Dan Snow's History Hit - The 7 Wonders of the Ancient World

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

People have always looked to the wonders of the ancient world for awe and inspiration. In the Ancient era, people embarked on dangerous pilgrimages to visit storied sites like the Pyramids of Giza, or the Statue of Zeus at Olympia. While only one of them remains, they still excite us thousands of years later.Bettany Hughes, author of 'The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World', joins Dan to talk about what they were like when they were first built, and what remains of them today.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW sign up now for your 14-day free trial.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi buddy, welcome to Dan Snow's History. It's one of the most successful branding operations in the history of the world. It's got to be up there with Nike, just do it, the idea of China or Christianity. I mean, it's a thing that everybody has heard of and assumes to be some eternal, immovable feature of our civilization. Yet in fact, it's just a list. eternal, immovable feature of our civilization. Yet in fact, it's just a list. It's just a list that someone dreamt up. I'm talking about the seven wonders of the world. The seven wonders of the modern world, well, they're much argued about. But the seven wonders of the ancient world were a thing. It was a thing. It was a list pretty much agreed upon, but it was certainly a concept agreed upon, that there were wonders in this world and you had to see them if you were curious,

if you wanted to marvel at the creativity of our fellow man and woman. And speaking of wondering at creativity, I've got someone on the podcast to talk me through the seven wonders of the ancient world, a person who I'm often marvelling at, and that is Bethany Hughes. She is a legend of British TV. She is the first woman in British history to have her own history series on the television. That's true. And that was in 1990, as you'll hear. She is also a phenomenal writer. She's been on the podcast many times before. Her book on Constantinople, Byzantium, Istanbul was extraordinary. She's just written a new book called The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And she is coming on the podcast right now to talk how those wonders came to be chosen, what they were like when they were still wonderful, and what remains of them

today. Bethany Hughes, she's a wonder. Enjoy. Bethany, so good to see you. So lovely to see you. The Seven Wonders. Okay, who decides? Why are there Seven Wonders? Who decides them? Were they even a thing?

Or is this a kind of modern, have we just imposed this on the past? I love, it's hilarious. When people are asking me about this book, they keep on saying, how did you choose the Seven Wonders? And it's like, I didn't choose them. I didn't choose them.

They are absolutely a thing. So they were a list. There was a list of the seven wonders of the ancient world, which changed a little bit. So sometimes the hanging gardens of Babylon are in, sometimes they're out, but there was kind of a loose seven that people agreed on. And the oldest example of this is a bit of papyrus that was used to mummify a human in central Egypt. It's a really kind of fragmentary scrap of a thing called the Latakuli Alexandrini. And that is the oldest example of the seven wonders list we have. And that's 2,200 at least- So Ptolemaic. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's the moment where the kind of Hellenistic world is really taking off.

So post Alexander the Great, everybody loves a list at this time. It's kind of, forget all that kind of washy philosophy and poetry that you had before. We really want to have a rational approach to life and we want to have a kind of taxonomy of things. So they love their lists in the Hellenistic world. And the Seven Wonders is one of these examples. But what I particularly adore about the Seven Wonders list that exists, this Alexandri Latakouli, is the fact that it's actually a list of the seven best of everything. So it's like the seven best rivers, the seven best mountains, the seven finest artists. Oh, and the Seven Wonders. Man-made things.

Exactly. You mentioned the Hellenistic. That seems important because it feels like there's a world now where there's a Greek-speaking post-Alexander the Great. Yes. There's a sort of cohesive world, as they would see it. Of course, it does not include Central Asia and Far East and Britain and Americas. But the essential precondition of these Seven Wonders

is that there's a kind of world as it's understood by these Hellenistic people. Well, I think so. I mean, it's again, like, where does anything start? You know, as a historian, you sort of think you found the beginning and then you have to go further back and back and back. I remember somebody saying to me, do you realise the middle class, its origins was in the Stone Age? And I thought, great, you know, you've really taken it a few thousand years ago. And it's the same with the seven wonders and this notion of seven. So the Greeks, you know, I love the Greeks. I'm a great Hellenophile. They invented the word history and they are therefore very good at writing themselves into history, the Greeks. And they kind of want us to think that they invented this notion of seven wonders. But that crops up way back in Mesopotamian culture. of seven wonders. But that crops up way back in Mesopotamian culture. So in the very early Babylonian texts, we also get lists of seven and the idea of sort of seven gates of hell and seven entries into heaven. But what you're saying is absolutely right. So the Hellenistic world goes,

