The Seven Wonders: A Novel of the Ancient World

by Steven Saylor

  “Father, this is Gordianus of Rome, the man who saved you. Gordianus, this is my father.”

  I had never seen a mummy before. Nor had I ever been formally introduced to a dead man. In the world’s oldest land, I was having many new experiences.

  I stepped closer to the mummy and made a small bow. As far as I could tell, the old fellow looked none the worse for his time in captivity. His linen wrappings were unsoiled, and his face was remarkably well preserved—so much so that I half-expected him to blink and open his eyes. Anything seemed possible in Egypt.

  Djal’s daughter came running into the room. “Father! Father! Come and see!”

  We followed her back to the garden. The face of the Nile had changed. Where before it had been as still and flat as a mirror, now a series of ripples extended across the whole width. Out on the boats, which bobbed slightly in the tide, fishermen waved their arms and cheered. Across the water, the fields were suddenly filled with farmers hurrying this way and that. Various contraptions with wheels and paddles were set in motion. The irrigation channels that crisscrossed the fields, which before had been dry, now glistened with moisture.

  “The inundation has begun,” whispered Djal. “And my father is home!” He dropped to his knees, covered his face, and wept with joy.

  “Come see!” cried the little girl. She took my hand and led me down a path toward the river. Antipater followed, groaning. On the muddy bank we took off our shoes and stepped into the Nile. Looking down, I saw the green water turn brown as it steadily rose, covering first my feet and then my ankles.

  From all up and down the river I heard cries of thanksgiving. Again and again the name of Isis was invoked. I stared at the sun-dappled water. For just an instant, amid the ripples and sparkles of light, I caught a glimpse of Isis smiling back at me.

  IX

  THEY DO IT WITH MIRRORS

  (The Pharos Lighthouse)

  “Why seven?” I said.

  “What’s that?” muttered Antipater, who was nodding off under the heat of the noonday sun. The crowded passenger boat we had boarded in Memphis had carried us all the way down the Nile, through the Delta, and into the open sea. Now we were sailing west, keeping close to the low coastline. There was not much to look at; the land was almost as flat and featureless as the sea. The broiling sun seemed to leach the color from everything. The pale expanse of water reflected a sky that was the faintest shade of blue, almost white.

  “Why is there a list of Seven Wonders?” I said. “Why not six, or eight, or ten?”

  Antipater cleared his throat and blinked. “Seven is a sacred number, more perfect than any other. Every educated person knows that. The number seven occurs repeatedly in history and in nature with a significance beyond all other numbers.”

  “How so?”

  “I’m a poet, Gordianus, not a mathematician. But I seem to recall that Aristobulus of Paneas composed a treatise on the significance of the number seven, pointing out that the Hebrew calendar has seven days and that in many instances Hesiod and Homer also attach special importance to the seventh day of a sequence of events. There are seven planets in the heavens—can you name them? In Greek, please.”

  “Helios, Selene, Hermes, Aphrodite, Ares, Zeus, and Kronos.”

  Antipater nodded. “The most prominent constellation, the Great Bear, has seven stars. In Greece, we celebrate the Seven Sages of olden days, and your own city, Rome, was founded on the Seven Hills. Seven heroes stood against Thebes—Aeschylus wrote a famous play about them. And in the days of Minos, seven Athenian youths and seven virgins were sent every year to be sacrificed to the Minotaur of Crete. Here in Egypt, the Nile where it forms the Delta splits into seven major branches. I could cite many more examples—but as you see, the list of the Seven Wonders is hardly arbitrary. It exemplifies a law of nature.”

  I nodded. “But why those seven?”

  “Now that we’ve seen all the Wonders, Gordianus, surely you can understand why each was placed on the list.”

  “Yes, but who made the list in the first place, and when, and why?”

  Antipater smiled. He was fully awake now, and doing the thing he enjoyed most, other than reciting his poems—teaching. “The list is certainly very old; it had been around for as long as anyone could remember when I was a child and learned it. But the list as we know it cannot be any older than the youngest item on it. That would be the Colossus of Rhodes, which was built about two hundred years ago. So the list of the Seven Wonders—as it was handed down to me, anyway—is no older than that.”

