How the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Works, Part I

Long before slide rulers and pocket protectors, civilizations across the world used their noggins to build some impressive structures. Almost all have crumbled to ruins over the millennium, but thanks to the earliest tourists, we admire them still today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland's We're coming to see you
guys this January. It's coming up soon, isn't it, Chuck.
That's right. It's our annual visit now to San Francisco
Sketch Fest, for my money, the best comedy festival around,
and they have us back kind of every year now,
which is great. Oh yeah, it's an annual tradition these days.
And we're gonna be there on Sunday, January fourteenth at

(00:23):
the Castro Theater. And there are tickets left, but they're
going fast. Portland's you guys are sold out, have been
for a while. Hats off to you guys in Seattle.
We're coming to see you guys January, and there's even
fewer tickets left than there are for San Francisco. That's right.
That's in the More Theater and you can get all
the ticket information at s y s K live dot com.

(00:43):
Are live touring home on the web, so so happy
holidays and hurry up. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck

(01:04):
Bryan there. Wait, wait, I know you thought I was
gonna say Jerry, but you're wrong because it's Noel today,
guest producer Noel, and that makes this stuff you should know.
That's how you doing. I'm good. Noel. Who is the
the eighth Wonder of the ancient world? Yes, and the
modern world too. He spans he spans space and time. Yes,

(01:27):
like the Colossus span the harbor of Rhodes or did it? Uh,
it didn't. We're gonna learn a lot, Chuck. I'm so
excited about this one. Oh yeah, these two? You mean
these two? That's right? Um? Yeah, I hit upon it
and I'm like, this is a two parter right here,
and I can't believe we haven't done this already. Like
everybody knows about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient world,

(01:48):
but nobody knows about the seven Wonders of the ancient world.
You know what I mean. Nobody knows about them at all.
It's like a perfect, perfect stuff you should know episode
if you ask me times two a sequel, that's right.
So um, to get started, we we probably would. Let's
just give a brief overview of the seven Wonders. Okay,

(02:09):
let's do should you just want to name them? Yeah,
and we're gonna we're gonna do them chronologically too, Okay,
is that how they're listed for me? Yeah? Okay, Well,
then first up we have the the the Great Pyramid,
the Great Pyramid of Giza, right, and then after that,
again chronologically, there's the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and apparently

(02:33):
there used to be it used to be the Walls
of Babylon in addition to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon,
but they were removed later. Uh. And then what's next, chuck,
the Temple of our artemies at here we go the
temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Uh, either one Artemis at

(02:57):
Ephesus nice man um. And then there's a statue of
Zeus at Olympia, which I have to admit I had
not heard of before I had heard of that one.
I think, I think a couple of these. I felt
bad because maybe I had disregarded some of the Seven
Wonders of the ancient world because a couple of these
were news to me. Oh yeah, okay, so that one

(03:18):
was for me. The Mausoleum at hell Carnassis was also
new for me too. Yeah. Colossus of Rhodes old hat sure,
everybody knows that one. Come on, yeah, Like, I've got
Colossus of Rhodes underwear on right now. I know you
where you got that whole style where you wear the
sag and you show your underwear too, that's right. Uh.
And then finally the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which is I

(03:42):
think I had heard of that one. But when when
you put these all together, it is not. It is
no small list, no, and and so this list, like
you may wonder who put this list together, you know, uh,
maybe Jacques Cousteau, maybe um bertrand Russell, who knows. It's
actually way, way way older than that. Um This list

(04:05):
goes back to the time of ancient Greece. Actually, and
they're not entirely certain who wrote the first one, but
there were several people who kind of took the list
and and added to it or subtracted to it. And
there's a bunch of candidates for who who had written
the list, But the one I saw that's pretty roundly
considered probably the first one to have written a list

(04:28):
is Diodorus Cecilius or Diodorus of Sicily. Yeah. And the
reason that these lists were made was because at the
time Greece had done a pretty good job of subjugating
a lot of the areas around it, like Turkey, Persia, Babylon,
and these places were now safe for Greeks to go visit.