but we need to understand the world with lists. And let's have this list, which includes everywhere within our territories territories and not only places that were within the kinds of purview of Hellenism, but that people could actually go to. Right. I was going to say, is this a list? Would people might've sort of visited this list? Definitely. So it's not just a list. It's a bucket list, you know, so people would think- Very Instagrammy. It's very, very buzzfeed-y. So we think people did actually tick off. They thought, okay, you know, I will go and visit them. And there's a guy called Philo of Byzantium who actually does pretty much a kind

of traveler's tourist guide. So this is how you can get to all of the seven wonders. So they were very real places. And I think that's the thing that, again, that we've almost got this notion that they were legendary and fantastical and they're scattered all across the earth, but they're in this sort of ring around the Mediterranean and they were real places built by real women and real men. It's very interesting you say this number seven, because isn't there a thing, this could be just utter Twitter pop psychology, but isn't it if you say to someone, name your number team one and 10, most people will say seven, isn't it? So seven is a thing. Listen, Dan, please get any mathematician you know to explain to me or psychologist why it is that seven is magical, because it has got this sort of super natural feel to it. And the ancients

explained that by saying that it was a combination of the seven elements of the earth and the seven elements of the heaven. So the sun, the moon, the stars, earth, winds and fire and water. And that's why we want to have seven because it's sort of the seven things that matter. But again, of course, that's made up, you know, there are other things in the world, but we just adore this number seven. So as I said, I'm genuine, this is a call out. Can somebody tell me why, why we think it's special and why we go to it automatically in our heads? And then you, and also, but the word wonders. Yes. We've done the seven, we've done a bit of the world, but what about wonders? Because

you write and talk so beautifully about the importance of a wonder. Yes. And what is a wonder? I mean, I think we are hardwired to wonder. We want to wonder at things. We want to find things that are full of awe, that make us inspired and excited. It suddenly sort of came to me that if we wonder, we're connected to something, we engage with it. And if we engage with something, we understand it. And if we understand it, we care about it. So it kind of forces this connection to the world. And the Greeks who were writing these seven wonders lists knew that as well. So the word that they use originally is theomata, which means literally a sight, a thing that you see, that you look at that is there. And then slowly, slowly they adapt and the word that they use is thaomata, which is a thing that is amazing, that causes awe. So they kind of get it as well, that it's not just a thing. It's a thing that makes you feel in a particular way. Because I don't know about you, but as the world seems to be getting more challenging at the moment, I do struggle with the idea of sometimes creating art

and doing mad things like writing this book or going to look for shipwrecks in Antarctica. But then I remind myself, but that's the mad journey that we're on. We humans, art doesn't make any sense at all. It doesn't feed anyone. It doesn't clothe anybody. It doesn't protect us in the elements. And yet it's wonderful. So it's kind of pointless and wonderful. And we, you shouldn't have to interrogate that too hard. No, totally right. I mean, I, you know, I love art and storytelling and it's very difficult to explain why, to kind of quantify how it matters. But if you think about it, those first two days of lockdown, for instance, when COVID first fell on the world and it was a petrifying time.

You know, we thought the world was going to end. We thought we were all going to die. Lots of us did lose loved ones. And it was, you know, it was a time full of trauma and tragedy. Lots of us did lose loved ones. And it was a time full of trauma and tragedy. And what is the first thing that people did? Okay, they stocked up on loo roll and they did a sort of inventory of their cupboards. The second thing that they did is that they started to share poems and pictures and to write songs. And this is a time when we were in crisis. So we almost kind of create our way out of a crisis.

