The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are one of the seven wonders of the ancient world listed by Hellenic culture.
They are described as a remarkable feat of engineering with great admiration by various ancient authors.
The architectural wonder was a pyramid consisting of four floors.
The floors themselves were platforms on columns with a height of 50 cubits, that is, about 27m.
The lower floor had the shape of an irregular quadrangle.
To prevent water from seeping down, the surface of each platform was first covered with a layer of reeds
mixed with natural asphalt, then two rows of bricks were placed on top,
built with gypsum mortar, and lead plates were placed above everything to seal it all together.
A fertile soil was poured on them, in which they planted seeds of various types of grass, flowers, bushes, trees, and others.
The height of the floors provided enough light and space for the plants.
The pyramid was an ever-flowering hill.
The gardens rose in steps, and in between, there were steps covered with pink and white stone.
The platforms themselves resembled terraces, each of which was an independent garden in itself.
This is where the popular name "hanging gardens" comes from.
The greatest beauty was that all the terraces formed a whole.
Creeping plants and lianas ran along their outer edge, which passed to the next terrace and thus united all the gardens
into a single ensemble of trees, shrubs, hedges, as well as avenues of flowers.
Into the interior of the columns which supported the platforms were built pipes,
by which water was brought day and night from the Euphrates to the uppermost terrace,
whence it flowed in streams and small waterfalls, watering the plants on the lower floors.
The most amazing and rare types of plants bloomed in these fabulous gardens.
Day and night, slaves or laborers turned the water wheel with leather vessels,
watering the hanging gardens with water from the Euphrates.
The cool and shady gardens, echoed by the murmur of the water,
seemed like a true wonder in the hot, sandy land of Babylon.
One of the ancient legends preserved to this day tells that the Hanging Gardens were built together
with a spectacular palace, known as the Miracle of Mankind,
by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar the second - bearer of the scepter between 605 and 562 BC.
However, the creation of the gardens is also attributed to the legendary Queen Semiramis.
It is for this reason that as an alternative name they are called the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis.
There are various theories about the existence of the queen herself.
Some of them share that she did not actually exist, but was a mythical projection of the real ruler of Babylon, Shamuramat.
However, she has historically had much more modest achievements than those ascribed to Semiramis.
If the topic is interesting to you, you can let us know if you wish for us to take a deep dive into it in a separate video.
Also, be sure to watch our video "Babylon - The Fall of the Richest City of All Time!"
The Hanging Gardens are the single contender in the Seven Wonders of the world category
whose true and exact location has remained a mystery to this day.
No Babylonian texts have been found in which we read about the gardens,
and no definite archaeological evidence has yet been found in Babylon itself.
This leads the researchers to construct three main hypotheses.
Hypothesis one suggests that they are purely mythical,
and descriptions found in ancient Greek and Roman texts including those of Strabo, Diodorus Siculus,
and Quintus Curtius Rufus recreate a romantic ideal of an oriental garden.
The second hypothesis suggests that they were real and located in Babylon,
but were destroyed sometime around the first century AD.
The third hypothesis suggests that the legend is actually about the much more elaborate garden
that the Assyrian king Sennacherib (704-681 BC) built in his capital Nineveh on the Tigris River,
near the modern city of Mosul.
Now we will follow the trail of truth by first looking for evidence and descriptions in the classical literature.
You can share in a comment before we get to the end, which theory do you think is the most credible?
CONSCIOUSNESS
Descriptions in classical literature
Descriptions of Babylon that have survived to this day in some form come from only five writers.
However, these authors describe the dimensions of the Hanging Gardens,
their overall design and irrigation methods, and why they were built.
Flavius Josephus (c. 37-100 AD) actually quoted Berossus, who was a Babylonian priest of Marduk,
as sharing about the gardens. He spoke of the gardens in a work of his from about 290 BC.
This is also the earliest known mention of the gardens.
Berossus speaks of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar the second and is in fact the only primary source
that attributes the construction of the Hanging Gardens to this king by name.
In his palace he erected very high walls, supported by stone pillars, and planted the so-called Pensil paradise,
filling it with all kinds of trees, making the view like that of a mountainside.
Legend has it that he did it for his queen because she had grown up in Media and missed the sight of greenery.
Diodorus Siculus (active ca. 60-30 BC) most likely drew on texts from the 4th century BC,
as well as those of Cleitarchus, a historian of Alexander the Great.
According to Diodorus, the gardens were the work of an Assyrian king.
He describes the garden in detail, claiming that it was square in shape.
It was arranged in steps, with the uppermost gallery being 50 cubits high.
The walls, made of bricks, were 22 feet thick.
The foundations of the stepped sections were of adequate depth to allow the roots of even the largest trees to grow,
and the gardens were irrigated by the nearby Euphrates River.
Quintus Curtius Rufus (1st century AD) is supposed to have used the same sources as Diodorus.
He says that the gardens were built on top of a citadel, which was 20 stadia in circumference.
Again, an Assyrian king built them for his queen because she missed her homeland.