(04:50):
And because the Greeks were wealthy and had a lot
of leisure time, they actually became some of the world's
first tourists, international tourists. And that was basically the you know,
the list of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world was, hey,
you should go visit these things, go to these places
and see these things, and so some people would go
do I think it was probably a point of pride

(05:11):
to be able to say I've seen all seven what
they called the amata. Yeah, theiamata translates as things to
be seen, or if you want to get even more modern,
it's literally like here are your musties if you're going
on vacation. It was kind of like the first travel
website kind of, but it was just a list. Yeah,

(05:31):
it wasn't on the web yet. That would take a
couple of hundred years, at least a couple of hundred
because these guys they did live in like the third, fourth,
fifth centuries BC, right, Yeah, so over time, this list,
like I said, it was, Um, it started out I
think with um, the Great Pyramid has always been on there,

(05:51):
hanging gardens have always been on there, Temple of Artemis,
Statue Zeus, the Mausoleum, the classes of and then I
think the lighthouse at Alexandria may not have been on
and it was the wall of the walls of Babylon,
and they said, we've already got bab blond covered, you guys,
this lighthouse is to be seen. So it was eventually

(06:12):
compiled and that list. So the list itself is pretty
ancient too. Yeah. In Babylon, if they had one motto,
it was come for the gardens, stay for the wall,
for sure, you know. Yeah. Um. So out of all
of those, the the only ones that are still around

(06:32):
actually is the Great Pyramid. Yeah. I mean there are
bits of some of these and various museums, most notably
the British Museum. Yeah. And there are some ruins on
the site still yeah, here and there, some some ruins
underwater here and there. Um. I used to have you
been to a lot of ruins? I've been to Pompeii,

(06:55):
you me and I went. It was kind of the
fulfillment of a lifelong dream. Yeah. You have you been
to Pompeii? Yeah? What ruins? Have you been to? Just
your your your garden variety ruins like uh, in Rome,
that kind of thing. Oh yeah, man, the Colosseum, Yeah,
that was something to be seen. Huh yeah, I mean

(07:16):
it's part of me. Like when I go to see ruins,
it's um, it's really cool because I try and take
myself back to that time. But then when I stand
back and look at it and it's in its current surroundings,
sometimes you get a little sad because there's a lot
of people like chewing gum and on their phone and stuff. Yeah,
you know, yeah man, and especially well we'll talk about

(07:39):
the Pyramids. Uh, but you know have you have you
seen the famous pizza hut pictures? No, what are you
talking about? Well, you know that the Pyramids. Oh is
that a photo shopped? No, it's not photo shopped. The
Pyramids back right up or I guess front, right up
to Cairo. H. So you always see the of image

(08:00):
looking at the Pyramids from Cairo. If you see the
image looking the other way, there's like a city right
button up against it. In an ancient Egyptian in the
foreground turns of the camera with a single tear coming down.
But he was really Italian. Now there's there, there's a
literally a pizza hut kfc um, which you could do

(08:24):
worse facing you could be a burger kid facing the
Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Sphinx. And in one
of the windows of the pizza hut there's the Pizza
Hut logo. And if you stand inside that Pizza Hut,
you can take a photograph of that Pizza Hut cap
and logo kind of sitting on top of the pyramid.

(08:45):
And uh so, you know, there are all kinds of
photos now of Pizza Hut, and it's just it's sort
of you know, it's not it speaks of the times,
you know, which is what I talked about being a
little s add there's a pizza hut. There's a freaking
Kentucky Fried Chicken yards from the Great Pyramids. Yeah, I

(09:11):
know how I feel about that. I guess that's well,
I think it's pretty clear how you feel about it.
You don't like it, I don't know. But I mean
you can't say, like, no, what are you gonna have
a restaurant here? You can't do anything it's just it
is what it is, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's
not like you're gonna live without KFC for a second.
That's true. I would challenge some KFC if I was
over there, the very famous one by the Pern I

(09:34):
know what you mean. Though, Sure, you know it was
a little weird, But at the same time you're like, wow,
you know this thing was built by slaves who died working.
So maybe the KFC is actually preferable in some ways,
you know. Yeah, And maybe that's what I should feel
sad about. Just feel sad about both. Okay, so let's
go to the Great Pyramids of Giza and there's actually

(10:02):
if you go, um, oh, we're gonna really wear out
the way Back Machine huh yeah this and gased it up.
It's ready, um, and I got a new air fresher
and you like it. I'm not big on the pineapple,
but it's all right, pineapple. We can swap it out
for the second part. Okay, Okay, So, um, we're gonna
get in the Way Back Machine and if you go,
we're actually just gonna go back a couple of days

