Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. Chuck here on Saturday.
Speaker 2: I am in charge of picking out the Saturday Select
Speaker 2: this week, and this week we're doing a two parter,
Speaker 2: so you're going to hear the first part today and
Speaker 2: then next week Josh we'll have his selection, and then
Speaker 2: the following week you can listen to part two. Or
Speaker 2: you can just get creative and type with your little
Speaker 2: fingies on the internet and get part two on your own.
Speaker 1: If you just can't wait two weeks. But here is
Speaker 1: part one from December twenty six, twenty seventeen. All the
Speaker 1: seven Wonders of the Ancient World work. Part one.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 4: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant there.
Speaker 3: Wait wait, I know you thought I was going.
Speaker 4: To say Jerry, but you're wrong because it's Nol today,
Speaker 4: guest producer Nol, and that makes this stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: That's right?
Speaker 3: How you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm good? Noel?
Speaker 2: Who is the uh the eighth Wonder of the ancient world?
Speaker 3: He is and the modern world too.
Speaker 1: He spans He spans space and time.
Speaker 4: Yes, like the Colossus spanned the Harbor of Roads or
Speaker 4: did it it didn't. We're gonna learn a lot, Chuck,
Speaker 4: I'm so excited about this one.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, these two? You mean these two?
Speaker 3: That's right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I hit upon it, and I'm like, this is a
Speaker 4: two parter right here, and I can't believe we haven't
Speaker 4: done this already. Like everybody knows about the Seven Wonders
Speaker 4: of the Ancient World, but nobody knows about the Seven
Speaker 4: Wonders of the Ancient World, you know.
Speaker 1: What I mean, Nobody knows about them at all.
Speaker 4: It's like a perfect, perfect stuff you should know episode
Speaker 4: if you ask me times two, Well, the sequel, that's right.
Speaker 4: So to get started, we probably would Let's just give
Speaker 4: a brief overview of the Seven Wonders.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's do you.
Speaker 1: Just want to like name them?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're gonna We're gonna do them chronologically too, Okay.
Speaker 1: Oh is that how they're listed for me?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, then first up we have the the the
Speaker 2: Great Pyramid, the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Speaker 4: Right, and then after that, again chronologically, there's the Hanging
Speaker 4: Gardens of Babylon and apparently there used to be it
Speaker 4: used to be the walls of Babylon in addition to
Speaker 4: the hanging Gardens of Babylon, but they were removed later, right,
Speaker 4: and then what's next, chuck.
Speaker 1: The Temple of Artemies at.
Speaker 2: Here we go the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus Ephesus
Speaker 2: either one Artemis at Ephesus, nice man.
Speaker 4: And then there's a statue of Zeus at Olympia, which
Speaker 4: I have to admit I had not heard of before.
Speaker 1: I had heard of that one. I think, I think
Speaker 1: a couple of these.
Speaker 2: I felt bad because maybe I had disregarded some of
Speaker 2: this and wonders of the ancient world because a couple
Speaker 2: of these were news to me.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, okay, so that one was for me. The
Speaker 4: Mausoleum at Halli Carnassis was also new for me too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Colossus of Rhodes old hat.
Speaker 3: Sure everybody knows that one.
Speaker 2: Come on, yeah, Like, I've got Colossus of Roads underwear
Speaker 2: on right now.
Speaker 4: I know you wear you got that whole style where
Speaker 4: you wear the sage and you show your underwear too,
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: And then finally the Lighthouse of Alexandria m h which
Speaker 2: is I think I had heard of that one. But
Speaker 2: when you put these all together, it is not. It
Speaker 2: is no small list.
Speaker 4: No, And so this list, like you may wonder who
Speaker 4: put this list together, you know, maybe Jacques Cousteau, maybe
Speaker 4: Bertrand Russell, who knows. It's actually way way way older
Speaker 4: than that. This list goes back to the time of
Speaker 4: ancient Greece, actually, and they're not entirely certain who wrote
Speaker 4: the first one, but there were several people who kind
Speaker 4: of took the list and added to it or subtracted
Speaker 4: to it. And there's a bunch of candidates for who
Speaker 4: had written the list, But the one I saw that's
Speaker 4: pretty roundly considered probably the first one to have written
Speaker 4: a list is Deodorus Sicilis, or Diodorus of Sicily. And
Speaker 4: the reason that these lists were made was because at
Speaker 4: the time Greece had done a pretty good job of
Speaker 4: subjugating a lot of the areas around it, like Turkey, Persia, Babylon,
Speaker 4: and these places were now safe for Greeks to go visit.
Speaker 4: And because the Greeks, who were wealthy and had a
Speaker 4: lot of leisure time, they actually became some of the
Speaker 4: world's first tourists, international tourists, And that was basically the
Speaker 4: point of the list of the Seven Wonders of the
Speaker 4: ancient world was hey, you should go visit these things,
Speaker 4: go to these places and see these things, and so
Speaker 4: some people would go do I think it was probably
Speaker 4: a point of pride to be able to say I've
Speaker 4: seen all seven what they called theamatta.
Speaker 2: Yeah, theamata translates as things to be seen, or if
Speaker 2: you want to get even more modern, it's literally like
Speaker 2: here are your mussies if you're going on vacation.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It was kind of like the first travel website.
Speaker 3: Kind of, but it was just a list.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it wasn't on the web yet. That
Speaker 2: would take a couple hundred years.
