of the once magnificent Wonder

Today some these works of art stand in the Mausoleum Room at the British Museum. There the images of Mausolus and his queen forever watch over the few broken remains of the beautiful tomb she built for him and that is now lost to eternity.

The Colossus of Rhodes

Colossus of Rhodes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Colossus of Rhodes was a huge statue of the god Helios in Rhodes, Greece, in the 3rd century BC. It was roughly the same size as the Statue of Liberty in New York, although it stood on a lower platform. It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The Colussus of Rhodes probably did not stand astride the harbor entrance as shown hereWhen Alexander the Great died at an early age he had not had time to put into place any plans for succession. Fights broke out between his generals, with three of them eventually dividing up much of the empire in the Mediterranean area.
During the fighting Rhodes had sided with Ptolemy, and when Ptolemy eventually took control of Egypt, they formed an alliance which controlled much of the trade in the eastern Mediterranean.

Another of Alexander's generals, Antigous, was upset by this turn of events. In 305 BC he had his son Demetrius (now a famous general on his own) invade Rhodes with an army of 40,000. However the city was well defended, and Demetrius had to start construction of a number of massive siege towers in order to gain access to the walls. The first was mounted on six ships, which blew over in a storm before they could be used. He tried again with an even larger land-based tower, but the Rhodian defenders stopped this by flooding the land in front of the walls so the tower could not move. In 304 BC a force of ships sent by Ptolemy arrived, and Demetrius's army left in a hurry, leaving most of their equipment.

To celebrate their victory the Rhodians decided to build a giant statue of their patron god Helios. Construction was left to the direction of Chares, who had been involved with large scale statues before. His teacher, the famed sculptor Lysippus, had constructed a 60 foot high statue of Zeus.

Ancient accounts (which differ to some degree) describe the structure as being built around several stone columns (or towers of blocks) on the interior of the structure, sitting on a 50 foot high white marble pedestal near the harbour entrance (others claim on a breakwater in the harbour). Iron beams were driven into the stone towers, and bronze plates attached to the bars formed the skinning. Much of the material was melted down from the various weapons Demetrius's army left behind, and the second tower was used for scaffolding around the lower levels. Upper portions were built with the use of a large earthen ramp. The statue itself was over 110 feet tall.

Construction completed in 282 BC after 12 years. The statue stood for 56 years until Rhodes was hit by an earthquake in 226 BC. The statue snapped at the knees, and fell over onto the land. Ptolemy III offered to pay for the reconstruction of the statue, but a Rhodian oracle was afraid that they had upset Helios, and they declined to rebuild it. The remains laid on the ground for over 800 years, and even broken they were so impressive that many traveled to see them.

In AD 654 an Arab force under Muawiyah I captured Rhodes, who sold the remains to a travelling salesman from Edessa, according to the chronicler Theophanes. The purchaser had the statue broken down, and transported the bronze scrap on the backs of 900 camels back to his home. Pieces continued to turn up for sale for years, after being found on the caravan route.

Note: Many older descriptions (from the 1700s) show the statue with one foot on either side of the harbour with ships passing under it - ... the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;.... This is an outright fabrication.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria

Lighthouse of Alexandria
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria (often called the "Pharos of Alexandria" after the island on which it resided), was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

It was built in the 3rd century BC and remained operational until it was largely destroyed by two earthquakes in the 14th century.

It was a tower that is estimated to have been 120 m high, at the time one of the tallest man-made structures on Earth. At its apex was positioned a mirror which reflected sunlight during the day; a fire was lit at night.

Pharos later became the etymological origin of the word 'lighthouse' in many Romance languages, such as French (phare) and Spanish (faro).

The Other Wonders of the World