  “But who created the list, and why?”

  “No one knows for certain, but I have my own theory about that.” Antipater looked quite pleased with himself.

  “A theory? Why did you never mention it before?”

  “Before proposing my idea to you, or to anyone else, I wanted to see all of the Seven Wonders. Having done so, I still need to do a bit of research. That’s one reason we’re heading to Alexandria. Hopefully, I’ll be able to gain access to the famous Library, where I can consult the ancient sources and meet with scholars to determine the feasibility of my theory.”

  “What theory?”

  “Having to do with the origin of the list of the Seven Wonders, of course.” He shook his head. “Ah, but look! There! Do you see it?”

  Ahead of us and a bit to the left, a bright star appeared to be shining just above the horizon—even though the hour was noon.

  “What can it be?” I whispered. I stared at the star that could not be a star, fascinated by the glimmering beam of light.

  “Behold the Pharos!” said Antipater.

  “Pharos?”

  “It takes its name from the rocky island on which it stands, out in the harbor of Alexandria. Alexander founded the city, but it was his successor, King Ptolemy, who made the city great by constructing vast new temples and monuments. The greatest of these—certainly the most conspicuous—was a structure of a sort that had never been seen before, a soaring tower with a beacon at its summit to guide ships safely past the shallows and reefs to Ptolemy’s capital. A lighthouse, they called it. In the two hundred years since it was completed, similar towers have been built all over the world, wherever sailors are in need of a high beacon to guide them, but none of these later lighthouses are remotely as tall as the original, the Pharos of Alexandria.”

  “But we must be a long way from Alexandria. I can’t see anything of the city at all.”

  “The beacon can be seen across the open sea as far as three hundred stadia, they say—in Roman terms, thirty miles or more.”

  “But how is such a light produced? Surely no flame can burn that brightly.”

  “By day, the beam is created using mirrors—enormous reflectors made of hammered bronze and silver that can be tilted in various ways so as to reflect the light of the sun. At night, a bonfire is kept burning in the tower, and the mirrors magnify the light to make it many times brighter.”

  “Remarkable!” I whispered, unable to take my eyes off the scintillating ray of light. Occasionally it appeared to flicker, distorted by waves of rising heat and the haze that hung over the tepid sea, but the light was strong and steady, growing brighter as our ship sailed closer to Alexandria.

  At last I began to discern in miniature the features of a coastal city—ships in the harbor, city walls and towers, a vast temple on a hill in the distance—and most prominent of all, the lighthouse called the Pharos at the harbor entrance. At first my eyes deceived me, and I thought the Pharos was much shorter than it was. Then, as we drew nearer and the features of the city resolved themselves in greater depth, I was staggered at the true dimensions of the tower. I had thought it might be as tall as the Mausoleum in Halicarnassus, but it had to be much taller than that, at least twice or perhaps three times as tall.

  “It must be as tall as the Great Pyramid!” I said.

  I heard a chuckle behind me. “Not quite that tall—at least, not according to those who possess the knowledge and instruments ca
pable of measuring such things.”

  I tore my gaze from the Pharos to have a look at the smiling passenger who had just spoken, and who now joined us at the railing. His skin was the color of ebony and he had not a hair on his head, which made his white teeth and his necklace of silver and lapis all the more dazzling. I found it hard to judge his age, but he was not young; there were a few white hairs in his eyebrows. His flawless Greek had the elegant (to my ear, rather affected) accent of highly educated Alexandrians.

  “My name is Isidorus,” he said. “Forgive me for intruding, but I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. Have you truly seen all of the Seven Wonders of the World?”

  “We have,” said Antipater.

  “How remarkable! And I believe you mentioned the Library, and your desire to visit that institution.”

  “I did,” said Antipater.

  “I happen to be a scholar at the Library. Perhaps I can assist you in gaining access—unless, of course, you already have the necessary credentials.”

