Selects: How the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Work, Part I
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Hi, everybody. Chuck here on Saturday. I'm in charge of picking out the Saturday Select this week. And this week, we're doing a two-parter. So you're going to hear the first part today.

And then next week, Josh will have his selection. And then the following week, you can listen to part two, or you can just get creative and type with your little fingies on the internet and get part two on your own if you just can't wait two weeks. But here is part one from December 26, 2017, How the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World Work, part one. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. ♪

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there, wait, wait, I know you thought I was going to say Jerry, but you're wrong. Because it's Noel today, guest producer Noel. And that makes it Stuff You Should Know. That's right. How you doing? I'm good. Noel, who is the...

The eighth wonder of the ancient world. He is. And the modern world, too. He spans space and time. Yes, like the Colossus spanned the harbor of Rhodes. Or did it? It didn't.

We're going to learn a lot, Chuck. I'm so excited about this one. Oh, yeah. These two, you mean? These two, that's right. Yeah, I hit upon it. 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, 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 Stuff You Should Know episode, if you ask me. Times two. Yeah. The sequel. That's right.

So, to get started, let's just give a brief overview of the seven wonders, okay? Let's do. You just want to, like, name them? Yeah. And we're going to do them chronologically, too, okay? Oh. Is that how they're listed for me? Yeah. Okay. Well, then, first up, we have the Great Pyramid. The Great Pyramid of Giza. Right. And then after that, again, chronologically, there's the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Yeah.

And apparently 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. Right. And then what's next, Chuck? The temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Here we go. The temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Ephesus. Either one. Artemis at Ephesus.

Nice, man. And then there's the statue of Zeus at Olympia, which I have to admit I had not heard of before. I had heard of that one. 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 was for me. The mausoleum at Halicarnassus 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've got that whole style where you wear the sag and you show your underwear, too. That's right. And then finally, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, which is, I think I had heard of that one. But when you put these all together, it is no small list.

No, and so this list, you may wonder who put this list together. Maybe Jacques Cousteau, maybe Bertrand Russell, who knows? It's actually way, way, way older than that. This list 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...

who kind of took the list and added to it or subtracted to it. And there's a bunch of candidates for who had written the list. The one I saw that's pretty roundly considered probably the first one to have written a list is Diodorus Sicilis or Diodorus of Sicily.

Yeah.

These places were now safe for Greeks to go visit. 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 point of 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 it. I think it was probably a point of pride to be able to say, I've seen all seven, what they called theomata. Yeah.

Yeah, Tiamata translates as things to be seen, or if you want to get even more modern, it's literally like, here are your must-sees. If you're going on vacation, it was kind of like the first travel website. Kind of, but it was just a list. Yeah, it wasn't on the web yet. That would take a couple hundred years. Sure, at least a couple hundred. Because these guys, they did live in the 3rd, 4th, 5th centuries BCE, right? Yeah. Yeah.

So over time, this list, like I said, it started out, I think, with the Great Pyramid has always been on there. Sure. Hanging gardens have always been on there. Temple of Artemis, Statue of Zeus, the Mausoleum.

The Colossus of Rhodes. And then I think the lighthouse at Alexandria may not have been on, and it was the walls of Babylon. And they said, we've already got Babylon covered. You guys, this lighthouse is to be seen. So it was eventually compiled. So the list itself is pretty ancient, too. Yeah, and Babylon, if they had one motto, it was come for the gardens, stay for the wall. Sure. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

So out of all of those, the only ones that are still around, actually, is the Great Pyramid. Yeah, I mean, there are bits of some of these in various museums, most notably the British Museum. Yeah, and there are some ruins on the site still. Yeah, here and there, some ruins underwater here and there. Have you been to a lot of ruins?