(10:23):
because we're going to modern times. But if we're gonna
look at the Great Pyramid at Giza. There's actually just
one of them that's on the list of the seven
Wonders of the Ancient World. It's one particular one, the
Pyramid of Kufu or Chaops is what the Greeks call them,
and his is the biggest pyramid of them all. Yeah,

(10:45):
I mean there are more than, uh more than or
exactly eighty pyramids scattered across Egypt, uh various sizes and there.
Imagine they're all pretty great to go look at. But
the big daddy of them all, like you said, is
Cufu k h u f U, and it is. It
is the one you know that you can get with

(11:06):
the pizza hut cap on top right. It's one. It's
the main dude there with the three pyramids with the
sphinx standing by watching over Kentucky Fried Chicken to make
sure nobody robs it. Well, it actually would work really
well for that pizza hut cap because it's the one
of the three. You always see the three together. The

(11:28):
other two are the Pyramid of menku Are and the
other one is Pyramid of Coffree, and they're smaller, but
if you'll notice those two have points. The biggest one,
the Pyramid of Kufu has a flat top, like it
just knew that that pizza hut was coming in four
thousand years right. But the so we know so little

(11:49):
about this pyramid that they're they're not entirely certain if
this is true or not. But there's a pretty widespread
theory that um, that pyramid was actually unfinished. Oh really,
they couldn't bring this final stones, huh. That maybe everybody
involved died or there was a change in dynasty or something.
But they think and there's other evidence we'll talk about,
but it seems like it might have been unfinished. Didn't

(12:12):
Napoleon toot off the nose of the sphinx? Or is that?
Is that an old wives tale that was isis? Okay?
Probably so took. One of the things that's so great
about this pyramids just how massive it is, right, It's
it's tall. It's very tall. It's like, um, four hundred
and eighty feet tall, which that's that's a substantial height

(12:34):
if you ask me. Yeah, I mean for a long
time it was one of the tallest or the tallest
building in the world, which is amazing. Yeah, until the
fourteenth century when Lincoln Cathedral in England finally topped it.
So for almost for about thirty four hundred years, it
stood as the tallest structure man made, human made structure
in the world. It's hard to believe. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

(12:55):
And then it's side. Each side at the base is
about seven one hundred and fifty five ft long. There's
just massive, massive structures. Yeah. And you know how I
was talking about the fact that it's uh, it just
butt right up against Cairo. Um at least it's not surrounding, uh,
like the city is not just on all sides. So

(13:16):
if you do look at it from the city, it's
on the Giza plateau and that is still you know,
I'm not sure how far it goes back, but you know,
a nice wide aerial shots. Looks like most of that
plateau is pretty preserved at least. So so this the
whole thing. The pyramid was built um sometime during the

(13:37):
reign of King Kufu appropriately enough, Um and the king
rain from I think sixty six. So it's pretty old
pyramid and it's it's you know, and it's made of
just a ton of blocks cut blocks, right. So one
of the things like if you go on some sites,

(13:59):
uh you'll find people who's just kind of poopoo the
pyramids there is just like it's just pile piles of
stone really, but it's actually pretty clever engineering, especially considering
how long ago, um it was built. It's not just
a pilot stone. There's a lot of corridors and shafts
and rooms, and the engineers had to take into account
where to place these things so that they structure didn't

(14:21):
collapse in on itself as it you know aged um.
So it is a pretty pretty big feet of engineering
just in addition to its size, you know. Yeah, I
mean there are more than two million pile of stones.
Who says that some people online? Yea more than two
million limestone and granite blocks, the weight of about six

(14:42):
and a half million tons, And these things are engineered
such that they that it's about a fifty one degree
slope on each side, and each side is faces exactly
to the four cardinal directions. So it's pretty impressive. Yeah,
that's no accident. It's not like it just happened to
land that way. It was all done very much on purpose.