Speaker 4: Sure, at least a couple hundred because these guys they
Speaker 4: did live in like the third, fourth, fifth centuries BCE, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: so over time this list, like I said it was,
Speaker 4: it started out I think with the Great Pyramid has
Speaker 4: always been on there, sure, hanging gardens have always been
Speaker 4: on there, Temple of Artemis, stato Zeus, the Mausoleum, the
Speaker 4: classes of roads, and then I think the lighthouse at
Speaker 4: Alexandria may not have been on and it was the
Speaker 4: wall of the Walls of Babylon, and they said we've
Speaker 4: already got Babylon covered, you guys. This lighthouse is to
Speaker 4: be seen, so it was eventually compiled and that list.
Speaker 4: So the list itself is pretty ancient too.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In Babylon, if they had one motto, it was come
Speaker 2: for the gardens, stay for the wall.
Speaker 1: For sure, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So out of all of those, the the only ones
Speaker 4: that are still around actually is the Great Pyramid.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean there are bits of some of these in
Speaker 2: various museums, most notably the British Museum.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And there are some ruins on the site still.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here and there, some ruins underwater here and there.
Speaker 1: I used to have you been to a lot of ruins?
Speaker 3: I've been to Pompeii? You me and I went. It
Speaker 3: was kind of the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, have you been to Pompeii? Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, what ruins have you been to?
Speaker 2: Just your your your garden variety ruins like in Rome,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, man, the call to see them, yeah, that
Speaker 4: was something to be seen.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's part of me. Like when I
Speaker 2: go to see ruins, it's it's really cool because I
Speaker 2: try and take myself back to that time. But then
Speaker 2: when I stand back and look at it and it's
Speaker 2: current surroundings, sometimes it get a little.
Speaker 4: Sad because there's a lot of people like chewing gum
Speaker 4: and on their phone and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah man, and.
Speaker 2: Especially well we'll talk about the pyramids, but you know
Speaker 2: you have you seen the famous pizza hut pictures?
Speaker 3: No, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Well, you know that the pyramids.
Speaker 2: Oh is that a photoshopped No, it's not photoshopped. The
Speaker 2: Pyramids back right up or I guess front, right up
Speaker 2: to Cairo, So you always see the image looking at
Speaker 2: the Pyramids from Cairo. If you see the image looking
Speaker 2: the other way, there's like a city right button up against.
Speaker 4: It, right, and an ancient Egyptian in the foreground turns
Speaker 4: of the camera, the single tear coming down in his eye,
Speaker 4: his cheek, but.
Speaker 1: He was really Italian. Right, No, there's there there's a
Speaker 1: literally a pizza hut KFC.
Speaker 5: Which you could do worse facing it could be facing
Speaker 5: the Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Sphinx, and and
Speaker 5: one of the windows.
Speaker 1: Of the pizza hut there's the Pizza Hut logo.
Speaker 2: And if you stand inside that pizza hut you can
Speaker 2: take a photograph of that Pizza Hut cap and logo
Speaker 2: kind of sitting on top of the pyramid, and so
Speaker 2: you know, there are all kinds of photos now of
Speaker 2: Pizza Hut, and it's just it's sort of you know,
Speaker 2: it's not it speaks of the times, you know, sure,
Speaker 2: which is what I talked about being a little sad.
Speaker 2: There's a pizza hut, there's a friggin Kentucky Fried Chicken
Speaker 2: yards from the Great Pyramids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know how I feel about that.
Speaker 4: I guess, well, I think it's pretty clear how you
Speaker 4: feel about it.
Speaker 1: You don't like it, I don't know, But I mean
Speaker 1: you can't say, like, no, what are you going to
Speaker 1: have a restaurant here? You can't do anything. It's just
Speaker 1: it is what it is, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's not like you're gonna live without
Speaker 4: KFC for a second.
Speaker 1: That's true. I would challenge some KFC if I was
Speaker 1: over there too.
Speaker 4: The very famous one by the Pyramids.
Speaker 3: I know what you mean. Though, Sure, you know it
Speaker 3: was kind of a little weird.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, you're like, wow, you know
Speaker 4: this thing was built by slaves who died working, So
Speaker 4: maybe the KFC is actually preferable in some ways, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And maybe that's what I should feel sad about.
Speaker 3: Sure, just feel sad about both.
Speaker 4: Okay, So let's go to the Great Pyramids of Giza,
Speaker 4: and there's actually if you go, oh, we're gonna really
Speaker 4: wear out the way Back machine.
Speaker 1: Huh. Yeah, this gassed it up.
Speaker 3: It's ready, and I got a new air fresher, and
Speaker 3: you like it.
Speaker 1: I'm not big on the Pineapple, but it's all right,
Speaker 1: hill the old Pineapple.
Speaker 4: We can swap it out for the second part. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 4: So we're gonna get in the way Back machine and
Speaker 4: if you go, we're actually just going to go back
Speaker 4: a couple of days because we're going in modern times.
Speaker 4: But if we're gonna look at the Great Pyramid at Giza,
Speaker 4: there's actually just one of them that's on the list
Speaker 4: of the seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It's one
Speaker 4: particular one, the Pyramid of Kufu or Chaops is what
Speaker 4: the Greeks call them, and his is the biggest pyramid
Speaker 4: of them all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there are more than more than or
Speaker 2: exactly eighty pyramids scattered across Egypt, various sizes, and they're
Speaker 2: imagine they're all pretty great to go look at. But
Speaker 2: the big daddy of them all, like you said, is
Speaker 2: Cufu k h U f U, and it is It
Speaker 2: is the one you know that you can get with
Speaker 2: a pizza hut cap on top.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's the main dude there with the three pyramids, with
Speaker 2: the sphinx standing by watching over Kentucky Fried Chicken to
Speaker 2: make sure nobody robs it.