And you must see this through history as well, that when I look right back to really deep history, and so we're talking kind of 70,000 years ago. These are tough times. These are times when you are likely to be killed by disease, plague, tiger attack, you know, wild elephant attack. People are taking time out of their busy, difficult lives to make beautiful things. People are taking time out of their busy, difficult lives to make beautiful things, you know, a jade hand axe or a kind of walrus out of ivory or a lion-headed human. So we need, you know, it's absolutely hardwired into us to express ourselves through these stories and through these kind of physical things that we create. So the wonders matter.

They're not just follies. Yeah, and we should be allowed to wonder. Yeah, definitely. And not feel guilty about it. Yeah, definitely. Well, I think also, you know, we're living in a difficult world at the moment and we see a lot of things being destroyed, but we have the capability to create. It's so easy to destroy. It takes a bit more time to create, but that is what we're good at. And that's what drives the creation of these wonders too. Right. Let's talk about the wonders because you're not only a wonderful

scholar who has written about them so fabulously, but you've also visited them and had adventures and stuff. It's so cool. Let's just do the list. What were the wonders? What were the seven wonders of the world? Well, the most popular list, and I go with the most popular one, starts with the Great Pyramid of Giza. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. It's awe-inspiring. It's the oldest. And of course, ironically, so it's over 4,500 years old, and yet it's the only one that still stands virtually intact. And if that doesn't say something about amazing engineering, I don't know what does. You know, you've visited it countless times. And so let's just, the list that you mentioned, the Hellenistic list is a bit of papyrus. The person who wrote that list, I think almost lives closer to today than the building of the Great Pyramid.

Yes, yes, that's right. I know, I know, I know. So isn't that crazy? So all those generations worth of wanderers have gone and looked at the pyramid. So it starts the oldest and arguably the finest, certainly the tallest. Tallest, yeah. Close on 500 feet tall. Tallest building until Lincoln Cathedral was built in 1311. It's still the heaviest building constructed on earth. What? The pyramid, I know.

So we've never bettered it. I mean, I could talk about that for hours, but it is an incredible place. So the Great Pyramids of Giza. And by the way, you've explored it in extraordinary detail, haven't you? You've crawled through it and been trapped in it and looked for chambers and all that amazing stuff. I have, I have. Why do that? I don't like small dark spaces. I've gone down underneath the pyramid, but yeah, no, I do, I do love it. And again, it's one of these amazing places where just last year they discovered a new corridor in it, you know, so its secrets are still to be revealed. Hanging Gardens of Babylon is the next. I'm going chronologically. I'm being very dull and chronological.

No doubt, we like that. This is the one I can never really understand. What is a hanging garden? Well, good question, because really interestingly, of all the wonders, I have this kind of, you know, test when I get in a cab or I'm standing with a stranger at a bar, being a bit weird and talking to strangers at bars. I'll say, you know, of the seven wonders, which is your favourite? People always say the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. There's a sort of poetry to even the name, isn't there? There is. And I think exactly, it sounds sort of mysterious and mystical, but it might not have existed. It's the only one of the seven for which we don't have irrefutable,

hard evidence of where it was and exactly what it looked like. Loads of descriptions of it from the ancient world. It was almost certainly in Babylon, you know, the name gives it away. But there's this really interesting possibility that it might have been actually a hundred miles to the north in Nineveh, in the city of Nineveh, because that whole region was described by some people as Babylonia. So it could have got a bit confused. Like London Luton Airport. as Babylonia, so it could have got a bit confused. Like London Luton Airport. Exactly. Exactly like that.

Thank you, Dan. Now I can explain to people why it could have been in the Netherlands. Exactly right. So the hanging thing, we think it was probably sloped, so it's supposed to kind of resemble a mountain. And the story that went around was that Nebuchadnezzar's, the great's wife, was pining for her mountainous homeland, so he kind of reconstructed it for her in garden form. So that's the kind of fluffy story. The slightly

less fluffy story is that we know from inscriptions that the great kings of the day, like Nebuchadnezzar, like Sennacherib from Nineveh, when they went on their rampaging campaigns through the world, you know, destroying people's lives and taking territories and enslaving people, they also picked up trees. They were kind of frustrated gardeners and they loved the fact that they could import all these exotic trees and plants because if you're in control of nature itself, you really are in control of the world. So they were obsessed with tree gathering. So it's really likely that they did bring these incredible plants to plant in their sort of palatial complexes. And if you imagine a complex,

