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6.TheColossusofRhodes


Rhodes is a Greek island off the coast of Turkey. The Colossus of Rhodes was a statue built by the people of Rhodes in about the year 290BC to guard the entrance to the island’s harbour. The gigantic statue, which measured 32 metres in height, was made of bronze and stood on a marble base beside the harbour. It represented the Greek sun god Helios. The statue was about the same size as the Statue of Liberty and is thought to have been the inspiration for it. The statue collapsed during an earthquake 56 years after being built and for hundreds of years its remains lay scattered on the ground. It was eventually sold to an Arab merchant, carried off on the backs of 900 camels and broken up for scrap! Today we use the word ‘colossal’ to describe something that is enormous.


7.ThePharosofAlexandria The Pharos of Alexandria was a very tall lighthouse built about 280BC on the island of Pharos, at the entrance to the port of Alexandria in Egypt. It was built by the Egyptian Pharaoh, Ptolemy II, and was the most famous lighthouse of ancient times. Pictures of the lighthouse even appeared on Roman coins! It rose to a height of about 125 metres and it is said that its light could be seen from a distance of 65 kilometres. Huge fires


were lit at night and large curved mirrors focused the


light into a powerful beam. In the day the sun’s rays were used. The lighthouse stood for about 1,700 years, but was eventually destroyed in an earthquake. To this day it remains the tallest lighthouse ever built. In the 1990s, archaeologists began exploring underwater ruins off the coast near Alexandria. Among these were ruined statues that may have decorated the Pharos.


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