Uh, I've been to Pompeii. Yumi and I went. It was kind of the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. Yeah? Yeah, have you been? To Pompeii? Yeah. No. What ruins have you been to? Just your garden variety ruins, like in Rome, that kind of thing. Oh, yeah. Man, the Colosseum. Yeah. That was something to be seen, huh? Yeah, I mean, 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 in its current surroundings, sometimes I get a little sad. Because there's a lot of people chewing gum and on their phone and stuff? Yeah. You know? Yeah, man. And especially, well, we'll talk about the pyramids. But have you seen the famous Pizza Hut pictures? No, what are you talking about? Well, you know the pyramids. Oh, is that photoshopped?

No, it's not photoshopped. The pyramids back right up, or I guess front right up, to Cairo. So you always see the image looking at the pyramids from Cairo. If you see the image looking the other way...

There's like a city right buttoned up against it. Right. And an ancient Egyptian in the foreground turns to the camera with a single tear coming down his cheek. But he was really Italian. Right. No, there's literally a Pizza Hut KFC restaurant.

Which you could do worse. It could be a Burger King. 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. Neat. And so, you know, there are all kinds of photos now of Pizza Hut people

And it's just, it's sort of, you know, it's not, it speaks of the times, you know? Sure. Which is what I talked about, being a little sad. There's a pizza hut. There's a frigging Kentucky Fried Chicken yards from the Great Pyramids. Yeah.

Yeah. I just don't know how I feel about that. I guess it'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, you can't 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 going to live without KFC for a second. That's true. I would challenge some KFC if I was over there. I would, too. The very famous one by the Pyramids. I know what you mean, though. Sure. You know, it's just 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. Sure. Just feel sad about both. Okay. So let's go to the Great Pyramids of Giza. Okay.

And there's actually, if you go, oh, we're going to really wear out the Wayback Machine, huh? Yeah, this thing, we gassed it up. It's ready. And I got a new air freshener. You like it? I'm not big on the pineapple, but it's all right. I'll deal. I love pineapple. We can swap it out for the second part, okay? Okay. So we're going to get in the Wayback Machine, and if you go, we're actually just going to go back a couple days because we're going in modern times.

But if we're going to 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 Khufu, or Cheops, is what the Greeks call them. And his is the biggest pyramid of them all. Yeah, I mean, there are more than or exactly 80 pyramids scattered across Egypt today.

of various sizes, and I imagine they're all pretty great to go look at. But the big daddy of them all, like you said, is Khufu, K-H-U-F-U. And it is the one that you can get with a Pizza Hut cap on top. 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. Yeah. The other two are the Pyramid of Menkuar and the other one is Pyramid of Khafre. And they're smaller, but if you'll notice, those two have points. Yeah. The biggest one, the Pyramid of Khufu, has a flat top. Like it just knew that that Pizza Hut was coming in 4,000 years, right? Yeah.

So we know so little about this pyramid that they're not entirely certain if this is true or not, but there's a pretty widespread theory that that pyramid was actually unfinished. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. They couldn't bring those final stones, huh? 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 Napoleon shoot off the nose of the Sphinx or is that a...

Is that an old wives tale? No, that was Isis. Oh, okay. Probably. So, Chuck, one of the things that's so great about this pyramid is just how massive it is, right? Yes. It's tall. It's very tall. It's like 480 feet tall, which that's a substantial height 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 14th century when Lincoln Cathedral in England finally topped it. So for about 3,400 years it stood as the tallest structure, man-made, human-made structure in the world. That's hard to believe. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And then its side, each side at the base is about 755 feet long. So just massive, massive structures.

Yeah, and you know how I was talking about the fact that it's...

It just butts right up against Cairo. At least it's not surrounding, like the city is not just on all sides. So 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, nice wide aerial shots looks like most of that plateau is pretty preserved. Right. At least. So the whole thing, the pyramid was built, so...

sometime during the reign of King Khufu, appropriately enough. And the king reigned from, I think, 2589 to 2566. So it's a pretty old pyramid. And it's made of just a ton of blocks, cut blocks, right? One of the things, like if you go on some sites...

