Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Alexandria and half-dismantled it. A great earthquake in 1375 shattered the remainder, throwing the great
hulks of marble into the harbor, where they remained.
Of course, the Greek writers and historians who recorded these wonders could only discuss things in
their known world. Elsewhere in the inhabited world before Christ's time there were other great wonders.
The most obvious absentee on the list of the wonders of antiquity is the Great Wall of China, the world's
longest wall fortification and perhaps the greatest building project ever undertaken. Although much of the
present Great Wall dates from
AD
1420 when it was enlarged during the Ming dynasty, the wall originally
dates to around 221
BC.
That was when the powerful emperor Shih Huang Ti unified the empire under the
Ch'in dynasty. To protect his northern border from attack by Hsiungu (Huns), Shih Huang Ti ordered the
existing town walls of the northern frontier linked to create the Great Wall. Accounts from that period state
that three hundred thousand men labored for years and that the fourteen-hundred-mile-long wall was ready
by 215
BC.
Also ignored was an entire city that must have ranked as a wonder, the Persian capital of Persepolis.
Given the way the Greeks felt about the Persians, it is no surprise that the Greek writers left out a Persian
accomplishment. These were the superpowers of their day and there was no love lost between them. Suc-
cessor to the empires of Babylon, Egypt, and Assyria, the Persian Empire, based in what is now Iran, was
larger and more populous than any of its predecessors of ancient times. Begun by Darius I, who reigned
from 522 to 486
BC
, Persepolis was built from scratch, a new capital city, anticipating such similarly
planned capitals as Washington, DC, and Brasilia.
The site for Persepolis was a natural rock terrace backed by a sheer cliff face. Unlike other ancient
building projects such as the pyramids, it was built by paid laborers rather than slaves. Clay tablets from
the construction period reveal accounts of the wages paid to the laborers who built the city. An awesome
piece of architecture, Persepolis contained huge palaces, ceremonial stairways, and imposing sculptures
such as the great carved gateway of Xerxes I, the son of Darius I.
The Persian Empire was at its height as the Greeks began their ascendancy, and the two empires fought
a series of bitter wars. Darius was defeated at the famed battle of Marathon (490
BC
). His son, Xerxes
I, continued the war against the Greeks and was checked at Thermopylae (480
BC
), but still destroyed
Athens. The Athenians defeated his fleet, however, at the great naval battle at Salamis. Had these Persian
wars, recounted by (among others) Herodotus, the “Father of History,” gone the other way, it might have
been a different ancient world. With the Greek victory began the domination of Greek and hence Western
civilization, which from this early beginning expressed a sense of moral and cultural superiority over the
East. (See “World Battlefields That Shaped History,” later in this chapter.)
The Persian Empire, struggling under court intrigues, was finally subdued by Alexander the Great in
330
BC
, when he sacked and destroyed Persepolis in revenge for the earlier destruction of Athens by Xer-
xes.
In 1971, the shah of Iran—later deposed by the Iranian Revolution of 1979—staged an enormous cel-
ebration in the ruins of Persepolis to commemorate the 2,500th anniversary of Iranian monarchy.
Was Cleopatra Black?
In Michael Jackson's Egyptian music video
Remember the Time
, the pharaoh is played by Eddie Murphy
and his queen, Nefertiti, by the model Iman. While it is safe to say that the Egyptian pharaohs did not look
like Yul Brenner, it may be a leap to think they looked like the star of
48 Hours
either. But it's a sure bet
that Moses had little in common with Charlton Heston and Jesus didn't look like Max Von Sydow, the
Swedish actor who portrayed Christ in
The Greatest Story Ever Told.
From
Birth of a Nation
to
JFK
, Hol-