it's behind a wall. So if you want to say to people outside, look how cool I am, then actually building a sloping garden that you can see is quite a good way of trumpeting your power. So we haven't found them yet. We will never say say never but i'm pretty sure that they were again real things and built with this kind of incredible water system somewhere in mesopotamia and just on that have you iraq's been a very difficult place to get to over the last well long time have you have you managed to get there well i haven't since i started to write this book so it was so sad because i was just on the verge it looked like there was a moment of peace just before lockdown. Then lockdown came.

Obviously, you really couldn't get there then. But I think I might be able to go later this year. Come along. Oh, let's do it. Dream. Let's do it. Why don't we go and discover the Hanging Gardens of Babylon together? Wow, Bethany.

Yes. All right. Okay, notice number three. So number three is the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in modern day Turkey. Possibly my favourite, slightly randomly, probably the least known. A huge temple. I mean, this was a temple that was twice the size of the Parthenon in Athens. I mean, absolutely enormous.

And basically, all Greek temples pretty much are based on this. It's the kind of mothership of Greek temples. And we should just say, of course, this is a period where the Greeks, as they've defined themselves, live down that coast of what is now Turkey. Yes. All the great famous cities like Miletus and Ephesus, they were all Greeks, but yeah, in Turkey now. Exactly, exactly. And as ever, as we were saying before, you know, the deep roots of history run strong.

So, in fact, it's a pre-Greek sanctuary. So it's got a very Eastern vibe to it. And the Artemis, the goddess Artemis, who becomes Diana in Roman mythology, the Artemis who was worshipped there is a really Eastern, ferocious, feisty goddess. So if you see the images of her, she's standing, this sort of sculpture, and she looks like she's got about a 100 breasts on her front. They're possibly not breasts. They're possibly bulls sacks, bull sacks of bulls or honey sacks or kind of bags of gold. But whatever they are, they're going like, I'm really fertile and fecund.

You know, it's all happening here. And the myths about that goddess is that she's so kind of fabulously fertile. She doesn't need any male to procreate. So she can just sort of give birth to whatever she wants just by herself because she's this fabulous, fabulous creature. And now warming to my theme, because she's a goddess I really love. So she's so sort of like fabulously kind of multi-sexual that her priests, male priests, castrate themselves. So she has eunuch priests because, you know, you wouldn't bring your kind of maleness in front of this goddess. So she's incredible. And she's described as this sort of queen bee with all these drones circling around her. So she's quite a character. But what's lovely about the temple

of Artemis is it's a sanctuary. So all Greek temples were sanctuaries, but this is a real sanctuary where refugees can come, where you seek asylum. So she sort of offered a home to people who were in need. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit, talking about the seven wonders of the ancient world. More coming up. More coming up. Normans, kings and popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

Eftis, I think, to say, what, famous for having a good theatre. Yes. Right, but can you see the base of this temple? Can you see the temple? I don't know. You can see its footprint. Wow. There's one column which always has a stalk nesting on it. So a lot of it is gone.

Quite a lot of it is, of course, in the museum in the UK and in museums around the world. In Vienna, basically that's where most of the Temple of Artemis that's left is now. But it's got this kind of grove-like, you can see why it was a magical place. You do get a sense of the place. And when was that built? So you say it was the Ur Temple. Things like the Parthenon actually deliberately copied it, did they? Yeah, they did.

So it's old. It's old, exactly. So the sort of original stone temple was built in the middle of the 500s BCE, decorated with gold by Croesus, the King Croesus, who was incredibly rich. So a good hundred years before your classic, people might be thinking of the Athenian golden age, a hundred years before. Exactly. So they copy it. It kind of burns down, collapses in earthquakes, it gets rebuilt again. So the wonder is the later hellenistic temple there's been a religious building there for you know well if we're looking

back from now for at least 3 000 years wow okay i love that you've sold me on artemis thank you i mean people talk about the modern crisis of masculinity but i mean she was she was on it she was absolutely she said you don't need these guys. No, no, no. So let's go. What's next? Are we three? Okay, what's number four? So then you've got the mausoleum of Halicarnassus. So actually, no, no, let's start with the Statue of Zeus because let's be strict about the chronology. Let's be strict.

