The three largest pyramids in the Valley of Giza are the Great Pyramid, which was built for Pharaoh Khufu in the 26th century B.C., the Pyramid of Kafhre and the Pyramid of Menkaura, which were also built for Egyptian kings. The Great Pyramid, which is the largest of the three, is made up of 2.3 million blocks of stone, reaches 450 feet into the air and weighs six million tons.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built around 600 B.C. at the direction of King Nebuchadnezzar II as a gift to his wife, who was homesick for the green and mountainous land of her youth. The gardens included trees and plants and consisted of a series of terraces situated upon cube-shaped pillars. The gardens were most likely lost to an earthquake in the Second Century B.C. They are the only ancient wonder whose remains cannot be archaeologically verified.
An earthquake most likely led to the downfall of the Pharos lighthouse, which rose 300 feet above the sea on the Island of Pharos. Alexander the Great, who founded the city of Alexandria in 332 B.C., ordered the lighthouse built, but died before it was finished. The lighthouse was the world's first, and stood 1500 years before the last of it fell into the Mediterranean Sea in 1326.
The Island of Rhodes was home to the Colossus, a giant statue of the patron god Helios. Often compared to New York's Statue of Liberty, the ancient Colossus stood at the Island of Rhodes' harbor entrance for 56 years before it collapsed during an earthquake; the Rhodians didn't rebuild the statue, and pieces of it lay along the harbor for centuries before the Arabs conquered Rhodes and sold the remains of the Colossus for scrap material.
When King Mausolus died in the city of Halicarnassus in 353 B.C., Queen Artemisia was heartbroken, which prompted her to build a magnificent tomb in his honor. The tomb was situated on a hill overlooking the city and included a courtyard, a staircase and statues of gods, goddesses, lions and warriors. Artemisia died two years later, and although the tomb was unfinished, the king and queen were eventually laid to rest there. After 17 centuries, the mausoleum was damaged by earthquakes. Today, the statues of Mausolus and Artemisia from the mausoleum stand in the British Museum.
The Temple of Artemis, which was made completely of marble, was built in Ephesus, now modern day Turkey, sometime after 356 B.C., after an existing temple was burned. The new temple boasted figures carved into columns and works of art, including four Amazon women statues cast in bronze. In 401 B.C. after Roman Emperor Theodosius decreed Christianity the state religion, Christians attacked and destroyed the temple.
In 776 B.C., the first Olympic games were held in honor of Zeus, the king of gods. Libon of Elis was commissioned to design a new Temple of Zeus, which was completed 12 years later in 456 B.C. Phidias, a sculptor, created the 40-foot statue of Zeus sitting on a throne of gold, ebony, ivory and precious gems. In the fourth century A.D., Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and ordered gold to be removed from all pagan statues. Today, some pieces of the temple are exhibited in the Louvre in Paris, although a few crumbled columns remain in Greece.