Speaker 4: Well, it actually would work really well for that pizza
Speaker 4: hut cap because it's the one of the three. You
Speaker 4: always see the three together. The other two are the
Speaker 4: Pyramid of men Kuar and the other one is Pyramid
Speaker 4: of Coffrey, and they're smaller, but if you'll notice those
Speaker 4: two have points. Yeah, the biggest one, the Pyramid of Cufu,
Speaker 4: has a flat top. Like it just knew that that
Speaker 4: pizza hut was coming in four thousand years, right. But
Speaker 4: so we know so little about this pyramid that they're
Speaker 4: not entirely certain if this is true or not. But
Speaker 4: there's a pretty widespread theory that that pyramid was actually unfinished.
Speaker 1: Oh really, mm hmm. They couldn't bring those final stones. Huh.
Speaker 4: Maybe everybody involved died or there was a change in
Speaker 4: dynasty or something. But they think and there's other evidence
Speaker 4: we'll talk about, but it seems like it might have
Speaker 4: been unfinished.
Speaker 1: Didn't Napoleon shoot off the nose of the sphinx? Or
Speaker 1: is that a Is that an old wives tale? No?
Speaker 3: That was isis?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Okay, probably so, Chuck.
Speaker 4: One of the things that's so great about this pyramid
Speaker 4: is just how massive it is, right, Yes, it's it's tall.
Speaker 3: It's very tall.
Speaker 4: It's like four hundred and eighty feet tall, which that's
Speaker 4: that's a substantial height if you ask me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean for a long time it was one
Speaker 2: of the tallest or the tallest building in the world,
Speaker 2: which is amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, until the fourteenth century when Lincoln Cathedral in England
Speaker 4: finally topped it. So for almost for about thirty four
Speaker 4: hundred years it stood as the tallest structure, the man made,
Speaker 4: human made structure in the world.
Speaker 1: It's hard to believe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 4: And then its side, each side at the base is
Speaker 4: about seven hundred and fifty five feet long. They're just massive,
Speaker 4: massive structures.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you know how I was talking about the fact
Speaker 2: that it's uh, it just butted right, up against Cairo
Speaker 2: at least is not surrounding, like the city is not
Speaker 2: just on all sides. So if you do look at
Speaker 2: it from the city, it's on the Giza Plateau and
Speaker 2: that is still you know, I'm not sure how far
Speaker 2: it goes back, but you know, a nice wide aerial shots.
Speaker 2: Looks like most of that plateau is pretty preserved, right
Speaker 2: at least, So.
Speaker 3: This the whole thing.
Speaker 4: The pyramid was built sometime during the reign of King Kufu,
Speaker 4: appropriately enough, and the king reign from I think twenty
Speaker 4: five eighty nine to twenty five sixty six, So it's
Speaker 4: pretty old pyramid, and it's it's you know, and it's
Speaker 4: made of just a ton of blocks cut blocks, right.
Speaker 4: One of the things like if you go on some sites,
Speaker 4: you'll find people who just kind of poopoo the pyramids,
Speaker 4: like it's just pile piles of stone. Oh, clearly, But
Speaker 4: it's actually pretty clever engineering, especially considering how long ago
Speaker 4: it was built. It's not just a pilot stone. There's
Speaker 4: a lot of corridors and shafts and rooms, and the
Speaker 4: engineers had to take into account where to place these
Speaker 4: things so that the structure didn't collapse in on itself
Speaker 4: as it aged. So it is a pretty big feed
Speaker 4: of engineering just in addition to its size, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there are more than two million pile
Speaker 1: of stones. Who says that.
Speaker 3: Some people online?
Speaker 2: Yeah, more than two million limestone and granite blocks, the
Speaker 2: weight of about six and a half million tons.
Speaker 1: And these things are.
Speaker 2: Engineered such that they it's about a fifty one degree
Speaker 2: slope on each side, and each side faces exactly to
Speaker 2: the four cardinal directions.
Speaker 3: So it's pretty impressive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's no accident. It's not like it just happened
Speaker 2: to land that way. It was all done very much
Speaker 2: on purpose. These rocks fit together, the blocks really really tightly,
Speaker 2: less than a fiftieth of an inch separating them. So
Speaker 2: that right there is why these things are still standing,
Speaker 2: you know, right.
Speaker 4: And so when you look at the pyramid, it's actually
Speaker 4: so I think I said four hundred and eighty feet.
Speaker 4: I think it's four hundred and fifty five feet at
Speaker 4: its height. Originally it was four hundred and eighty feet
Speaker 4: and it was also encased in limestone.
Speaker 1: Well did it originally have the point then?
Speaker 4: I don't think so, because I think they would. I
Speaker 4: think there's some other stuff that suggests that it was
Speaker 4: unfinished too. I don't know if it ever had the point.
Speaker 4: I don't know if anybody knows for certain, but it
Speaker 4: seems like it hadn't been put on yet.
Speaker 1: Like an inscription at the top that's just not quite done.
Speaker 3: Well, that's one of the things.
