Alexander the Great and the ambition of the Seven Wonders

Taking advantage of the turn of the century, a Swiss foundation organized a global vote to establish the seven new wonders of the world. The final result placed the Taj Mahal, Petra, the Great Wall of China, Chichén Itzá, Machu Picchu, the Colosseum in Rome, and the Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro on the podium. A list that joins dozens that have appeared over the centuries and whose first known model, recalls British historian Bettany Hughes, is 2,200 years old and emerged in the vast rational, empirical, and taxonomic Hellenistic world—Aristotle was the emperor's tutor—created by Alexander the Great. A list that was followed by many others, lists that did not portray mythical or unattainable places and that served as a tourism resource in ancient times.

The earliest list found is the Laterculi Alexandrini , a fragmentary papyrus wrapped around a mummy in Egypt that contained numerous lists: the seven most important islands, the seven most beautiful rivers, and the seven best artists, seven being a number associated with perfection. Some Laterculi Alexandrini begin with an imaginary conversation between Alexander the Great and the Indian Gymnosophists—literally, the Wise Men Who Talk Naked—talking about the nature of government, which shows that the lists are about power while also being an advertorial for the known world colonized by the Greeks. Three of the list of wonders were preserved on the very deteriorated papyrus: the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, and the Great Pyramid at Giza.

“Symbols of human power and ambition, many were brought down by the power of Mother Earth.”

Along with them, over the centuries, the canonical list would be completed with the Colossus of Rhodes, the great statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. And the stories of these seven canonical wonders are revived by Hughes in The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (Attic Books). “Whether times are good or bad, people want wonders. They crave that sense of wonder to collaborate, to create extraordinary things. Moreover, there is a lot of new archaeology in the eastern Mediterranean today that is fleshing out the story of these wonders. So it was time for this book,” the historian notes.

And he recalls that “there are people who think some of them are legends, but they are real places that people actually visited. It's incredible to see those huge blocks of stone on the seabed that were part of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, with people fishing while sitting on the frame of one of the wonders where we know Cleopatra would have walked.” And he warns that “they were part of early tourism; many lists survived because they were written as very practical guides. Philo of Byzantium literally wrote a tourist guide: don't dock at that port, it's quite dangerous, don't leave your belongings there, they could be stolen.”

And he notes that among the seven wonders are "the Great Pyramid and also the Colossus of Rhodes, separated by more than two thousand years. It's a very long list, but it speaks to that world conquered by Alexander the Great. It's almost a catalog: these are the amazing things in this part of the world over which we have control or influence in cultural terms. In that sense, it's significant that Persepolis, in Iran, isn't on the list." A list, he recalls, "in which size matters, because they are all enormous" and "they are all incarnations of very different aspects of what it means to be human."

“The Great Pyramid,” he exemplifies, “is about our connection to a larger universe: they believed Pharaoh Khufu was in a giant resurrection machine, that he would be expelled and become part of the universe. The Lighthouse of Alexandria is about wisdom, rationality, and exchange—the combining of ideas to get the best. The Colossus of Rhodes is a kind of symbol of diplomacy. They're grand in size, but also in meaning. The Temple of Artemis is about giving sanctuary, the notion that you can welcome the weak and the needy. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are about mastery over power in nature. And the statues used at Olympia are about competition. It's not just about power, it's also about meaning.”

Buildings that have even left us words— mausoleum comes from Mausolus, the king who built the lavish tomb at Halicarnassus, where tourists still went in the 12th century—and whose disappearance (only Giza remains), Hughes points out, was largely due to “Mother Nature.” “The stones outside Giza were shaken by an earthquake, which also caused the Lighthouse of Alexandria to collapse. The Temple of Artemis was attacked, but there was also a lot of earthquake damage. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus collapsed due to an earthquake. It’s interesting that these are absolute expressions of human ambition and hope and arrogance. We can make our own mountains, but humans are like matchsticks when it comes to natural power.”

And he warns of a newly discovered eighth wonder, “an astonishing 12,000-year-old settlement called Karahan Tepe, between Syria and Turkey. It's going to rewrite history: a city 4,000 years before we thought cities existed. Only 1% of it has been excavated, and it's enormous, with giant penis chambers. It's going to change how we think about early human society. And it must have been buried when the original list was made.”