World History to 1500 - HIST 111 Resource Guide

Large statue of Helios, the sun god, destroyed by an earthquake in antiquity. Consider one of the Seven Wonders of the World by the ancients, it was built in part by Chares of Lindus (Rhodes) between 292 and 280 B.C. Its bronze was taken from the machines and tools left behind by Demetrius I after his unsuccessful siege of Rhodes. According to legend, the 100 ft (30.5 m) statue stood astride the harbor and ships passed between its legs. In reality, it stood on a promontory overlooking the harbor, and the representational type is well known from images on coins of the same period.

The largest of the Egyptian pyramids, built by Cheops.

The Great Pyramid at Giza was built by Cheops (or Khufu), the 26th-century bc king of Memphis. It is the largest of the pyramids of Egypt and one of the legendary Seven Wonders of the World.

> THE HANGING GARDENS OF BABYLON
Tradition has it that the most splendid gardens were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Classical authors described the gardens as resembling a mountain, with terraces of brick, bitumen on stone foundations, and planted with trees. A hidden mechanism, a remarkable feat of engineering, raised water to the highest terrace, and there were pavilions among the vegetation. They attributed this to Nebuchadnezzar II, although the king's own inscriptions do not mention such a garden.

Under Ptolemy II, the city gained one of what were to become known as the seven wonders of the ancient world: the Pharos, or lighthouse at Alexandria. The approximately 350-foot-high lighthouse was an engineering wonder for its time. Situated on the island of Pharos in the city's harbor, the lighthouse was built by Sostratus of Cnidus and stood for centuries. Records indicate the lighthouse survived until the twelfth century, but by the mid-fifteenth had become so dilapidated that the Mamluke sultan Qait Bey built a fortress atop the ruins. Like the lighthouse, neither the Mouseion nor the library survived into modern times. The Mouseion complex, including the library, was destroyed by civil war under the Roman emperor Aurelian in 272; a companion library, housed in a separate complex, was destroyed by Christians in 391.

The city had, on one occasion, played a leading role in the history of Greek architecture and art. This distinction was owed to the tomb of Mausolus, which has brought the term ‘Mausoleum’ into modern languages. Before his death the king had already started work on the building, which was subsequently continued by Artemisia II and Ada. Surmounted, according to Pliny the Elder, by a twenty-four-step pyramid, the colonnaded Mausoleum ranked as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were selected by the ancients themselves as being astonishing examples of human creativity and construction.

The ruins of the Temple of Artemis at Sardis, Turkey. Greek civilisation, 4th Century BC.

This program films Empereur and his team performing salvage archaeology as they scramble to find clues to the Pharos Lighthouse-one of the seven wonders of the ancient world-and the magnificent Caesareum.

Discusses the architectural achievements of the ancient world known as the Seven Wonders of the World, including the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the Colossus of Rhodes.
DVD 930.09 Se82f 2002