Speaker 4: That's one of the reasons why they think that it
Speaker 4: wasn't done, because it's lacking inscriptions that other pyramids have,
Speaker 4: like in ass Oh, it doesn't have any no more
Speaker 4: like we dedicate this to the Sun god raw and
Speaker 4: the name of King Kufu.
Speaker 3: And blah blah blah, right, yeah, the usual.
Speaker 4: So it's lacking any kind of inscriptions. The king's burial chamber,
Speaker 4: the actual sarcophagus, which is just this huge, massive stone
Speaker 4: that they actually built the chamber around. It's not like
Speaker 4: they built the room and then imported this thing. It's
Speaker 4: bigger than any entrance to the room. But it's it's
Speaker 4: kind of rough, it's got some cut marks still showing,
Speaker 4: and it was obviously not finished. And then the other
Speaker 4: reason why they think that it wasn't ever finished, Chuck,
Speaker 4: was that there's no evidence that anyone ever found any
Speaker 4: treasure loot bodies anything. Yeah, it's like it's this dead,
Speaker 4: empty place that has never been used. Ironically too and
Speaker 4: tomb dead people into it was just never finished either.
Speaker 4: So that's one theory that it was finished and never used.
Speaker 4: Another one is that it actually was looted, and it
Speaker 4: was looted so thoroughly that there's just not even evidence
Speaker 4: of it being looted.
Speaker 1: Whoa.
Speaker 3: And then that yeah, it's kind of impressive.
Speaker 4: And then the last one is that it is finished
Speaker 4: and that all of these shafts and like walkways and
Speaker 4: crawl spaces that we found are actually meant to distract
Speaker 4: you from the real places where the tombs are that
Speaker 4: we've just not found yet.
Speaker 1: Couldn't they find those by now?
Speaker 4: Though not necessarily. They're still finding like secret rooms and
Speaker 4: passages that are hidden from view. They're just starting to
Speaker 4: now apply the technology to seeing through stone.
Speaker 2: Literally, just get up the X ray camera right and
Speaker 2: just stand at pizza hut, zoom in right and just
Speaker 2: see what's in that thing.
Speaker 4: You don't even need that you can send off for
Speaker 4: some of those X ray specs from a comic book exactly.
Speaker 4: I don't know why no one else has thought of
Speaker 4: this yet.
Speaker 1: So I have a question. Then they said it's originally
Speaker 1: covered in limestone in that casing. Does that mean that
Speaker 1: originally it was not in a step pattern and it
Speaker 1: was just smooth on the outside. Yes, Well, how in
Speaker 1: the world did they get up there? Would they just
Speaker 1: slide back down?
Speaker 4: Well, the answer that is obvious. It was aliens that
Speaker 4: helped them. That's right, That's that's it. That's the answer.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 4: I have no idea, Chuck, that's a really good question
Speaker 4: to tell you the truth. Maybe they maybe there's a
Speaker 4: passageway inside.
Speaker 1: Right that they come out the top, you know, come out.
Speaker 4: The top, pull the limestone up into place, and then
Speaker 4: slide down it and start the process over again.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 4: But if you want to see kind of probably what
Speaker 4: it looked like, just go look at the Iron Maiden
Speaker 4: Power Slave album cover.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of like smoothly covered.
Speaker 4: It's not stepped, really, I mean, there's steps, but they're
Speaker 4: they're meant to be like a staircase.
Speaker 3: It's not steps on the outside.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that makes sense. So yeah, So in the
Speaker 1: fourteenth century, there was an earthquake, and as you'll see,
Speaker 1: that becomes a pattern here with a lot of these
Speaker 1: ancient wonders that would become ruins because of earthquakes.
Speaker 2: You know, most of these in the Middle East. It's
Speaker 2: a volatile area tectonically speaking, so you know, over the
Speaker 2: course of thousands of years, things are gonna tumble over time,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it is what happened in this case.
Speaker 4: It's basically earthquakes, earthquake, earthquake, earthquake, over and over again.
Speaker 3: It's the great leveler of monuments, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But the Kufu Pyramids stood. It was stood that earthquake
Speaker 2: because it's just more than a pile of rocks. It
Speaker 2: is so big and so grand and so heavy, I guess,
Speaker 2: and probably a little luck came involved as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it was also really good engineering too, for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But the earthquake did get it in that it did
Speaker 4: level Cairo, and they went out to the pyramid and
Speaker 4: took the limestone off of it and used it to
Speaker 4: rebuild Cairo.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's another common refrain of notices.
Speaker 2: A lot of these would be toppled, and then people
Speaker 2: would come in and say, hey, let's use this stuff
Speaker 2: for like actual for the city, yeah, instead of just
Speaker 2: some monument to a ruler.
Speaker 3: Yep. And if you are you ever going to go
Speaker 3: see the pyramids.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: It was sort of on the old bucket list until
Speaker 2: I saw the pizza hut thing.
Speaker 1: To day.
Speaker 3: Oh man, that's funny.
Speaker 2: And I read an article where someone was like, don't
Speaker 2: do it, just don't go really yeah, but I mean
Speaker 2: that's just one person's opinion. We also had people that
Speaker 2: said the northern lights aren't that impressive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that one person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got shouted down for that. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: It still happens from time to time.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So if you do go, though, chuck the way that
Speaker 4: you go into the pyramid, as far as you can,
Speaker 4: it's actually an No one's figured out how to go
Speaker 4: in the way that it was intended. It's that entrance
Speaker 4: is lost to history as far as I know. The
Speaker 4: entrance that you use is actually a carved tunnel through
Speaker 4: the pyramid from the ninth century from this guy named
Speaker 4: Abdullah al Maman who oversaw a looting expedition, and he's
Speaker 4: one of the reasons why they think that it was
Speaker 4: unused because even back in the ninth century, this guy
Speaker 4: couldn't find anything in the sealed pyramid interesting.