You'll find people who just kind of poo-poo the pyramids. It's like it's just piles of stone, really. But it's actually pretty clever engineering, especially considering how long ago it was built. It's not just a pile of 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 the structure didn't collapse in on itself as it, you know, aged. Right.

So it is a pretty big feat of engineering just in addition to its size, you know? Yeah, I mean, there are more than 2 million pile of stones. Who says that? Some people online. More than 2 million limestone and granite blocks, the weight of about 6.5 million tons. And these things are engineered such that they...

It's about a 51-degree slope on each side, and each side faces exactly to the four cardinal directions. That'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. These rocks fit together, the blocks, really, really tightly, less than a 50th 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 480 feet. I think it's 455 feet at its height. Originally, it was 480 feet and it was also encased in limestone. Well, did it originally have the point then?

I don't think so. No. Because I think they would, I think, there's some other stuff that suggests it was unfinished too. I don't know if it 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 says not quite done? Well, that's one of the things, that's one of the reasons why they think that it wasn't done is because it's lacking inscriptions that other pyramids have like in aces. Oh, they say that when you finish your work?

No, more like we dedicate this to the sun god Ra in the name of King Khufu and blah, blah, blah. Right, yeah, the yuge.

So it's lacking any kind of inscriptions. The king's burial chamber, the actual sarcophagus, which is just this huge mass of stone that they actually built the chamber around. It's not like they built the room and then imported this thing. It's bigger than any entrance to the room. But it's kind of rough. It's got some cut marks still showing, 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. Yeah, so they would have done that afterward. Yeah, it's like it's this dead, empty place that has never been used, ironically, to entomb dead people into. It was just never finished. Right. 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 there's just not even evidence of it being looted. Whoa. And then the... Yeah, it's kind of impressive. And then the last one is that...

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 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, 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 no one else has thought of this yet.

So I have a question then. They said it's originally covered in limestone in that casing. Does that mean that originally 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 to that is obvious. It was aliens that helped them. That's right. That's it. That's the answer. All right.

I have no idea, Chuck. That's a really good question to tell you the truth. Maybe there's a passageway inside. Right. They come out the top? Come out the top, pull the limestone up into place, and then slide down it and start the process over again. Interesting.

But if you want to see kind of probably what it looked like, just go look at the Iron Maiden Power Slave album cover. Oh, yeah. It's kind of like smoothly covered. It's not stepped, really. I mean, there's steps, but 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 14th century, there was an earthquake. And as you'll see, that becomes a pattern here with a lot of these ancient wonders that would become ruins because of earthquakes, right?

You know, most of these in the Middle East, it's a volatile area, tectonically speaking. So, you know, over the course of thousands of years, things are going to tumble over time, you know? Yeah. And that's what happened in this case. It's basically earthquakes, earthquake, earthquake, earthquake, over and over again. It's the great leveler of monuments, right? Yeah. But the Khufu Pyramid stood. It was stood that earthquake.

Because it's just more than a pile of rocks. 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 Yeah but 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. Mm-hmm A lot of these would be toppled and then people come in and say hey, let's use this stuff and

for the city instead of just some monument to a ruler. Are you ever going to go see the pyramids? 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 that's just one person's opinion. We also had people that said the

the northern lights aren't that impressive. Yeah. That one person. Yeah, we got shouted down for that. Oh, my God. It still happens from time to time. Yeah. So if you do go, though, Chuck, the way that you go into the pyramid as far as you can, it's actually no one's –

figured out how to go in the way that it was intended. That 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 9th century from this guy named Abdullah al-Maman.

who oversaw a looting expedition. And he's one of the reasons why they think that it was unused, because even back in the 9th century, this guy couldn't find anything in the sealed pyramid. Interesting. And you gain access to that through the bathroom of Pizza Hut? That's right, with your x-ray specs. Wow. You want to take a break? Yeah, let's do that. Let's do it now. ♪ music playing ♪

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This is the – we're going chronologically like you said. So the second oldest, if it was real, built in about the 6th century. And obviously these don't exist anymore in any shape or form. But the deal is that these – this is in like modern-day Iraq and Iraq.

