THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD, Paul Curtis [chromebook ebook reader txt] 📗

he would probably have been completely forgotten.
It was three years after Maussollos death around 350 BC that The Mausoleum was completed and For 16 centuries, it remained in good condition until the roof and colonnade was damaged by an earthquake.
When the Knights of St John invaded the region in the early fifteenth century they built a huge crusader castle and when it was fortified in 1494 it was stones from the Mausoleum that they.
Over the next 30 years almost every block of stone and marble had been used by the crusaders for construction.
The great crusader castle still stands in Bodrum and the mausoleum’s polished stone and marble blocks are easy to see in the walls of the structure.
At the site of the Mausoleum only the foundations remain while some of the sculptures and parts of frieze are on display at the British Museum in London.
So the name of the unremarkable King Maussollos lives on all around the world where in every city families continue to place loved ones in tombs or more accurately mausoleums.


THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES

The Colossus of Rhodes was the youngest of the seven ancient wonders with the 12 year construction being completed in 282 BC.
The 110 ft colossus was cast in bronze and stood on a huge white marble plinth on the eastern promontory of the Mandraki harbor by the entrance of the port on the beautiful Mediterranean island of Rhodes and contrary to popular belief the Colossus did not straddle the mouth of the harbor.
The huge bronze statue of the sun god Helios was cast by the Rhodian sculptor Chares of Lindos to celebrate the lifting of the siege of Rhodes by the Antigonids of Macedonia.
Not only was the colossus the youngest wonder it was also the most short lived only surviving for 56 years before it was felled by a severe earthquake in 226 BC that badly damaged the city.
The statue lay broken in ruins on the ground where it fell for almost a thousand years until the Arabs invaded Rhodes in 654 AD who sold the bonze remains to a Syrian Jew who had them transported home reportedly on 900 camels.
Although it physically survived for little more than half a century such was the statues magnificence it survived in people’s hearts and minds sufficiently to elevate it to become one of the seven wonders.
Even though we have no way of knowing the exact appearance of the Colossus it has none the less influenced other great artists over the centuries such as the great French sculptor Auguste Bartholdi best known for the Statue of Liberty.

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Publication Date: 10-05-2010

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