The above saying came to my mind when looking at the seven ancient wonders of the world. Were we able of sailing our originally intended path from Alexandria to Rhodes, we could visit four of the seven. The Pyramids of Gizeh, the Lighthouse in Alexandria, the Mausoleum in Bodrum and the Colossus of Rhodes. Sadly, the war in Gaza and travel restrictions between Turkey and Greece will cut the number to one: the Mausoleum in ancient Halicarnassus. For consolation, next year's journey will start in Rhodes.
The Pyramid of Caius Cestius in Rome is on the Way from the City to Fumincino Airport
The seven wonders of the world are probably a mistranslation. The Greek word "thaumata" (wonder) was confused with "theamata" (sights to be seen). The Macedonian conquerors of the Persian Empire (Persia, Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt and northwestern India) must have compiled a list of things to visit. Today, we call it a "Bucket List". We do not know who put it together. Most likely, it was written around 100 BC in Alexandria. Evidence is fragmentary. Albeit an origin from antiquity's biggest library makes perfect sense.
Except the Statue of Zeus, the Seven Ancient Wonders were located in the Persian Empire
In antiquity, people did not travel for leisure. It was too expensive and too risky. Soldiers, merchants and government officials were the only people on the road or the sea. That is probably the reason whey so little written evidence survived. There are more busts of Augustus and other Roman Emperors in our museums than text fragments on the seven wonders of the world. Still, we know what these seven wonders were and where they stood. I learned about them already in High School - they are still famous
The Pyramids in the Louvre were built by the Chinese American Architect I.M. Pei in 1988
Their fame lasted throughout history and many of them were copied and repurposed. Just think of the Pyramids of Giza, build in the middle of the 3rd millenia BC. You find copies of them everywhere. There are about 150 copies in theme parks around the world, several copies were built in Imperial Rome as tomb for prominent politicians. Only one of them, the Pyramid of Caius Cestius at the Porta San Paolo, survived. The most recent pyramid copies now stand in the Louvre in Paris and shelter the entrance to the famous museum. Whilst built with glass and steel, their dimensions are proportional to the originals in Gizeh.
Artist Impression of the Colossus of Rhodes - nobody knows
how it really looked since there are no Drawings left
Covered the Lighthouse of Alexandria already in a previous blog thus will focus on the Mausoleum in Bodrum and the Colossus of Rhodes. The 105 foot tall statue of the Sun God Helios was erected at Rhodes' harbour to celebrate its victory over Demetrius in 305 BC, a successor king to Alexander the Great. The iron and bronze used for the statue were forged from the weapons Demetrius left behind when abandoning the siege. The Colossus wore the a crown with sun rays and probably held a torch in his hands. Details are a bit shaky.
Luckily, coins from Rhodes give us some ideas how the Colossus might have looked. The statue took 12 years to build. Unfortunatley, it was destroyed by an earthquake 54 years later, in 226 BC. The tremors snapped the knee and the statue fell over - never to be rebuilt again. Its pieces remained at the harbor entrance for centuries. The Colossus was widely mentioned in ancient literature. The famous Greek geographer Strabo wrote about it, as did Pliny the Elder, the naturalist and Navy commander of the early Roman Empire.
The Statue of Liberty with Manhattan at the back stands on Bedloe Island (old name)
2'000 years later, the Colossus inspired French sculptor Bartholdi to a similar project: the Statue of Liberty in New York. Completed in 1886, it was dedicated to celebrate the 100th anniversary of American Independence. The statue was repurposed though. Bartholdi's original plan was to decorate the northern entrance of the Suez Canal (inaugurated in 1866) with a statue called "Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia" in the form of a peasant woman dressed in traditional clothing. The statue was supposed to hold a torch which would serve as light beam for arriving ships. Shape and form borrowed heavily from the Colossus of Rhodes, best illustrated by the crown of sun rays. The project never made it though. It was rejected by Lesseps, the canal builder, and the Egyptian government as too expensive.
From 1886 - 1906 the Statue of Liberty served also as Lighthouse
Whilst parts of the Statue of Liberty were adapted to its new meaning, many features retained its original shape like the Egyptian clothing, the crown with sun rays and the torch which served for the first twenty years as light beam for ships in the Hudson. Initially, the Statue of Liberty was planned to be gifted by French people. However, the project run out of funds. Had it not been for the fund raising campaign of American publisher Publitzer, the project may never have been completed. The statue's small mock-up stands today in Paris on an island in the Seine, close to the Eiffel Tower.
One of the many Attempts to reconstruct how the Mausoleum may have looked like
The last monument to cover today is the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, today's Bodrum. Like the Colossus of Rhodes, nobody is certain how it looked. Pleny the Elder described it in some detail. Then there are pieces which were sold by the Ottoman Sultans to the British Museum and some of the tomb's statues are still in Bodrum. Still, its image influenced many architects of monumental buildings. General Grant's tomb in New York and several World War One Memorials around the world were definitely influenced by its style.
The seldom visited Tomb of General Ulysses Grant is on Riverside Drive and 122nd Street in New York. Grant became America's 18th Presdent after the Civil War (1861 - 1865)
Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance commemorates the fallen Australian Soldiers in the First World War. It was completed in 1934
History does not repeat itself but it ryhmes. Pyramids, Stutue of Liberty and War Memorials are reminders of our 2'000 years old civilisation. Am happy we will visit two of the original sites this and next year.
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