The phrase “seven wonders of the ancient world” is enough to make your heart sink. There is something so fly-blown about the notion of an archaeological greatest hits – all tourist buses, bossy tour guides and dodgy air conditioning. Bettany Hughes, however, is on a mission to re-enchant us with what she calls seven “test cases of the human imagination”, from the Great Pyramid at Giza to the Colossus of Rhodes by way of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. “I have travelled as the ancients did by land and sea to explore traces of the Wonders themselves,” declaims Hughes, sounding for all the world like Homer. And now she is here to tell us why we should wonder – and perhaps wander too – in her wake.
We start on the banks of the Nile, staring into the scorching sun and trying to discern the tip of King Khufu’s great pyramid, built around 2560BCE. The pharaoh was convinced that a tall, pointy launchpad in blinding white limestone was just what he needed to sail into the sky and on into the afterlife. Thrillingly, new evidence about his postmortem travel plans continues to emerge. Hughes explains that as recently as 2011 the remains of a boat were excavated on the eastern side of the Pyramid, still patiently waiting to ferry its royal commander into the beyond. You have to admire the literalness or perhaps hubris of the Egyptian king in thinking that he could paddle his way to the stars. Worth noting, though, that his mummified body has never been found.
One of the great joys of Hughes’s book is the way she follows her wonders into their own less-than-glorious afterlives. In the 1930s, when Egyptology was all the rage, it was quite the thing for Bright Young Things to climb to the top of Khufu’s pyramid and picnic ostentatiously in their bathing costumes, all the better to top up fashionable tans.
It gets more complicated when you can’t be sure that a particular wonder even existed. This is the case with the so-called Hanging Gardens of Babylon, said to have been built about 600BCE. While there’s strong archaeological evidence for the Mesopotamian city’s sturdy walls, the notion that these were topped by fantastic decorative shrubbery seems to defy the laws of nature, not to mention physics. An extensive irrigation system might have worked in theory, but could it really have delivered? Perhaps, suggests Hughes, the gardens were actually a matter of a few scrappy plants and a lot of wishful thinking.
Or maybe it was all a metaphor. This, after all, was the iron age, a time when humans set about making their mark on the natural world rather than harbouring ambitions to paddle off and join the sky gods. It is also, incidentally, the moment when the Book of Genesis, with its lush horticultural fantasies about the Garden of Eden, was conceived. Whether or not there ever was a marvellous plantation hanging in the sky, it’s clear that it became an irresistible challenge to subsequent wonder-merchants. It inspired the gardens in Alexandria, some of which still endure today around the Mahmūdiyya canal. It was there too in Herod’s Winter Palaces in Judaea and in the splendour of Nero’s Golden House in Rome.
Tempting though it is to read the ancient wonders metaphorically – otherwise, what are we to make of Roman author Aelian’s straight-faced assertion that the eels in the ponds at the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos wore gold necklaces as they shimmied through the water? – Hughes remains insistent that material facts do matter. In her chapter on the temple of Artemis, she tells how she was given the opportunity in 2020 to visit a mansion where archaeologists had recently discovered the skull of a young, aristocratic woman decapitated to appease the gods. A virgin sacrifice, in other words, a sort of bronze age building insurance. “Suddenly,” admits Hughes, “ancient stories felt horribly real.” It is this capacity to move deftly between registers – mythic, historical, sacred, profane and pitifully personal – that makes her such a beguiling guide.
• The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World by Bettany Hughes is published by W&N (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. From Friday 8 December 2023 to Wednesday 10 January 2024, 20p from every Guardian Bookshop order will support the Guardian and Observer’s charity appeal 2023.