  “As a matter of fact, any assistance you might give me would be most welcome,” said Antipater. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Zoticus of Zeugma—no famous scholar, alas, merely a humble teacher of the young. And this is my pupil—or former pupil, I should say, for Gordianus is now a man and past the age of schooling.”

  “A Roman?” said Isidorus.

  I nodded. My accent always gave me away.

  “You work at the Library?” said Antipater. “I thought the scholars there were seldom permitted to leave Alexandria, except on official business sanctioned by King Ptolemy.”

  “That is correct. I’m just returning from a journey up the Nile. During the excavations for a new temple, some scrolls were discovered in a buried jar. They appeared to be very ancient. I was sent to retrieve them, so that they may be evaluated, copied, and catalogued in the Library.” Slung by a strap over one of his shoulders was a Roman-style capsa, a leather cylinder for carrying scrolls.

  “Fascinating,” said Antipater. “May I ask what sort of documents these scrolls turned out to be?”

  Isidorus laughed. “Don’t become too exited, friend Zoticus. The scrolls were in poor condition—the copiers will face quite a challenge, making sense of the faded script and the gaps. And from my cursory examination, they pertain mostly to day-to-day business among petty bureaucrats during the reign of some ancient pharaoh whom no one even remembers. Nothing to do with the Seven Wonders, I’m afraid.”

  “Speaking of which…” I returned my gaze to the Pharos, which loomed even larger before us, so incredibly tall that it defied belief. “How can it be that this wonder is not listed among them?”

  Isidorus smiled. “Certainly, we Alexandrians take great pride in the Pharos. But I can tell you, for a start, that it is not as tall as the Great Pyramid. Of course, the pyramids—and the Mausoleum, for that matter—are virtually solid constructions, made of stones stacked on stones with very little interior space. Given a large enough base, and enough stones, one could build such a construction to any height and it would remain stable—indeed, immovable, like a mountain. But such an edifice is by definition a monument, not a building of the sort that people can actually make use of, with hallways, rooms, stairwells, and windows. But the Pharos is such a building. There are hundreds of rooms inside, on many different levels—storerooms for fuel, workshops for the repair and upkeep constantly required by the complicated lighthouse mechanisms, dining halls for the workers, and barracks and armories for the soldiers who man the Pharos garrison. The Pharos does not merely exist to be gazed upon and marveled at. The Pharos is a working wonder.”

  As we drew closer, I saw the soldiers and workers of whom Isidorus had spoken, moving purposefully across the island, up the long ramp that led to the lighthouse entrance, and manning the parapets of the tower. The soldiers wore exotic armor that mingled the traditions of Greece and Egypt. The workers wore a sort of uniform that consisted of a tight-fitting green cap and a dark green tunic.

  I studied the details of the Pharos. The building was constructed of huge blocks of white stone, with decorations made of red granite; columns of this rose-colored stone framed the massive entrance. The tower rose in three distinct stages. The lowest and largest was square in shape; the four walls gently tapered inward as they rose and ended in an elaborately decorated parapet which featured gigantic Triton statues at each corner, each holding a trident in one hand and blowing a conch in the other. The middle portion was octagonal, and not as tall as the first. The final tower was cylindrical, and the shortest of the three. It was capped by the beacon, which appeared to be housed inside a colonnaded structure not unlike a round temple. Upon the roof of the Pharos stood a gilded statue, so distant that I was not sure which god it represented.

  Antipater saw me squinting. “That statue up there is Zeus the Savior, as he is known and worshipped by sailors in many a temple beside the sea. In one hand he holds a thunderbolt, the symbol of his absolute power over land and sea; there is nothing a sailor fears more than a lightning storm. In the other hand he holds a cornucopia, the symbol of his beneficence and the fruits of commerce; all who carry cargoes across the sea seek the blessing of Zeus the Savior.”

  I squinted again, and was barely able to make out the image Antipater described. “But how can you possibly see all those details?” I demanded, for Antipater’s eyesight was not as good as mine.