They were gardens that it was really about the building. It's kind of like the first big botanical garden. Right. It wasn't just things hanging from the sky. It was plants and trees and everything planted in this grand big building that had water flowing through it. Yeah. In the desert. Yeah. Yeah.

So if it was in Babylon, it would have been about 90 miles or 90 kilometers. I can't remember which one. Outside of Baghdad, modern-day Baghdad, right? And if it was in Babylon, they think that maybe King Nebuchadnezzar built the gardens. This is according to legend, at least. Sure. He built the gardens for his wife, Amytis, who was from...

Yeah.

But supposedly it was just this enormous building tiered with huge walkways. Yeah. And they planted it with dirt and trees. And there is 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,

a while after they would have been built. But the idea that you could just walk down tree-lined avenues in this building in the desert is pretty neat.

Yeah, I mean, I get the sense that in today's terms, it would be like a sort of a nice office park. Yeah, I guess so. 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. It was along the Euphrates 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 75 feet tall, like you said, tiered.

This brick structure with plants and waterfalls coming off of it and 22-foot thick walls, 400 feet wide, and all manner of flora all over the place and irrigated from that Euphrates River. Right. If, again, it was in Babylon. But there's a couple of reasons why that whole thing is –

Why it's questioned, right? So on the one hand, there's no evidence of it. No one said this is where it was. And other people say, well, of course you can't say that. These were plants. These were gardens. There's not going to be any trace of it left. Maybe we found the building and we don't even realize it. Right.

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, you know...

let out like a 30-second belch today, King Nebuchadnezzar. He would have stuff like this inscribed, right? Yeah, I can't think of anyone today who I could liken that to, but yes. Right, exactly. Like he was one of a kind. No ruler ever has bore any resemblance to him. But he never mentioned the gardens of Babylon in any cuneiform tablet that's ever been discovered. Yeah, he did not tout it in writing, right?

Which is very, very unusual. And then there's another guy, Herodotus. He was an historian from Greece, and he wrote basically a monograph on Babylon.

100 years after Nebuchadnezzar, and 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, maybe it wasn't in Babylon. Maybe it was in another place, in Assyria.

Yeah, maybe the Assyrian queen built it. Maybe the ruler of Nineveh, whose name and these names, I just love ticking through all these names as if Nebuchadnezzar wasn't good enough. Sennacherib?

That's great. The ruler of Nineveh may have built them. I had always thought these were real, but I tend to think that maybe Nebuchadnezzar didn't have anything to do with it because it doesn't. You're right. 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 this stuff like,

keeping records, it was all very new, it was like the hot thing to do, you know? - Sure, right. - And so they wouldn't just say, oh by the way, we failed to mention, we built this

what will eventually be a wonder of the world, but we just didn't think it was important enough to write down. Yeah, and this is from Nebuchadnezzar who used to leave like inscriptions in the blocks of buildings saying, built by Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of Babylon from sea to sea. Even if he didn't build it. He would have, right, exactly. He would have mentioned it, right? So if it was in Nineveh,

It would have been close to present-day Mosul in northern Iraq, right? Right. And if it was in Nineveh, then we've actually already found the gardens of Babylon because they discovered –

a structure that was clearly something similar to what the gardens of Babylon have described. It was a structure that had irrigation brought to it that used water screws to pump water. Remember from our Archimedes death ray episode? To pump it upward to this thing. So we found a garden...

Basically a botanical garden structure in Nineveh. 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 from the Euphrates into these big holding tanks, these big cisterns essentially on top.

