Top Highlights

• All seven of the wonders were standing at the same time for less than 60 years and, of the seven listed above, only the Great Pyramid exists today.
• and even after that date the seven constituents of the list were not firmly fixed until the arrival of mass printing and popular education in the last century. (ix-x)
• Even ancient writers disagreed on what wonders should appear on a list, but it does not seem any would have denied the magnificence of the seven standards recognized today, all of which were raised at sites around the Mediterranean between c. 2560-280 BCE.
• If the Hanging Gardens did exist, they are said to have been destroyed by an earthquake sometime after the 1st century CE.
• According to the historian Theophanes, the bronze ruins were eventually sold to "a Jewish merchant of Edessa" around the year 654, who carried them away on 900 camels to be melted down.

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