  He laughed. “All I see up there is a glimmer of gold atop the lighthouse. But I know the statue represents Zeus the Savior because of the famous poem by Posidippus—which you should remember as well, young man, for I’m sure I taught it to you. You must know it, Isidorus.”

  “Indeed I do,” said the scholar, who commenced to recite in his elegant accent.

  “On the island sacred to Proteus, Sostratus of Cnidos

  Built this savior of the Greeks, the Pharos tower.

  The coast of Egypt offers no lookouts or mountaintops,

  And treacherous rocks rim Alexandria’s watery bower.

  But Pharos pierces the sky like an upright thorn,

  Visible day and night, thanks to the beacon’s conflagration.

  Even as a ship approaches the Bull’s Horn,

  Zeus, gazing down, offers salvation.”

  “The Bull’s Horn?” I said. “What’s that?”

  Isidorus peered ahead and grabbed the railing. “I think you’re about to find out, Gordianus. Hold on tight!”

  Antipater and I followed his example, though I failed to see the need. We were about to sail into the harbor, with plenty of distance between the breakwaters and us. As far as I could see, there were no ships or any other hazards nearby.

  Suddenly, from high above our heads, I head the blaring of a horn. I looked up, and to my amazement realized the noise was issuing from the conch held by the nearest of the four Triton statues that perched at the four corners of the Pharos. The horn blared again.

  The ship made a sharp turn to one side. The three of us were showered with sea spray. As I blinked my eyes to quell the stinging, I looked back to see the jagged outcrop of stone around which our captain had deftly maneuvered. The rock did indeed resemble a bull’s horn, rising from the foamy waves.

  “What just happened?” I said.

  “There are watchers posted on the Pharos who observe every ship as it arrives and departs,” explained Isidorus. “Our captain has plenty of experience on this route, but in case he had any difficulty in spotting the Bull’s Horn, a watcher on the Pharos sounded a specific signal to alert him as our ship approached the hazard.”

  “But how can a statue be made to blow a horn?”

  Isidorus smiled. “That is yet another of the wonders of the Pharos. There’s a treatise that describes the Tritons’ manufacture and operation in the Library, but I’m afraid King Ptolemy restricts access to such documents; the pneumatic science behind the working of the Tritons is a state secret. But I can tell you that each of the conches held by the four Tritons produces a d
ifferent note. By sounding two or more horns in unison, or by sounding a sequence of different notes, or by holding notes for various durations, a great many different signals can be given. Experienced captains know the signals that apply to them—such as that simple warning note about the Bull’s Horn.”

  “Amazing!” I said.

  “And did you notice the movable mirrors that run along the parapets, between each of the four Tritons?”

  I had not. Peering up, I now perceived large sheets of hammered bronze attached to pivots along the parapets, tilted at various angles.

  “Those also can be used to send signals, but unlike the horns, their messages can be directed to a specific ship or even to a particular building in the city of Alexandria, by aiming flashes of reflected sunlight.”

  I gazed up at the Pharos, more in awe of the building than ever.

  “Tell me, do you have a place to stay in Alexandria?” asked Isidorus.

  “Not yet,” said Antipater.

  “Then you must stay with me. No, I insist! My quarters are very near the Library. The accommodations are simple, but you’ll have your own room. The offer is an act of selfishness on my part, for I greatly desire to hear every detail of your journey to see the Wonders. And in return, I promise to do what I can to permit your entry to the Library.”

  “A splendid arrangement!” declared Antipater.

  * * *

  What sort of city could produce a structure as remarkable as the Pharos? As we sailed into the harbor we passed a number of islands with beautiful gardens and buildings; these were the property of the king, extensions of the grand royal palace that lined much of the shore. I had never seen such a handsome waterfront; the buildings stood many stories tall and were appointed with splendid decorations, sweeping balconies, and aerial gardens. The skyline of the city beyond offered glimpses of elegant towers, temple rooftops crowded with statues, and soaring obelisks. Rising above the skyline at a considerable distance, built upon the only hill of any significance, was a temple that appeared to be as grand as any we had encountered in our travels.