So I was staying in Turkey, but we go back to the Greek mainland for the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, at the sanctuary site of Olympia. Again, an incredible statue that was over 40 foot tall of the seated king of the gods Zeus. So it's all about power and potential. It's this idea, if you've got this mighty creature who might just stand up and de-roof the temple that he's housed in. And he was the god who was in charge of and overseeing the Olympic Games. So very appropriate

for this year, the Olympic year. And it's a completely different vibe to the Temple of Artemis. So the Temple of Zeus and the statue of Zeus is all about macho power. This is all about competition, winning, you know, brawn losers just, you know, can't be tolerated in his presence. If you lost, or if you in any way cheated in the games, then there were these terrible sort of shame statues that were put up that you had to pay for, or Zeus, and you had your name inscribed on it going like, you know, I'm a rubbish person. So it was this sort of ultimate notion of success that was incorporated in the Zeus temple. And did the Zeus statue survive? Or was it toppled and broken up?

in the in the zoo and did the zoo actually survive or was it well that toppled and broken up well no fascinatingly it was taken to what was then constantinople so it was imported as one of these kind of you know this biggest outdoor museum of the world that you had in constantinople so i mean just think of that because it's got a ton of ivory on it a ton of gold and they must have transported it by ship somehow and it ends up in Constantinople. We think actually some of the precious stuff had been nicked from it basically, because they don't quite describe the gold as you'd expect. But then in the fifth century was lost in a terrible fire in Constantinople, what's now Istanbul. Fifth century AD. Fifth century AD, yeah.

So if only someone had written a brilliant, brilliant book about Constantinople that we could cross-reference. You talented, talented woman. Everyone go back and buy that book as well. And so your statue dates from sort of... So it's finished around 430 BCE. So Peloponnesian War kind of time. And we've beaten the Persians with the Greeks feeling pretty good about themselves. They're feeling very good about themselves.

But they also know that they've got to keep literally fighting fit in order to battle off any future Persian attack or attack from outside. So it made it through, it lasted until the early medieval. That's okay, that's sad news. Now, what's next? So now we can go to the mausoleum of Halicarnassus. So again, sort of whooshing down to what's the southern coast of Turkey, what's modern day Bodrum, Halicarnassus is. And the mausoleum, there's such a cool story about this. So first of all, all mausoleums in the world are named after the mausoleum of Halicarnassus. And the mausoleum of Halicarnassus is named after

King Mausolus, who was the ruler of the Carian people, very neglected civilization. And he had this kind of show-off tomb, I think we can call it, which is again, you know, a hundred or so feet high, would have been like a kind of firework erupting on that landscape, brightly coloured, decorated with a little bit of everything. So Amazonian steelies, there was a kind of pyramid in there, beautiful sculpture, topped with a four-horse chariot of King Mausolus and his queen, Artemisia, who was also his sister. Roger. Okay. So there was a bit of brother-sister love going on. And actually, the mausoleum should be called the Artemisian because Artemis finishes it off

and she's buried there. She's not the naval commander at the Battle of Salamis. She's her granddaughter. Okay. I'm a big fan of her. Okay. Yeah. She's amazing. So Artemisia I, exactly that female admiral. There are not that many of those through time. And Artemisia II, you feel really loves her feisty ancestor. And in the mausoleum, and it was discovered this is actually now in the UK, there's this beautiful engraved alabaster pot which belonged to Artemisia I, to the female admiral, and her granddaughters got it in her tomb. So you think she really did love her.

She had a real connection. Yeah. And is that what condition today? What are we talking? Well, you can go to the site, and again, you can see the footprint, and a few remains. A lot of it's also here in the UK and elsewhere in the world.