Speaker 1: And you gain access to that through the bathroom of
Speaker 1: pizza hut.
Speaker 4: That's right with your X ray specs. Wow, you want
Speaker 4: to take a break.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do that.
Speaker 3: Let's do it now.
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we're back.
Speaker 3: Yes, we are.
Speaker 2: No more poopoo ing of modern things next to old things.
Speaker 2: I sound like an old man crabbing, grabbing along.
Speaker 3: That's all right, man uh.
Speaker 2: And this next one is interesting, the hanging Gardens of Babylon,
Speaker 2: because this is one that that may not have even existed.
Speaker 2: These are this is the we're going chronologically, like you said,
Speaker 2: so the second oldest if it was re built in
Speaker 2: about the sixth century. And obviously these don't exist anymore
Speaker 2: in any shape or form. But the deal is that
Speaker 2: these this was in like modern day Iraq, and they
Speaker 2: were gardens that it was really about the building. It's
Speaker 2: kind of like the first big botanical garden, right. It
Speaker 2: wasn't just things hanging from the sky. It was plants
Speaker 2: and trees and everything planted in this grand, big building
Speaker 2: that had water flowing through it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in the desert.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So if it was in Babylon, it would have been
Speaker 4: about ninety miles or ninety kilometers. I can't remember which
Speaker 4: one Outside of Baghdad modern day Baghdad, right, And if
Speaker 4: it wasn't Babylon, they think that maybe King Nebukanezer built
Speaker 4: the gardens. This is according to legend at least sure,
Speaker 4: he built the gardens for his wife Ametis, who was
Speaker 4: from the north where it's much more fertile and green.
Speaker 4: And apparently Ametus missed her homeland, so the king built
Speaker 4: her the hanging gardens. And again this is in the desert,
Speaker 4: so to. And Babylon was a magnificent place in and
Speaker 4: of itself, again, like their walls were once on this
Speaker 4: list of seven Wonders to go see, right, But supposedly
Speaker 4: it was just this enormous building, tiered with huge walkways. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and they planted it with dirt and trees. And there
Speaker 4: was a quote that was said it was thickly planted
Speaker 4: with trees of every kind that, by their great size
Speaker 4: or charm, could give pleasure to the beholder. That was
Speaker 4: Deodorus who said that, and he was writing like a
Speaker 4: while after they would have been built. But the idea
Speaker 4: that you could just walk down treeline avenues in this
Speaker 4: building in the desert's pretty neat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I get the sense that in today's terms,
Speaker 2: it would be like a sort of a nice office park.
Speaker 1: I gets.
Speaker 3: So now we just take them for granted.
Speaker 1: But back then it was a big deal.
Speaker 2: You didn't have these structures with all these plants in
Speaker 2: the middle of the desert like this. It was along
Speaker 2: the Euphrates River most likely, and we're talking about I mean,
Speaker 2: it looks any of the pictures that you've seen, it
Speaker 2: really looks like it was something else. About seventy five
Speaker 2: feet tall, like you said, tiered, this brick structure with
Speaker 2: plants and waterfalls coming off of it, and twenty two
Speaker 2: foot thick walls four hundred feet wide, and all manner
Speaker 2: of flora all over the place, and irrigated from that
Speaker 2: Euphrates River.
Speaker 4: Right if if again it wasn't Babylon. But there's a
Speaker 4: couple of reasons why that whole thing is why it
Speaker 4: is question right. So for on the one hand, there's
Speaker 4: no evidence of it. No one said this is where
Speaker 4: it was, right, And other people say, well, of course
Speaker 4: you can't say that these were plants, these were gardens.
Speaker 4: There's not going to be any trace of it left.
Speaker 4: Maybe you know, we've the building and we don't even
Speaker 4: realize it. The reason why they think it might not
Speaker 4: have actually existed in Babylon is because, first of all,
Speaker 4: King nebukin Ezer love to boast about all of the
Speaker 4: stuff he did. He left inscriptions in cuneiform basically everywhere.
Speaker 4: He's like, you know, let out like a thirty second belch. Today,
Speaker 4: King Nebucanezer, he would have stuff like this inscribed.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, I can't think of anyone today who I
Speaker 1: could like in that too, but yes.
Speaker 4: Right, exactly like he was one of a kind. No
Speaker 4: ruler ever has for any resemblance to him. But he'd
Speaker 4: never mentioned the gardens of Babylon and any cuneiform tablet
Speaker 4: that's ever been discovered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did not tout it in writing, which is
Speaker 2: very very unusual.
Speaker 4: And then there's another guy, Herod Herodotus. He was an
Speaker 4: historian from Greece and he wrote a basically a monograp
Speaker 4: on Babylon one hundred years after Nebukanezer, and he didn't
Speaker 4: mention the hanging gardens at all. No gardens, no legend
Speaker 4: of a garden, no talk of a garden, no garden.