The account by Strabo, ancient Greek, and Roman geographer, historian, and traveler (c. 64 BC-AD 21)
is probably based on the lost account of Onesicritus from the 4th century BC.
He describes that the gardens were irrigated by means of an
Archimedean screw bringing water from the Euphrates River
Evidence of Historical Existence
The absence of documents in modern Babylonian sources makes us question whether the Hanging Gardens
really existed or were only the fruit of poetic creation.
There are many detailed writings available about the deeds of Nebuchadnezzar the second,
but they do not mention a single garden.
However, the gardens are believed to have still existed when later writers described them.
It is also suggested that some of these accounts came from people who visited Babylon.
To this day, no archaeological evidence of the Hanging Gardens has been found in Babylon.
It is possible that they exist under the Euphrates River, but at the moment,
archaeological activities cannot be safely carried out there.
During the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, the river flowed east of its present position.
Some scholars have expressed doubts that Berossus may have attributed the gardens to Nebuchadnezzar II for political reasons,
and that he borrowed the legend from elsewhere.
Identification with the gardens of Sennacherib in Nineveh
Oxford researcher Stephanie Daly offers us a hypothesis in which the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
are actually the well-described and documented gardens built by the Assyrian king Sennacherib who ruled between 704 - 681 BC.
They were part of his palace in Nineveh.
According to Daly, over the centuries the two sites were confused and the beautiful gardens of Sennacherib's palace
were attributed to Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar the second.
She finds support for her claims in archaeological excavations that have uncovered traces of an extensive system
of aqueducts dating back to the time of Sennacherib.
Daly suggests that only part of an 80-kilometer (50 miles) irrigation system of canals, dams,
and aqueducts was discovered thanks to which water was carried to Nineveh,
using water screws to raise it to the top level of the gardens.
Daly also finds support for her words in recent advances in the analysis of ancient Akkadian texts.
Her main points are:
The name Babylon, which translates as "Gate of the Gods", is a name given to several Mesopotamian cities.
Sennacherib renamed the city gates of Nineveh after Gods,
indicating that he intended for his city to be considered "Babylon".
Only Flavius Josephus names Nebuchadnezzar the second as the king who built the gardens.
But Nebuchadnezzar the second bequeathed us a rich collection of notes,
nowhere in them is there any mention of gardening or engineering work.
Diodorus Siculus and Quintus Curtius Rufus indicate an "Assyrian" king.
Unlike Nebuchadnezzar the second, Sennacherib left rich written accounts
and there is archaeological evidence of his water engineering.
Further evidence is found in the fact that his grandson Ashurbanipal depicted the mature garden
on sculptural panels on the walls of his palace.
Sennacherib called his palace and garden "a wonder for all nations".
He describes the construction and operation of screws to raise water to his garden.
King Sennacherib's garden is known as a year-round oasis with incredible greenery standing out
against the summery, dusty landscape.
But let us return to the sculptural panels from Ashurbanipal's walls, which show the garden in its maturity.
One of the original sculptural panels and a drawing of another are held in the British Museum,
but neither artifact is on public display. Noticeable in them are characteristics mentioned by a cople of authors.
Parts of Sennacherib's palace were excavated by Austin Henry Layard in the mid-19th century.
A plan of its citadel forms contours that match descriptions of Sennacherib's garden, but its position is not confirmed.
Unfortunately, a more detailed and further study is not possible due to the fact that the area is used as a military base.
To irrigate such a garden would require a water supply analogous to that of the city of Nineveh.
The canal system stretched more than 80 km into the nearby mountains.
Sennacherib was proud of the technologies he used and described them in great detail in his records.
From them, we learn that automatic sluices were located in the upper reaches of the Bavian (Hinnis) River.
The huge aqueduct crossing the valley at Jeruan was built from over two million hewn stones -
held together by stone arches and waterproof cement.
“Sennacherib, king of the world, king of Assyria. At a great distance I ordered an aqueduct to be directed
to the vicinity of Nineveh, joining the waters over steep valleys I laid an aqueduct of white limestone blocks,
and I made these waters flow along it.'
What were the plants in this mythical garden?
We can best understand this from the depiction of gardens in works of art.
From them, we understand that there were blooming flowers,
ripe fruits, bubbling waterfalls, and terraces with rich greenery.
Another source in which we find information about the potential flora and fauna of the gardens
is the Babylonian literature, traditions, and ecological features of the area.
Based on this, gardens may have featured plants such as:
Olea europaea, Cydonia oblonga, Pyrus communis, Ficus carica, Prunus dulcis, Vitis vinifera,
Phoenix dactylifera, Tamarix aphylla and Pistacia atlantica.
Imported plant species most likely to have been present in the gardens include cedar, cypress, ebony, pomegranate, plum,
rosewood, terebinth, juniper, oak, ash, fir, myrrh, walnut, and willow.
Is such an incredible confusion in connection to the so called Hanging Gardens really possible,
or was it simply a competition for abundant palace gardens?
Was it all just a myth or a historical reality?
These are only questions, that we hope, time will answer!
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