But you can get a sense of it. I think they often close it, but you can actually walk down into the place where Mausolus himself was buried. So it's still, the site is there. Yeah, the site's there. Again, it's been so funny with this because people kept on saying to me, oh, they've all disappeared. And I'm like, no, they haven't. They've got these little fragments that we can go and jigsaw puzzle together. Right, what's been so funny with this because people kept on saying to me, oh, they've all disappeared. And I'm like, no, they haven't.

They've got these little fragments that we can go and jigsaw puzzle together. Right, what's next? And so that period, again, so that's now, that's sort of 100 years after the Battle of Salmon. So what's that, fourth century or something? Yes, exactly, fourth century. So Alexander the Great goes there. Heard of him.

And so he'd have seen it, you know. Alexander would have seen all of the Seven Wonders. He was a bit of a tourist, wasn't he? He was a mega tourist, apart from, ironically, the lighthouse of Alexandria, of his name's city, because it was built after he died. But yeah, so he would have gone there. I've just got to tell you this little Alexander story.

He has this kind of flirty relationship with Mausolus and Artemisia's other sister, Ada, who's this sort of cougar relationship. She obviously adores him. And she said she's going to make him a little sort of sweet pastries before he goes into battle. And he goes, I got to battle on an empty stomach. Anyway, it's a hilarious relationship, but they become allies and Alexander helps get her back into power. So it was all going on in Halicarnassus. So next we go to Rhodes, the Island of Rhodes, and the Colossus. Possibly, I don't know, again, with the Hanging Gardens, do you think possibly

the most famous? Yes, that's right. Yeah, good point. We've all heard of that one for sure. We've definitely. Confusingly, we associate it with the Colosseum in Rome, and the Colosseum in Rome is indeed named after... Yes, is this the first Colossus? This is. So the one in Rhodes is the original Colossus. And it's the first time we hear of a giant statue being called a Colossus. And again, we use the word colossal the whole time. And this was nuts, frankly. It's a bronze statue of the sun god Helios, 108 feet tall, with the face of Alexander the Great, with legs that I actually don't think it was straddling the harbour. That's how it's always portrayed. If

you play any video games or look at any medieval... Yes, the ships come coming through the groin. They do. They do. Nice idea, but I think sadly impossible in engineering terms. A lot of metal workers have tried to work that out. I just don't think that would have been how it would have stood up. But as you said, I've travelled to all these sites. I genuinely can't write history unless I go to the place where it happened. And that's not just because I'm a nice little boat ride around the Eastern Mediterranean, although, you know, of course, well, I feel incredibly lucky to be able to do that. But it's a really good example with Rhodes where you think, where was this statue? You know, we've got to try to understand where this colossal statue was. And if you sail into Rhodes and you look at the top of Rhodes Old Town, then where

the sanctuary of Helios, the sun god Helios, and this was a statue of the sun god Helios, where the sanctuary is right on the top of the hill of Rhodes, where the Helian games were played. If the statue had stood there, it would look like it was straddling the two harbours. Clever. So that's what you'd see as you came in. So I reckon that's where it was.

But I would not have got that unless I hadn't done that boat trip. This is true of all of these sites, but it is worth remembering that if there was a hundred foot tall bronze statue anywhere in the world now we'd think it was bonkers we live in a world of ridiculous mega projects structures and dams and buildings and people building dubai whatever like yeah we still think so what did they think in those days it must have been absolutely bonkers i know i know i mean and that's why they end up on the list, because people all talked about them. You've got to go and see this.

People went, and actually, if you think about it, basically, these are all the biggest size matters, definitely, in the Seven Wonders list. Everybody was amazed. And there's a very beautiful thing about the Colossus of Rhodes is that it's a kind of testament to diplomacy. So there'd been this terrible siege of Rhodes, bitter hundreds and thousands of people dying in a terrible way. And basically the world, kind of almost like a sort of pre-UN UN, got together and went, hang on, this is ridiculous. We can't have fellow Greeks slaughtering each other like this. Why can't we try diplomacy? So they managed to stop the siege through diplomacy. And as a kind of act of peace, we're told that the siege engines

and some of the weapons were melted down to turn into this statue. Oh, that's cool. It's cool, isn't it? And what date of that? So it's around 280. Okay. That kind of time, 290, 280, again, BCE.

