eb over at Emerald Pillows posted her version of the seven wonders of the world. Go look at it, but come back. I’ll wait…

So who doesn’t like a little meta-blogging? eb got me to thinking and thinking got me to writing. See how this happens? It explains memes for sure. Anyway, when I was a child, I thought I should learn the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And I did. My grandmother and I even talked once about going to see where they were (for one) or had been (for six). It would be a grand adventure. We should have gone and never did.

Just to be clear, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World are:

The Pyramids at Giza
The Colossus at Rhodes
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
The Statue of Zeus at Olympus
The Lighthouse at Alexandria
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

And, no I didn’t have to look them up, but I did spell all the words that aren’t “at” or “the” in the last one wrong and had to look up the spelling. Blogger didn’t have Halicarnassus loaded into its database. Go figure.

I don’t know why I committed these to memory as a child. I just did. It’s probably the same reason I am often asked about random stuff I should know nothing about and sometimes know anyway.

When I met Honey, the seven wonders came up and she referred to them (jokingly) as the seven natural, material, wonders of the ancient and modern world (or something like that). I’ve always thought she was more bemused then anything that I knew them. It certainly wasn’t high on my “let’s be Honies” point total. Like, “ok, she gets +500 points for knowing all seven wonders, but -800 for having a nightmare destructive dog.”

The list is very old and appears partially in a book published by Antipar of Sidon which dates to 130 B.C.E. He didn’t come up with the list, as there are references to it appearing in older texts. Only the oldest sturcture on the list still stands. The pyramids are older by 2000+ years than the others. GO pyramids!

The Artemis Temple, Hanging Gardens, and Colossus were destroyed before the Common Era began. The Mausoleum survived into the 15th century as did the lighthouse. The Zeus probably made it to the 5th century in the common era.

None of this really matters. It won’t get you the girl. The good news is; it won’t keep you from getting her either.

My grandmother has been gone (that’s a Southern expression meaning dead) for a while now. But I still remember, as if it were yesterday, her helping me find each of the ancient places in her atlas. We planned our trip and talked about all the marvelous things we’d see. So, I think I’ll keep remembering them. Someday I may see some of the places they stood. If I do, I will be glad I learned them all and still remember.

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