(15:03):
These rocks fit together, the blocks really really tightly, less
than a fiftieth of an inch separating them. So that
right there is why these things are still standing, you know, right,
And so when you look at the pyramid, it's actually
so I think, I said fot, I think it's fo
at its height originally it was four ft and it

(15:25):
was also encased in limestone. Um, well, did it originally
have the point then? I don't think so, because I
think they would. I think there's some other stuff that
suggests that was unfinished too. Um. I don't know if
I ever had the point. I don't know if anybody
knows for certain, but it seems like it hadn't been
put on yet, like an inscription at the top that's

(15:46):
just not quite done. Well, that's one of the things.
That's one of the reasons why they think that it
wasn't done, because it's lacking inscriptions that other pyramids have,
like in aces, doesn't have no more like we dedicate
this to the sun god raw in the name of
King Kufu and um, right, yeah, the usual. So it's

(16:07):
lacking any kind of inscriptions. The king's burial chamber, the
actual sarcophagus, which is just this huge, massive stone that
they actually built the chamber around. It's not like they
built the room and then imported this thing was it's
bigger than any entrance to the room, but it's it's
kind of rough, it's got some cut marks still showing,

(16:28):
and it was obviously not finished. And then the other
reason why they think that it wasn't ever finished, Chuck,
was that there's no evidence that anyone ever found any treasure,
loot bodies, anything. It's like, yeah, it's like it's this dead,
empty place that has never been used. Ironically too and

(16:49):
tomb dead people into it was just never finished either.
So that's one theory that it was finished and never used.
Another one is that it actually was looted and it
was looted so thoroughly that um, there's just not even
evidence of it being looted. And then the yeah, it's
kind of impressive. And then the last one, uh, is

(17:10):
that um, it is finished, and that all of these
shafts and like walkways and crawl spaces that we found
are actually meant to distract you from the real places
where the tombs are that we've just not found yet.
Couldn't they find those? By now? Though not necessarily, they're
still finding like secret rooms and passages that are hidden

(17:33):
from view. They're just starting now apply the technology to
seeing through stone. Literally, just get up the X ray
camera right and just stand at pizza hut, zoom in
right and just see what's in that thing. You don't
even need that. You can send off for some of
those X ray specs from a comic book exactly. I
don't know why, and no one else has thought of

(17:55):
this yet, So I have a question. Then they said
it's originally covered in limestone in that case, sing, does
that mean that originally it was it was not in
a step pattern and it was just smooth on the outside. Yes,
How in the world did they get up there? Would
they just slide back down? Well, the answer that it's
obvious it was aliens that helped them. That's right, That's

(18:18):
that's it. That's the answer. I have no idea, Chuck,
that's a really good question to tell you. Maybe they
maybe there's a passageway inside right that they can come
at the top, You come out the top, pull the
limestone up into place, and then slide down and start
the process over again. Interesting. But if you want to
see kind of probably what it looked like, just go

(18:39):
look at the Iron Maid in Power Slave album covered
it's kind of like smoothly covered. It's not stepped really.
I mean there's steps, but they're they're meant to be
like a staircase. It's not steps on the outside. Oh yeah,
that makes sense. So yeah. So in the fourteenth century
there was an earthquake and as you'll see, that becomes
a pattern here with a lot of these ancient uh

(19:00):
wonders that would become ruins because of earthquakes. Um. You know,
most of these in the Middle East. It's a volatile
area tectonically speaking, so um, you know, over the course
of thousands of years, things are going to tumble over time,
you know, And it is what happened in this case.

(19:21):
It's basically earthquakes, earthquake, earthquake, earthquake, over and over again.
It's the great leveler of monuments, right. Yeah. But the
Cufoo Pyramids stood. It was stood that earthquake because it's
just more than a pile of rox. It is so
big and so grand and so heavy, I guess, and
probably a little luck came involved as well. Yeah, but
it was also really good engineering too, for sure. But

(19:44):
the the earthquake did get it in that it did
level Cairo and they went out to the pyramid and
took the limestone off of it and used it to
rebuild Cairo. Yeah, and that's another common refrain of notices.
A lot of these would be toppled, and then people
would come in and say, let's use this stuff for
like actual for the city, yeah, instead of just some

(20:05):
monument to a ruler. Yeah. And if you are you
ever gonna go see the pyramids? I was. It was
sort of on the old bucket list until I saw
the pizza hut thing today. Oh man, that's funny. And
I read an article where someone was like, don't do it,
just don't go really, Yeah, but I mean that's just
one person's opinion. We also had people that said the

(20:26):
the northern lights aren't that impressive. Yeah, and that one
one person. Yeah, we got shouted down for that. Oh
my god. It still happens from time to time. Yeah. Um.
So if you do go the chuck the way that
you go into the pyramid, as far as you can,
it's actually and no one's figured out how to go
in the way that it was intended. It's that that

(20:48):
entrance is lost to history as far as I know.
The entrance that you use is actually a carved tunnel
through the pyramid from the ninth century from this guy
named Abdullah all Mama who oversaw the a looting expedition,
and he's one of the reasons why they think that
it was unused because even back in the ninth century,
this guy couldn't find anything in the sealed pyramid interesting.