And then it would use a very clever system of gravity to then feed down and irrigate all the different areas as it flowed downward. Right. Really something to see. I can't imagine what it must have been like. Especially there. I literally can't. You know? I'm kind of disappointed now.

i have to admit why no because it doesn't sound like it was it was there or maybe even real yeah but it could have been in nineveh i think it was real i think it was a nineveh and yeah because if you if you look at the um if you look at some i think it was deodorius deodorus's writing from sicily the guy from sicily yeah he says that there were hanging gardens but they were built by a syrian king

So I'm pretty sure that's it. All right. So they were real, Chuck, and we know where they are. Okay. 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 after this. Hi, icons. It's Paris Hilton. Check out my new single, Chasen, featuring Meghan Trainor. Out today. Hi.

I feel so lucky to collaborate with Megan and how perfectly she put my experience into words. Listen to Chasen from my new album, Infinite Icon, on iHeartRadio or wherever you stream music. Don't forget to visit InfiniteIcon.com to pre-save my album. Sponsored by 1111 Media.

In every pair of Tecova's boots, you can expect handmade quality, first-wear comfort, and timeless Western style. Tecova's boots are always made from premium bovine and exotic leathers, and with occasional re-solving, they will last a lifetime. The best way to shop for boots is at your local Tecova's store, where you'll be greeted by the smell of fresh leather and a friendly smile.

Come on in, grab a cold one, get fitted by a pro, and shop the latest dials. Visit Decovas.com. That's T-E-C-O-V-A-S.com. And don't go gently, y'all.

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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 120 years to build and just one night to go bye-bye. Yeah. Which is how it goes sometimes. Yeah, especially when there's someone with pyromania involved. Yeah, exactly. So Ephesus, Ephesus, Ephesus, that's what I'm going with. How about you?

Artemis at Ephesus. Yeah, that sounds better. I think that might be it. So Ephesus is actually a pretty well-known city of the ancient world. And I think it's still around in some way, shape, or form.

But it used to be a fabulously wealthy port city in 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 at the pleasure of Greece and then later Rome. But they managed to be an important...

place of 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 ancient world. Yeah. So when they call it the city of magic, they mean that literally. Right.

Right, not Magic City. But it had like a quarter of a million residents at its peak, or at the time when the Temple of Artemis was in full swing. And it was originally built, this temple, this massive, huge temple, back in 550 BCE by a guy named King Croesus. They think that might be old King Cole. Did you know that? Oh, really? Mm-hmm. Huh. That's what I've always heard. So King Croesus of Lydia, and this one...

If you look it up under the images, it looks like your kind of classic Greek temple. It's rectangular. It measures about 350 by 180 feet tall.

And the thing about this one that really jumped out at me were the columns. And there are more than 100 columns, and they're marble. And it's not just like everything had columns. So that's all fine and well. It's like enough with the columns. These were the ionic architectural style columns. But these were, like if you look at it, they're 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 just the size of this thing, too. 350 feet in length, right? Yeah. Or in depth. That's like more than one football field, American football field. This is a pretty good-sized temple. Yeah. It's not as massive as you might think initially, but it's still pretty big. Well, I mean, you've got to...

You have to think all of this in ancient standards. Sure. Like today, you look at a building the size of a football field, and it's not that big of a deal, but it's still large. But by those standards back then, it was enormous. Right, which I'm happy with saying it's massive. Yeah, put on your ancient hats, folks. Plus also just 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, the base...

There was a door and two windows. I believe the windows were on either side of the door. That was not for you, Peon. That was for Artemis to enter and leave her temple at her whim. That's right. So Artemis herself, this is one of the reasons why this is my favorite. Artemis herself was the Greek precursor to the Roman Diana. Okay? Yes. She was the goddess of fertility, of the hunt, and I believe the moon too, right? Yeah.

And she was Apollo's twin sister. She was the daughter of Zeus and Leto. 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. And her name was Sybil.

And Sibyl was based on an ancient, like, fertility goddess from 9,000 years ago. So they took Sibyl and they took Artemis, who basically represented the same thing but two different cultures, and they put it together at this Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Yeah, and we're talking about a statue.

