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WE are third-year students from the University of the East, and we are taking up B.S. Accountancy. In your article last July 18, 1998, you featured the wonders of the world and lovely tourist spots. We would like to have more information since we don't have the money to travel and visit those places. We hope you have the time to answer the following questions: 1. What makes those places wonderful (the wonders of the world)? 2. What attracts people to visit the beautiful tourist spots?--E. Agustin and M. J. Miranda, N. Vicencio, Niugan, Malabon, Metro Manila I did enumerate the wonders of the Ancient and modern world last July, but did not describe any of them. My sincere apologies--I took for granted that they are so well-known that no more characterization is necessary. Following then are short descriptions of each ancient spots selected by the Byzantine mathematician Philon 150 years before the birth of Christ. I borrow liberally from "The Book of Lists" by David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace (New York: Bantam, 1977). The seven wonders of the ancient world are: 1. The Great Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt was a royal tomb in c. 2600 B.C., and is the only surviving wonder today. This burial tomb of Pharoah Cheops was made up of 2.3 million blocks of stone, some of them weighing 2 1/2 tons. 481 feet tall, this pyramid located in Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo, has a base width of 755 feet on each side, "large enough to enclose London's Westminster Abbey, Rome's St. Peter's and Milan's and Florence's main cathedrals." 2. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon in Iraq were built in 600 B.C. by King Nebuchadnezzar for his wife, a Medean princess, who was homesick for the lush foliage of her native land. The gardens were contained in a square building 400 feet high, with "five terraces supported by arches climbing upward, each densely planted with grass, flowers and fruit trees irrigated from below by pumps manned by slaves on oxen. Inside and beneath the gardens, the queen held court amid the vegetation and artificial rain." By 79 A.D. though, the hanging gardens were already eroded. 3. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia in Greece was made by Phidias some time after 432 B.C. Made of ivory and gold plates set on wood, this 40-foot high statue was contained in--where else--the temple of the god Zeus (incidentally, where the Olympic Games were held every four years). "Zeus had jewels for eyes, sat on a golden throne, feet resting on a footstool of gold." It was destroyed shortly after the second century A.D. 4. The Temple of Diana at Ephesus in Turkey was Philon's favorite. Built after 350 B.C. to honor Diana, the goddess of hunting and fertility, the temple was 225 feet wide and 525 feet long, supported by 127 marble columns 60 feet high. Its history was quite interesting: the kings of many Asian kingdoms contributed to its construction, but it was wrecked by invaders and rebuilt three times before the Goths destroyed it once and for all in 262 A.D. The English archaeologist J.T. Wood was able to unearth fragments of the original columns in 1874, after more than a decade of hard work. 5. The Tomb of King Mausolus at Halicarnassus in Turkey was so splendid that the term "mausoleum" is used today in its honor. The story behind it is a poignant one. "King Mausolus, conqueror of Rhodes, ruled over the Persian province of Caria. His queen, Artemisia, was also his sister. When he died in 353 B.C., he was cremated and his grieving widow drank his ashes in wine. As a memorial to him, she determined to build the most beautiful tomb in the world at Halicarnassus, now called Bodrum. She searched Greece for the greatest architects and sculptors and by 350 B.C. the memorial was completed. There was a rectangular sculptured marble tomb on a platform, then 36 golden-white Ionic columns upon which sat an architrave, which in turn held a pyramid topped by a bronzed chariot with statues of Mausolus and Artemisia." It lasted for 1,900 years. To be continued |