(21:13):
And you gain access to that through the bathroom of
pizza with your X ray specs. You want to take
a break, Yeah, let's do that. Let's do it now. Hey, everybody,

(21:47):
we're back. Yes, we are no more poopo ng of
modern things next to old things. I sound like an
old man grabbing, grabbing along. That's all right, man uh.
And this next one is interesting hanging gardens of Babylon,
because this is one that that may not have even existed. Um,
these are this is the we're going chron chronologically, like

(22:09):
you said, so the second oldest if it was real,
built in about the sixth century. And obviously these don't
exist anymore in any shape or form. But the deal
is that these this was in like modern day Iraq,
and they were gardens that it was really about the building. Um,

(22:31):
it's kind of like the first big botanical garden it
wasn't just things hanging from the sky. It was plants,
uh and trees and everything planted in this grand, big
building that had water flowing through it. Yeah, in the desert. Yeah.
So if it was in Babylon, it would have been
about ninety miles or kilometers, you can't remember which one

(22:52):
outside of Baghdad modern day Baghdad, right. And if it
wasn't Babylon, they think that maybe King Nebuchaannezzar built the gardens.
This is according to legend, at least he built the
gardens for his wife Amatists, who was from the north
where it's much more fertile and green, and apparently amateurs
mr her homeland, so the king built her the hanging gardens.

(23:16):
And again this is in the desert, so to to.
And Babylon was a magnificent place in and of itself
again like their walls were once on this list of
seven Wonders to go see right. Um. But supposedly it
was just this enormous building, tiered with huge walkways, and

(23:39):
they they planted it with dirt and trees. And there's
a a quote that said it was thickly planted with
trees of every kind that by their great size or
charm could give pleasure to the beholder. That was Diodorus
who said that, and he was writing like for a
while after um, they would have been built. But the

(24:01):
idea that you could just walk down tree line avenues
in this building in the desert, it's pretty neat. Yeah,
I mean, I get this inset. In today's terms, it
would be like a sort of a nice office park. Yeah,
I guess now we just take them for granted. But
back then it was a big deal. You didn't have
these structures with all these plants in the middle of
the desert like this. Um, it was along the Euphrates

(24:23):
River most likely, and we're talking about I mean, it
looks any of the pictures that you've seen, it really
looks like it was something else about seventy five ft tall,
like you said, tiered. Uh, this brick structure with plants
and waterfalls coming off of it and twenty two ft
thick walls four feet wide and all all manner of

(24:46):
flora all over the place and irrigated from the Euphrates River.
Right if if again, it wasn't Babylon. But there's a
couple of reasons why that whole thing is um. Why
it's question right. So for on the one hand, there's
no evidence of it, no one said this is where
it was, um, And other people say, well, of course
you can't say that these were plants, these were gardens.

(25:09):
There's not gonna be any trace of it left. Maybe
you know, we found the building and we don't even
realize it. Um. The reason why they think it might
not have actually existed in Babylon is because, first of all,
King Nebuchadnezzar loved to boast about all of the stuff
he did. He left inscriptions in cuneiform basically everywhere. He's like,

(25:30):
you know, uh, let out like a thirty second belch today,
King Nebuchadnezzar, he would have stuff like this inscribed. Right.
I can't think of anyone today who I could like
him that too, But yes, right, exactly, like he was
one of a kind. No ruler ever has bore any resemblance.
But he never mentioned the gardens of Babylon and any

(25:51):
cuneiform tablet that's ever been discovered. Yeah, he did not
tout it in writing, which is very very usual. And
then there's another UM guy, Herod Herodotus UM. He was
a a Storian from Greece, and he wrote a basically
a monograph on Babylon a hundred years after Nebuchadnezzar, and

