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Lofty Monument - Ancient
© Ferdinand Knab/The Bridgeman Art Library/Getty Images

Lofty Monument - Ancient

The Zeus Statue at Olympia: Long gone, the monumental statue was the work of the Greek sculptor Phidias in 432 B.C. It stood 40 feet in height, and arguably one of the ancient world’s tallest statues—and that, with Greece’s chief god sitting down. “It seems that if Zeus were to stand up," the geographer Strabo noted early in the 1st century BC, "he would unroof the temple." Sculpted in ivory and gold, Zeus and his temple towered over the site of the Olympic Games. No one is absolutely sure how it was destroyed.

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