Hazaad.com’s Blog

Another wonder of the ancient world was the statue of Zeus at Olympia. The statue was carved by the well-known ancient Greek sculptor Phidias. It was truly a huge creation at about forty feet tall. The statue depicted a seated Zeus and filled the temple that was built to house it. It filled it so much that Zeus’ head was quite close to the roof of the building. As a result the figure gave the impression of being able to take off the roof simply by standing up. His generally large size in addition to his large size in comparison to his surroundings helped to make him look all the more powerful.

Here is a depiction of what the statue might have looked like.

The statue was built in the fifth century BCE, around 435 BCE. It is thought to have stood (or I guess sat) there for over 800 years. It concluded its time in Olympia when it was moved to Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. After having been moved it is believed to have been lost in an accidental fire in Constantinople.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Middle Eastern Art, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.