(26:17):
he didn't mention the hanging gardens at all. No gardens,
no legend of a garden, no talk of a garden,
no garden. I visited nothing about gardens. And the idea
that he would have passed over one of the great
wonders of the ancient world when he's writing about the
town that contains it, it's pretty questionable. So some people say, well,

(26:37):
maybe it wasn't in Babylon. Maybe it was in another
place in Assyria. Yeah, maybe, uh, the Assyrian queen built it.
Maybe the ruler of Nineveh, whose name and these names
I just love kicking through all these names, as if
Nebuchadnezzar wasn't good enough. Uh senac arib it's great, the
ruler of Nineveh may have built them. Um. I had

(27:01):
always thought these were real, But I tend to think
that maybe uh Nebucadnezzar didn't have anything to do with it,
because it doesn't You're right, I don't. I don't think
it makes any sense that it was not mentioned in
any of these accounts, right, because they just and it
wasn't just Nebuchadnezzar all all this stuff like keeping records.
It was all very new. It was like the hot

(27:21):
thing to do, you know, And so they wouldn't just say, oh,
by the way, we we failed to mention we built
this what would eventually be a wonder of the world,
but we just didn't think it was important enough to
write down. Yeah, and this this is from Nebuchadnezzar, who
used to leave like inscriptions in the blocks of buildings
saying built by Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of Babylon from C to C.

(27:42):
Even if he didn't build it, he would have been
right exactly, he would have mentioned it. Right. So if
if it was in ninevah Um, it would have been
close to present day Mosel in northern Iraq, right. And
if it was in ninevah then we've actually already found
the gardens of Babylon be because they they discovered a

(28:04):
structure that was clearly and something similar to what the
Gardens of Babylon have described. It was a structure that
m had irrigation brought to it, that used water screws
to pump water, remember from our Archimedes death ray episode,
um to pump it upward to this thing. So we
found a garden basically a botanical garden structure in ninevah.

(28:27):
So if it is there, we now know where the
hanging gardens were. Yeah, and that is the idea, is
that they took this water up them from the Euphrates
into these big holding tanks, uh, these big cisterns essentially
on top, and then it would use a very clever
system of of gravity to then feed down and irrigate

(28:48):
all the different areas as as it flowed downward. Right,
Really something to see. I can't imagine what it must
have been like like, especially there, can't, you know, kind
of disappointed now I have to admit why because it
doesn't sound like it was it was there or maybe
even real. Yeah, but it could have been a ninevah.

(29:08):
I think it was real. I think it was a ninevah.
And yeah, because if you if you look at the
if you look at some I think it was Diodorius.
Diodorus is writing from Sicily, the guy from Sicily. He
says that they were hanging gardens, but they were built
by a Syrian king. So I'm pretty sure. That's that's it.

(29:29):
So they were real, Chuck, and we know where they are. Um.
And then you want to do one more for this episode. Yeah,
let's take a break and we'll come back and finish
up with the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, right for this? Okay, Chuck,

(30:07):
and we're back this one. This might be my faith.
Do you have a favorite one yet? Uh? My favorite
one will be in the next episode. Okay, cool. How's
that for a tease. That's a great tease. This one's
pretty good though, because this took, by all accounts, over
a hundred and twenty years to build and just one
night to go bye bye. Yeah, which is how it

(30:29):
goes sometimes, especially when there's someone with pyromania involved. Yeah, exactly. So, uh,
Ephesus thesis, Thesis, That's where I'm going with. How about you,
Artemis at Ephesus. I think it sounds better. I think
that might be it. So if thesis is Um. It's
actually a pretty well known city of the ancient world,

(30:51):
and I think it's still around in some some way,
shape or form. But it was It used to be
a fabulously wealthy ports city in Um what's today Turkey,
but it was under the control basically of Greece, and
from what I understand, it was allowed to remain an
independent city state, but it was still like that was

(31:12):
at the pleasure of Greece and then later Rome. But
they managed to be an important place of um finance
and law too. I think that's where a lot of
the courts were was in Ephesus. But it was also
well known for all of its magic cults. Right, Yes,
that's where the magician's mansion was located back in the

