The Wonders of the Ancient World remain cornerstones of human culture, and the concept is regularly referred to in casual conversation as well as in the academic sphere. But how many people can actually name all seven wonders – and then, how many can imagine how they might actually have figured before the turn of the common era?
For a start, six of the ancient wonders have vanished – and that’s if they existed in the first place. The original list of wonders was compiled as a kind of travel guide by Antipater of Sidon, a 2nd-century-BCE Greek poet, and it seems unlikely that he himself would have had the means to visit all these landmarks (and, presumably, others that didn’t make the shortlist) in his lifetime. Some of his choices – such as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – were probably based on the writings of others, which may not have been reliable or correctly interpreted.
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