AMAZING FACTS

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the World that still survives. Can you name the other six?

They are:

1) The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which were built on the banks of the Euphrates river by King Nebuchadnezzar II.

2) The gigantic gold statue of Zeus was built by the sculptor Pheidias at Olympia.

3) The temple of Artemis was erected in the Asia Minor city of Ephesus in honour of the Greek goddess of hunting and wild nature.

4) The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was a huge tomb constructed for King Maussollos, Persian satrap of Caria.

5) The Colossus of Rhodes was a massive statue erected by the Greeks in honour of Helios the sun-god.

6) The Lighthouse of Alexandria was built by the Ptolemies on the island of Pharos.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was built near the ancient city of Memphis for Pharaoh Khufu in the period of the Fourth Dynasty, between 2613 and 2494BC. The Greeks refered to it as the Pyramid of Cheops. A true wonder, it is immense: according to Mysteries of the Unknown, it covers a ground area of 13.1 acres (32,4 hectares), composed of some 2.3 million limestone blocks average two-and-a-half tonnes each, enough stone to build a wall of foot-square cubes two-thirds around the globe at the equator, a distance of 16,600 miles (26 500km).

The oldest statue in the world is the Great Sphinx of Egypt. Carved out of limestone, it stands 19,8 metres (65 ft) high and is 73 metres (240 ft) long.