(31:35):
ancient world. Yes, so when they call it the city
of magic, they mean that literally, right, not magic city.
It's but it had like a quarter of a million
residents at its peaker at the time when the Temple
of Artemis was in full swing, and it was originally
built this temple, this massive, huge temple um back in
five b C. By again named King Croesus. They think

(32:00):
that that might be old King Cole Did you know that?
Oh really? Huh, that's what I've always heard, so King
Crosus of Lydia. And this one, if you look it
up under the images it is it looks like you're
you're kind of classic Greek temple. It's rectangular, uh, that
it measures about three fifty by one eight feet. And

(32:24):
the thing about this one that is is uh really
jumped out at me were the columns and there are
more than a hundred columns and their marble and it's
not just like everything had columns. So that's that's all fine,
and well, these are enough with the columns. These are
the ionic architectural style columns. But these were like if

(32:44):
you look at it, there like the two rows of
columns on the front. To me, like the fact that
they doubled them up and offset them is just really
kind of striking looking. It is. It's gorgeous. And if
you're just the size of this thing to in length
or in depth, that's like one in the one in
uh more than one football field American football field, which

(33:08):
is this is a pretty good sized temple. It's it's
not as massive as you might think initially, but it's
still pretty big. Well, I mean, you gotta you have
to think all of this in ancient standards like today,
you look at a building the size of football field,
it's not that big of a deal, but it's still large.
But by those standards back then, it was enormous, right,

(33:29):
which I'm I'm I'm happy with saying it's massive. Put
on your ancient hats, folks. Plus also, let's also, um,
just the the ornate detail that was carved into the
structure in every single spot, it was pretty neat. And
then if you looked at the pediment of the temple
of the base, there was a door and two windows.
I believe the windows are on either side of the door.

(33:50):
That was not for you, Pion, that was for Artemis
to enter and leave her temple at her whim. That's right,
So Artemis herself, this is this is one of the
reasons by this is my favorite. Artemis herself was um
the Greek precursor to the Roman Diana. Okay, she was
the goddess of fertility of the hunt and I believed

(34:11):
the moon too right, And she was Apollo's twin sister.
She was the daughter of Zeus and Liedo, so she
was a pretty important deity. But she was kind of
cobbled together at the Temple of Artemis with an already
much much much older deity for the area Um and

(34:34):
her name was Sybil, and Sybil was based on an
ancient like fertility goddess from nine thousand years ago so
they took Sybil and they took Artemis, who basically represented
the same thing but to two different cultures, and they
put it together at this temple of Artemis at a thesis. Yeah,
I mean, we're talking about a statue. I don't think

(34:56):
we said that. Oh yeah, we No, we didn't. We
weren't talking about some kind of weird black voodoo, black magic. Right,
It's a statue built from gold, silver, ebony, and some
other stuff they had laying around, uh pull tabs from
tab cans. Sure, it was like a found object basically.

(35:17):
But this what's amazing about this one. You can actually
look up the statue even though uh, these are just
I don't know if where there ever pictures of it,
or is it's just called from I don't I don't know, man,
I'm not sure if it was just from writings or
if they do have it somewhere. Well, the cool thing
is is the statue has this row of bulbs hanging
from her body, and if you look at it looks

(35:38):
like she's wearing a a tunic made of avocados or
like water balloons. Sure, but what they are is up
for debate. Some people say, well, they're obviously breast. She's
a fertility goddess for it does It would make even
more sense if it weren't for the fact that Sybils
cult Um was known to castrate bulls as sacrifice, so

(36:03):
they think they were probably bull testicles, and the actually
the the Cibil cult high priests would castrate themselves so
they could be more like Sybil i e. Without testicles.
Remember our castration episode. Boy, we've talked about a lot
of stuff, Chuck, we have. So you've got this amazing, wonderful,

(36:30):
super cool statue in already amazing temple. And it's not
just me who thought that um that it was the
most amazing one of all. There was another guy who wrote.
His name was antipurav Sidon. He says, I, and this
is he's writing back in Um. You know, I guess

(36:52):
BC still because he was an ancient Greek. But he said, Um,
I have seen the walls of unbreachable Babylon. Remember that
was aginally went seven wonders along which chariots may race,
and the statue of Zeus by the river Alphaeus, the
hanging gardens, and the Colossus of the Sun, the great
Man made mountains of the lofty pyramids and the gigantic