Speaker 4: I visited nothing about gardens. Yeah, and the idea that
Speaker 4: he would have passed over one of the great wonders
Speaker 4: of the ancient world. When he's writing about the town
Speaker 4: that contains it, it's pretty questionable. So some people say, well,
Speaker 4: maybe it wasn't in Babylon. Maybe it was in another
Speaker 4: place in Assyria.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe the Assyrian queen built it. Maybe the ruler
Speaker 2: of Nineveh, whose name and these names I just love
Speaker 2: ticking through all these names, as if nebucad Nezar wasn't
Speaker 2: good enough, Senakaib it's great, the ruler of Nineveh may
Speaker 2: have built them. I had always thought these were real,
Speaker 2: But I tend to think that maybe nebuchad Nesser didn't
Speaker 2: have anything to do with it, because it doesn't You're right.
Speaker 2: I don't think it makes any sense that it was
Speaker 2: not mentioned in any of these accounts, right, because they
Speaker 2: just and it wasn't just Nebukinzer all all this stuff
Speaker 2: like keeping records.
Speaker 1: It was all very new.
Speaker 2: It was like the hot thing to do, you know, sure, right,
Speaker 2: and so they wouldn't just say, oh, by the way,
Speaker 2: we failed to mention we built this what would eventually
Speaker 2: be a wonder of the world, but we just didn't
Speaker 2: think it was important enough to write down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is from Nebukinezer, who used to leave
Speaker 4: like inscriptions in the blocks of buildings saying built by Nebukinzer,
Speaker 4: ruler of Babylon from sea to sea.
Speaker 1: Even if he didn't build it, he would.
Speaker 3: Have met right exactly, he would have mentioned it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: So if if it was in NINEVA, it would have
Speaker 4: been close to present day Mosl in northern Iraq, right right.
Speaker 4: And if it was in NINEV, then we've actually already
Speaker 4: found the gardens of Babylon because they they discovered a
Speaker 4: structure that was clearly in something similar to what the
Speaker 4: Gardens of Babylon have described. It was a structure that
Speaker 4: had irrigation brought to it, that used water screws to
Speaker 4: pump water remember from our Archimedes death ray episode, uh huh,
Speaker 4: to pump it upward to this thing. So we found
Speaker 4: a garden, basically a botanical garden structure in NINEV. So
Speaker 4: if it is there, we now know where the hanging
Speaker 4: gardens were.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that is the idea is that they took
Speaker 2: this water up them from the Euphrates into these big
Speaker 2: holding tanks, these big cisterns essentially on top and then
Speaker 2: it would use a very clever system of gravity.
Speaker 1: To then feed down and irrigate all the.
Speaker 2: Different areas as it flowed downward.
Speaker 1: Right, really something to see.
Speaker 4: I can't imagine what it must have been like like,
Speaker 4: especially they rely can't.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm kind of disappointed now I have to
Speaker 1: admit why we because it doesn't sound like it was
Speaker 1: there or maybe even real.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it could have been. In NINEV I think
Speaker 4: it was real. I think it was a nineveh Yeah,
Speaker 4: because if you if you look at the if you
Speaker 4: look at some I think it was Diodorus. Diodorus's writing
Speaker 4: from Sicily, the guy from Sicily. Yeah, he says that
Speaker 4: there were hanging gardens, but they were built by Assyrian king,
Speaker 4: So I'm pretty sure that's that's it, all right, So
Speaker 4: they were real, Chuck, and we know where they are. Okay,
Speaker 4: and then you want to do one more for this episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's take a break and we'll come back and
Speaker 2: finish up with the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus after this.
Speaker 4: Okay, Chuck, and we're back. Yes, this one, this might
Speaker 4: be my favor. Do you have a favorite one yet?
Speaker 2: My favorite one will be in the next episode. Oh okay, cool,
Speaker 2: how's that for a tease.
Speaker 3: That's a great tease.
Speaker 1: This one's pretty good though, because this took by all accounts,
Speaker 1: over one hundred and twenty years to build in just
Speaker 1: one night to go bye bye, yeah, which is how
Speaker 1: it goes sometimes.
Speaker 4: Yep, especially when there's someone with pyromania involved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: So ephesusesis Ephesis, That's what I'm going with.
Speaker 1: How about you, Artemis at Ephesis. I think that sounds better.
Speaker 3: I think that might be it.
Speaker 4: So Ephesis is It's actually a pretty well known city
Speaker 4: of the ancient world, and I think it's still around
Speaker 4: in some way, shape or form. But it was It
Speaker 4: used to be a fabulously wealthy port city in what's
Speaker 4: today Turkey, but it was under the control basically of Greece. Yea,
Speaker 4: from what I understand, it was allowed to remain an
Speaker 4: independent city state, but it was still like that was
Speaker 4: at the pleasure of Greece and then later Rome. But
Speaker 4: they managed to be an important place of finance and
Speaker 4: law too. I think that's where a lot of the
Speaker 4: courts were was in Ephesis. But it was also well
Speaker 4: known for all of its magic cults. Right, Yes, that's
Speaker 4: where the Magician's mansion was located.
Speaker 3: Back in the ancient world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so when they call it the city of magic,
Speaker 1: they mean that literally.
Speaker 3: Right, not magic city.
Speaker 4: But it had like a quarter of a million residents
Speaker 4: at its peaker at the time when the Temple of
Speaker 4: Artemis was in full swing, and it was originally built
Speaker 4: this temple, this massive, huge temple back in five point
Speaker 4: fifty BCE by a guy named King Croesus. They think
Speaker 4: that that might be old King Cole.