I don't even think we said that. Oh, yeah. No, we didn't. We weren't talking about some kind of weird voodoo black magic. Right. It's a statue built from gold, silver, ebony, and some other stuff they had laying around. Pull tabs from tab cans.

Sure. It was like a found object thing. Basically. But what's amazing about this one, you can actually look up the statue even though these are just, I don't know, were there ever pictures of it or is this just called from writings? 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 the statue has this row of bulbs hanging from her body. And if you look at it, it looks 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 breasts. She's a fertility goddess. Yeah, that would make a little bit of sense. It does. It would make even more sense if it weren't for the fact that Sybil's cult...

was known to castrate bulls as sacrifice. So they think they were probably bull testicles. And actually the Sybil cult high priests would castrate themselves so they could be more like Sybil, i.e. without testicles. Remember our castration episode? Oh, do I? Boy, we've talked about a lot of stuff, Chuck. We have.

So you've got this amazing, wonderful, super cool statue in an already amazing temple. Yeah. And it's not just me who thought that it was the most amazing one of all. There was another guy who wrote, his name was Antipur of Sidon.

He says, and this is, he's writing back in, you know, I guess BCE still. Yeah. Because he was an ancient Greek. But he said, I've seen the walls of unbreachable Babylon. Remember that was originally one of the seven wonders. Yeah. Along which chariots may race and the statue of Zeus by the river Alpheus, the hanging gardens and the colossus of the sun, the great man-made mountains of the lofty pyramids and the gigantic tomb of Mausolus. Yeah.

But when I saw the sacred house of Artemis reaching the clouds, the others paled. And that was Antipur of Sidon, right? So he's saying, like, I've seen all the wonders. And to me, the temple of Artemis at Ephesus 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 it. So this thing was very, I mean, 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, um,

little 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 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 the little replica, that exact thing was going on thousands of years ago. Yeah. That's nothing new. I want one of those. That would be great. If you're looking for something for me for Christmas, an original replica from the BCE of the Temple of Artemis, I would love that. All right. So you just want a gift that's priceless. Basically. Okay. Yeah.

So this story gets a little more interesting here. You mentioned a pyromaniac earlier. In July 356 BC, there was a man named, and we almost didn't know his name, Herostratus, who was a pyromaniac who burned this temple down for the, by all accounts, for the sole reason of living in infamy. And 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. Yeah. But yeah, a guy named, who was it? Theo Pompas was the one who wrote it down, who recorded the act. And so...

What's his name? Herostratus. Yeah. Was recorded in infamy just like he wanted. That's right. He was an ancient jerk, I think is what you'd call it. And the temple, the story gets even better because the temple burned the same day that Alexander the Great was born, which was amazing. And they would later rebuild the temple. And Alexander said, yeah, you know what? Why don't I pay for this thing?

All you got to 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 just build it on our own. Right. But then they back slowly out of the room like, okay, that's okay, right? You're not going to kill us, are you? 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 so the story goes. I'm not sure about that, though. That's according to how stuff works. Yeah. So they rebuilt it. They eventually did rebuild it.

And I think it was somewhat shortly after. I'm not sure actually how long it was after it was burned. Yeah, 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. Sure. But then in 262 CE, the Goths raided Ephesus, led by Robert Smith II.

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 great leveler. I know. And then I saw another thing that said, and this wasn't in our article either, but it said that it was rebuilt again in

even after that, and then a 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 Ephesus was an 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 going to undermine our Artemis and our local economy is going to fall to pieces.

My ancient religion was so interesting. It really was. You know? Yeah. All right. You got anything else on that one? No, I don't, man. I think we've reached the end of part one. Hooray. And if you're waiting, while you're waiting for episode two to come out, you can get in touch with us. We accept emails by the oodles at stuffpodcasts at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Thank you.

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