(37:13):
tomb of Mossulus. But when I saw the sacred House
of Artemus reaching the clouds, the others paled. And that
was antipur of side on right. So he's saying, like,
I've seen all the wonders and to me, the Temple
of Artemis, that Efsis is the best. And he said,
you got to see it. She has bull testicles hanging
around her neck. You've never seen anything like. Uh. So

(37:36):
this thing was very I mean it was. It was
a legit tourist destination. People would travel long distances to
come to this place to see the statue in the temple,
and it was I mean, it's hard to believe, but
even back then they had. It boosted the local economy
and was literally supported by like gift shops selling little

(37:58):
statuette recreations of this thing. Yeah, and this was already
a wealthy area, so the tourism was so big that
that was still significant. The the replicas, the sale of
the replicas still made that much of a splash on
the local economy. That's how many were sold. Like you
go to New York City and you go to a
gift shop at the statue of Liberty and you buy

(38:23):
the little replica that exact thing was going on thousands
of years ago. Yeah, there's nothing new. I want one
of those. That would be great if if you're looking
for something for me for Christmas, an original replica from
the BC. Okay, um of of the Temple of Artemus,
I would love that, all right. So you just want

(38:44):
to give it's worth. That's priceless basically, Okay. Uh, so
this story gets a little more interesting here. You mentioned
a pyromaniac earlier. Uh, in July three BC, there was
a man name and we almost didn't know his name.
He wrote Stratus, who was a pyromaniac who burned this
temple down for the by all accounts, for the sole

(39:07):
reason of living in infamy. And uh there was a
decree that his name shall never be recorded at all,
so he wouldn't even earn that, but someone did. Well,
that was it was punishable upon death to even say
his name afterward. Yea, But yeah, a guy named um
who was it? THEO pompous was the one who wrote

(39:29):
it down, who recorded the act, and so um what's
his name? Harris Stratus was was recorded in infamy just
like he wanted he was. He was an ancient jerk,
I think, is what you'd call it. And the temple,
this is the story gets even better because the temple
burned h the same day that Alexander the Great was born,

(39:51):
which was amazing, and the temple. They would later rebuild
the temple, and Alexander said, yeah, you know what, why
don't I Why don't I pay for this thing? Um,
all you gotta do is, like, I don't know, just
throw my name on it somewhere, right, And they said, yeah,
that's nice, but we'll we'll just build it on her own, right.
But then they backed slowly out of the room, like, Okay,

(40:12):
that's okay, right, you're not gonna kill us, are Yeah?
And I couldn't find a bunch of places that said
that he wanted his name on the temple except for
our article, So I'm not sure that's true. Did you
see that in other places? I did not. Yeah, that's
that's so the story goes. I'm not sure about that though.
That's that's according to the house stuff works. So they

(40:33):
they rebuilt it. They eventually did rebuild it. Uh, and
I think it was somewhat Yeah, it was somewhat shortly after.
I'm not sure actually how long it was after it
was burned. Yeah, I don't, No one knows. They said
they don't know the date. Okay, but it was rebuilt,
and I think it was rebuilt even bigger than before.
But then in two sixty two, see the Goths rated

(40:57):
it rated if faces Um, led by Robert Smith and
Peter Peter Murphy, and they burned that thing to the ground.
That's right. They actually broke the thing up and used
the marble to build the city after what chuck an
earthquake yep, a bunch of earthquake. That's right, it's the

(41:17):
Great Leveler. And now and then I saw another thing
that said, and this wasn't in our our our article either,
but it said that it was rebuilt again even after that.
And then Christian mob came along and destroyed it. Oh,
is that right? That's what I saw. I've not seen
that one. I did see that if Thesis was an

(41:38):
important city in the Bible, because I think Paul came
and was proselytizing there and started a riot because everybody's like,
oh man, your God sounds so great that it's gonna
undermine our artemis in our local economy is gonna fall
to pieces. My ancient religion was so interesting, it really was,
you know, all right, have you got anything else on

(42:01):
that one? No? I don't, man, I think we've reached
the end of part one. And if you're waiting, while
you're waiting for episode two to come out, you can
get in touch with us. You can join me on
Twitter at josh um Clark. Uh. There's also the s
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(42:22):
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(42:44):
other topics, is how Stuff Works dot com.