Rhodes is an island located where the Aegean Sea meets the Mediterranean with a capitol city of the same name built in 408 BC at the location of the island's best natural harbour on the northern coast.
Alexander the Great conquered Rhodes in 332 BC but he died at an early age and three of his generals, Ptolemy, Seleucus and Antigous, divided up his vast kingdom between themselves. This lead to a problem however, although he took Egypt in the deal, the Rhodians still supported Ptolemy. This angered Antigous who now ruled Rhodes and he sent his son Demetrius to punish the Rhodians.
Although Demetrius sailed into Rhodes with an army of 40 000, more than the entire population of the island, he was stopped by a flooded ditch and heavy mud outside the city walls. He laid siege to Rhodes for almost a year before a fleet of ships from Egypt arrived to assist the people of Rhodes. Demetrius withdrew, leaving the massive siege tower behind.
To celebrate their victory and therefore their freedom, the Rhodians set upon building a giant statue of their patron god, Helios.
They used the bronze from various things Demetrius left behind and used his siege tower as scaffolding. Construction started in 304 BC and lasted 12 years.
The Colossus was one hundred and ten feet high, almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty in New York and stood upon a fifty-foot pedestal near the harbour entrance. Many illustrations show the Colossus with one leg on either side of the harbour so that ships could pass underneath however it was actually on one side in a very Greek pose wearing only a spiked crown and a cloak.
The Colossus at Rhodes stood for 56 years but was destroyed by an earthquake leaving the huge bronze sections strewn around the harbour for centuries. An Egyptian king is reported to have offered to pay for its reconstruction but the Rhodians, fearing that they had angered Helios, prompting him to send an earthquake to destroy the Colossus, refused.
The Pharos (Lighthouse) of Alexandria
Alexander the Great founded the city of Alexandria in 332 BC. It was one of 17 cities he started named Alexandria in different location around his vast kingdom, the majority of them disappeared but Alexandria in Egypt was a huge city and is still there today.
Learning from previous examples, Alexander the Great chose not to build his new city on the Nile Delta because harbours there had become blocked with silt from the river, instead he chose a site twenty miles along the coast to the west. Since he still wanted his city to have easy shipping access to the River Nile for trading purposes, Alexander the Great constructed a canal between Lake Mareotis, south of Alexandria and the Nile giving the city two harbours, one leading to the River Nile and one on the Mediterranean Sea and he would have no problems with either one of them getting blocked.
Alexander the Great died less than 10 years later and Ptolemy took over the building of the city, which he made rich and prosperous. The busy shipping meant that the seas around the harbour were treacherous and needed a system to guide ships safely into Alexandria so Ptolemy commissioned the building of the lighthouse on the island of Pharos, the building soon acquiring the name Pharos for itself. The Pharos became the world second tallest building after the Great Pyramid and the word 'Pharos' became so widely known that it became the root of the word for lighthouse in many Latin derived languages.
The architect behind the Pharos was Sostrates of Knidos. Naturally he wished to carve his own name into the foundation of his work, but Ptolemy II, son of Ptolemy insisted that his name be the only one on the whole building. This didn't put Sostrates off; he came up with a scam to get what he wanted. He chiselled his own name into the stone foundations and then quickly plastered over it before inscribing the king's name into the plaster. Over time the plaster fell away revealing Sostrate's original inscription.
It was possible for civilians to ascend the Pharos and look out over the sea as they enjoyed a meal from the lighthouse restaurant, a rarity in ancient times. Like many of the other wonders, earthquakes destroyed the lighthouse. It was damaged by tremors in 365 and 1303 AD and after 1,500 years of guiding ships with a mirror in the daytime and a fire at night the Pharos collapsed into the Mediterranean Sea in 1326 AD.