But it only lasts for 50 years. Well, I'm not surprised. No, there's an earthquake. Straight over. Straight over, yeah. But okay, you can see the sanctuary today. You can see the sanctuary where I think, but you know, I'm ready surprised. No, there's an earthquake and that all troubles me. Straight over. Straight over, yeah. But okay, you can see the sanctuary today. You can see the sanctuary where I think, but you know, I'm ready to be corrected,

but that's where I think it's good. Be a brave person does that. Okay, so what's next? So the final one is the lighthouse of Alexandria, the great Pharos lighthouse, which doesn't appear in all of the earlier lists, but I think that's partly because Alexandria was where the people who were writing the lists were based. So it was almost like-

Well, there's that one out the back. There's that one, exactly. It was almost that kind of centre. And then really randomly, we have this thing with a lot of the documents of these lists. They finish in the middle of chapter six. So we don't hear what the seventh was. It's really, really weird. It's just this kind of chance, lack of survival of the final chapter. But again, so the lighthouse of Alexandria was three times the size of the Colossus Road. Mind-blowing. It was extraordinarily high. This beacon that welcomed ships into the harbour of Alexandria, which was an incredible place where, as you know, people had to bring papyrus rolls of knowledge as a kind of docking tax. So it's this city that absolutely privileged

wisdom. So it was a kind of beacon of light in all kinds of ways, and a very practical lighthouse beacon as well, because they're very perilous, the seas around there. So sailors really needed help. I mean, yeah, so that would really function. You'd have seen that along, I mean, obviously people would have argued the religious sites were functional as well, but that one, you would have, it would have been like, oh, thank goodness for that. You steered towards it. Definitely. Definitely. I mean, again, there are lots of stories about it. People said, oh, you can see the beam of the lighthouse of Alexandria as far away as Constantinople.

Not true, but I think it would have shone out and they had some kind of, basically we know that it was big enough to get lines and lines of donkeys or mules taking fuel for the fire up and there were these reflective metal sort of sheets so i mean it would it would have glanced out so the little mules going up a sort of spiral yes that's cool it's very cool and how long that lasts well that's not cool we have to say that's not cool because that's because it's burden it's using animals a beast of burden it's very interesting engineering yes exactly not prayers for the beast exactly not that we do now if you go to alexandria now you can see some of the original blocks of stone so like these beautiful red granite from aswan there's a few bits and at the bottom of the sea so on a clear day

you can see bits in the alex Alexandria Bay. So that was built after, well, obviously after the founding of Alexandria and sort of post-Alexandria, the great, how long did it last? So that lasts until at least 1303 CE, AD.

I know. I mean, it was really, really, really, really well built. Basically, all the best brains in the world that could travel to Alexandria did. So you've got a lot of brain power there.

And again, it's an earthquake that eventually kind of shakes it down. But we have these fantastic descriptions, particularly from Arabic writers who go and tour around it, do these kind of detailed annotations right up to the 14th century. Well, that was a tour de force. Lastly, though, tell us why, in this crazy world, why should we go and visit Wonders Day, whether or not it's these ancient wonders or more modern wonders? What is it that you, because you're so famous for this, what is it that you derive from this? Something I sometimes struggle to articulate, but I just love it like you do, and you're much smarter than me.

So why do you seek these things out, and why do you want to go and be near them? I mean, I think there's something very instinctive about it, because they're incarnations of a kind of burning will and hope. So this kind of absolute certainty that you can make the impossible happen. And that's something that we do as a species. We have this really busy, brilliant imagination and we kind of imagine the impossible and then we make it happen. And they prove that we can make the impossible, inverted commas, happen. And I think also just the fact that they're these sites

that encapsulate kind of a collective shared experience of the possibilities beyond the individual, the fact that we're a hyper-sociable, hyper-collaborative species and you can't make something like that unless you collaborate with people so it kind of reminds us what makes us us that's what i was hoping for a brilliant answer that i can now copy anytime anyone asks me thank you bethany hughes i'm stealing that your brilliant book is called the seven wonders of the ancient world yeah thank you so lovely to chat about it Chattabasin.