Speaker 3: Did you know that?
Speaker 4: Oh really, m h huh, that's what I've always heard.
Speaker 1: So King Crosis of Lydia.
Speaker 2: And this one, if you look it up under the
Speaker 2: images it is it looks like you're you're kind of
Speaker 2: classic Greek temple. It's rectangular that it measures about three
Speaker 2: fifty by one eighty feet.
Speaker 1: And the thing about this one that is really jumped
Speaker 1: out at me were the columns. And there are more
Speaker 1: than one hundred columns and their marble and it's not
Speaker 1: just like everything had columns. So that's that's all fine,
Speaker 1: and well, these.
Speaker 3: Are enough with the columns.
Speaker 2: These are the ionic architectural style columns. But these were
Speaker 2: like if you look at it, there like the two
Speaker 2: rows of columns on the front. To me, like the
Speaker 2: fact that they doubled them up and offset them is
Speaker 2: just really kind of striking looking.
Speaker 3: It is. It's gorgeous.
Speaker 4: And if you just the size of this thing too,
Speaker 4: three hundred and fifty feet in length right or in depth,
Speaker 4: that's like one in more than one football field American
Speaker 4: football field. Which is this is a pretty good sized temple. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's not as massive as you might think in this
Speaker 4: but it's still pretty big.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you gotta you have to think all
Speaker 2: of this in ancient standards. Sure, like today you look
Speaker 2: at a building in size of a football field and
Speaker 2: it's not that big of a deal, but it's still large.
Speaker 1: But by those standards back then, it was enormous.
Speaker 3: Right, which I'm I'm happy with saying it's massive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, put on your ancient hats, folks.
Speaker 4: Plus also plus also just the the ornate detail that
Speaker 4: was carved into the structure in every single spot, it
Speaker 4: was pretty neat. And then if you looked at the
Speaker 4: pediment of the temple, the base, there was a door
Speaker 4: and two windows. I believe the windows are on either
Speaker 4: side of the door. That was not for Upion, that
Speaker 4: was for Artemis to enter and leave her temple at
Speaker 4: her whim.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 4: So Artemis herself, this is this is one of the
Speaker 4: reasons why this is my favorite. Artemis herself was the
Speaker 4: Greek precursor to the Roman Diana. Okay, she was the
Speaker 4: goddess of fertility, of the hunt and I believed the
Speaker 4: moon too, right, all right, And she was Apollo's twin sister.
Speaker 4: She was the daughter of Zeus and Leto, so she
Speaker 4: was a pretty important deity. But she was kind of
Speaker 4: cobbled together at the Temple of Artemis with an already
Speaker 4: much much much older deity for the area. And her
Speaker 4: name was Sibyl, and Sibyl was based on an ancient
Speaker 4: fertility goddess from nine thousand years ago. So they took
Speaker 4: Sybil and they took Artemis, who basically represented the same
Speaker 4: thing but to two different cultures, and they put it
Speaker 4: together at this Temple of Artemis at Ephesis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we're talking about a statue. I don't
Speaker 1: think we said that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, we didn't.
Speaker 1: We weren't talking about some kind of weird black voodoo,
Speaker 1: black magic.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's a statue built from gold, silver, ebony, and some
Speaker 2: other stuff. They had laying around. Pull tabs from tabcans.
Speaker 3: Sure, it was like a found object thing basically.
Speaker 1: But this what's amazing about this one.
Speaker 2: You can actually look up the statue even though these
Speaker 2: are just I don't know.
Speaker 1: If whether it were pictures of it or is this
Speaker 1: just called from I.
Speaker 4: Don't know, man, I'm not sure if it was just
Speaker 4: from writings or if they do have it somewhere.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: The cool thing is is the statue has this row
Speaker 2: of bulbs hanging from her body and if you look
Speaker 2: at it looks like she's wearing a.
Speaker 1: Tunic made of avocados.
Speaker 4: Or like water balloons. Sure, but what they are is
Speaker 4: up for debate. Some people say, well, they're obviously breasts,
Speaker 4: she's a fertility goddess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, make a little it does.
Speaker 4: It would make even more sense if it weren't for
Speaker 4: the fact that Sybil's cult was known to castraight bulls
Speaker 4: as sacrifice, so they think they were probably bull testicles, right,
Speaker 4: and the actually the Sybil cult high priests would castrate
Speaker 4: them so they could be more like Sybil I e.
Speaker 4: Without testicles. Remember our castration episode do I Boy, We've
Speaker 4: talked about a lot of stuff, Chuck, we have. So
Speaker 4: you've got this amazing wonderful, super cool statue in an
Speaker 4: already amazing temple. And it's not just me who thought
Speaker 4: that that it was the most amazing one of all.
Speaker 4: There was another guy who wrote. His name was antipurv Sidon.
Speaker 4: He says, I and this is he's writing back in
Speaker 4: You know, I guess BCE still because he was an
Speaker 4: ancient Greek. But he said, I have seen the walls
Speaker 4: of unbreachable Babylon. Remember that was originally when the Seven
Speaker 4: Wonders along which chariots may race, and the statue of
Speaker 4: Zeus by the River Alpheus, the hanging Gardens, and the
Speaker 4: Colossus of the Sun, the Great Man made mountains of
Speaker 4: the Lofty Pyramid, and the gigantic tomb of Masciless. But
Speaker 4: when I saw the sacred House of Artemis reaching the clouds,
Speaker 4: the others paled.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And that was Antipur of Sidon, right. So he's saying, like,
Speaker 4: I've seen all the wonders, and to me, the temple
Speaker 4: of Artemis at Efesis is the best.
Speaker 2: And he said, you got to see it. She has
Speaker 2: bolt testicles hanging around her neck.
Speaker 3: You've never seen anything like it.
Speaker 2: So this thing was very I mean it was it
Speaker 2: was a legit tourist destination. People would travel long distances
Speaker 2: to come to this place to see the statue in
Speaker 2: the temple, and it was I mean, it's hard to believe,
Speaker 2: but even back then they had. It boosted the local
Speaker 2: economy and was literally supported by like gift shops selling
Speaker 2: little statuette recreations of this thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this is already a wealthy area, so the
Speaker 4: tourism was so big that that was still significant. The replicas,
Speaker 4: the sale of the replicas still made that much of
Speaker 4: a splash on the local that's how many were sold.
Speaker 2: Like you go to New York City and you go
Speaker 2: to a gift shop at at the Statue of Liberty
Speaker 2: and you buy the little replica that exact thing was
Speaker 2: going on thousands of years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's nothing new.
Speaker 3: I want one of those.
Speaker 4: That would be great if you're looking for something for
Speaker 4: me for Christmas, an original replica from the BCE, okay,
Speaker 4: of the Temple of Artemis.
Speaker 3: I would love that, all right.
Speaker 2: So you just want to give that's worth that's priceless basically. Okay,
Speaker 2: So this story gets a little more interesting here. You
Speaker 2: mentioned a pyromaniac earlier in July three fifty six BC.
Speaker 2: It was a man name and we almost didn't know
Speaker 2: his name. He wrote Stratus, who is a pyromaniac who
Speaker 2: burned this temple down for the by all accounts, for
Speaker 2: the sole reason of living in infamy.
Speaker 1: And there was a.
Speaker 2: Decree that his name was I'll never be recorded at all,
Speaker 2: so he wouldn't even earn that.
Speaker 1: But someone did.
Speaker 4: Well that was it was punishable upon death to even
Speaker 4: say his name afterward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, a guy named who was it?
Speaker 4: Theopompus was the one who wrote it down, who recorded
Speaker 4: the act and so.
Speaker 3: What's his name? Heristratus?
Speaker 4: Yeah, was was recorded in infamy just like he wanted.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 3: He was an ancient jerk, I think, is what you'd
Speaker 3: call it.
Speaker 2: And the temple, this is the story gets even better
Speaker 2: because the temple burned the same day that Alexander the
Speaker 2: Great was born, which was amazing, and the temple. They
Speaker 2: would later rebuild the temple and Alexander said, yeah, you
Speaker 2: know what, why don't I why don't I pay for
Speaker 2: this thing?
Speaker 1: All you gotta do is, like I don't know.
Speaker 2: Just throw my name on it somewhere, right, And they said, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's nice, but we'll we'll just build it on her own.
Speaker 4: Right, But then they backed slowly out of the room, like, okay,
Speaker 4: that's okay, right, you're not gonna kill us, are you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I couldn't find a bunch of places that said
Speaker 2: that he wanted his name on the temple except for
Speaker 2: our article, So I'm not sure that's true.
Speaker 1: Did you see that in other places?
Speaker 3: I did not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's so the story goes. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: about that though.
Speaker 4: That's according to how stuff works. Yeah, so they rebuilt it.
Speaker 4: They eventually did rebuild it, and I think it was
Speaker 4: some Yeah, it was somewhat shortly after I'm not sure
Speaker 4: actually how long it was after it was burned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't, No one knows. They said they don't
Speaker 1: know the date.
Speaker 4: Okay, but it was rebuilt, and I think it was
Speaker 4: rebuilt even bigger than before.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 4: But then in two sixty two CE, the Goths rated
Speaker 4: it raided Aphasis, led by Robert Smith and Peter Murphy,
Speaker 4: and they burned.
Speaker 3: That thing to the ground.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 4: They actually broke the thing up and used the marble
Speaker 4: to build the city. After what an earthquake yep, a
Speaker 4: bunch of earthquake that's right.
Speaker 3: It's the great leveler I know.
Speaker 2: And then I saw another thing that said, and this
Speaker 2: wasn't our our article either, but it said that it
Speaker 2: was rebuilt again even after that, and then a Christian
Speaker 2: mob came along and destroyed it.
Speaker 3: Oh, is that right?
Speaker 1: That's what I saw.
Speaker 3: I've not seen that one.
Speaker 4: I did see that Ephesis was an important city in
Speaker 4: the Bible, because I think Paul came and was proselytizing
Speaker 4: there and started a riot because everybody's like, oh man,
Speaker 4: your God sounds so great that it's going to undermine
Speaker 4: our artemis and our local economy's going to fall to pieces.
Speaker 1: Wait, an, your religion was so interesting, it really was,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, all right, have you got anything else
Speaker 1: on that one?
Speaker 3: No? I don't, man. I think we've reached the end
Speaker 3: of part one.
Speaker 1: Hooray.
Speaker 3: And if you're waiting while you're waiting.
Speaker 4: For episode two to come out, you can get in
Speaker 4: touch with us. We accept emails by the oodles at
Speaker 4: stuff Podcasts at House Stuffworks dot Com, and has always
Speaker 4: joined us at our home on the web. Stuff Youshould
Speaker 4: Know dot com.
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