Wonder: Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Country: Iraq
Region: Babylon
Visitable: No
About:
Country: Iraq
Region: Babylon
Visitable: No
About:
The
legend says that the King Nebuchadnezzar constructed the gardens to
please his wife Amytis. They were amazing terraces with beautiful
flowers and tree around the palace of Nebuchadnezzar in the city of
Babylon
The hanging gardens are said to have stood on the banks of the Euphrates River in modern-day Iraq, although there's some doubt as to whether they ever really existed.
The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II supposedly created the terraced gardens around 600 B.C. at his royal palace in the Mesopotamian desert. It is said the gardens were made to please the king's wife, who missed the lush greenery of her homeland in the Medes, in what is now northern Iran.
Archaeologists have yet to agree on the likely site of the hanging gardens, but findings in the region that could be its remains include the foundations of a palace and a nearby vaulted building with an irrigation well.
The
most detailed descriptions of the gardens come from Greek historians. There is
no mention of them in ancient Babylonian records.
These famous gardens were one of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World which was
described by the Greek historian Herodotus. The oldest descriptions about the gardens
were written by Greek sources like Strabo or Philo of Byzantium. These historians
described the gardens as one of the most impressive sites of the World.
Some stories tell that the hanging gardens towered above hundreds of feet into the
air but archaeological investigations indicate a more modest height, but still impressive
to the time. The hanging Gardens did not really “hang “in the exact sense of being
suspended from cables or ropes. The origin of the name is an inexact translation
of the Greek word “kremastos” which mean “hanging”, but it means also “overhanging”
such as a terrace or balcony.
The Greek Historian Strabo (first century BC) described the gardens with these words:
“Babylon, too, lies in a plain; and the circuit of its wall is three hundred and
eighty-five stadia (an ancient unit of distance). The thickness of its wall is thirty-two
feet; the height thereof between the towers is fifty cubits (an ancient unit of
measure); that of the towers is sixty cubits; and the passage on top of the wall
is such that four-horse chariots can easily pass one another; and it is on this
account that this and the hanging garden are called one of the Seven Wonders of
the World. The garden is quadrangular in shape, and each side is four plethra (an
ancient unit of measure) in length. It consists of arched vaults, which are situated,
one after another, on checkered, cube-like foundations. The checkered foundations,
which are hollowed out, are covered so deep with earth that they admit of the largest
of trees, having been constructed of baked brick and asphalt — the foundations themselves
and the vaults and the arches. The ascent to the uppermost terrace-roofs is made
by a stairway; and alongside these stairs there were screws, through which the water
was continually conducted up into the garden from the Euphrates by those appointed
for this purpose. For the river, a stadium in width, flows through the middle of
the city; and the garden is on the bank of the river”.
Another Greek historian named Diodorus Siculus tells that the gardens were around
400 feet wide by 400 feet long and almost 80 feet high. Garden´s height is very
controversial, since Herodotus said it was 320 feet high, but this point seems too
exaggerated
Other source described the hanging gardens as follows: "The Hanging Garden has plants
cultivated above ground level, and the roots of the trees are embedded in an upper
terrace rather than in the earth. The whole mass is supported on stone columns...
Streams of water emerging from elevated sources flow down sloping channels... These
waters irrigate the whole garden saturating the roots of plants and keeping the
whole area moist. Hence the grass is permanently green and the leaves of trees grow
firmly attached to supple branches... This is a work of art of royal luxury and
its most striking feature is that the labor of cultivation is suspended above the
heads of the spectators".
HISTORY
According to Greek historians, the hanging gardens were built by order of the king
Nebuchadnezzar II around 600 BC. The legend says that Nebuchadnezzar constructed
the gardens to please his wife Amytis the daughter of the king of the Medes. Amytis
was married with Nebuchadnezzar to create an alliance between nations.
The homeland of Amytis was green, rugged and mountainous; therefore when the new
queen arrived to Babylon, she was depressed because this city is over a flat sun-baked
terrain. The intention of Nebuchadnezzar was to recreate the homeland of his wife
building an artificial mountain with rooftops gardens.
Nevertheless, many modern historians doubt about the existence of these
gardens. One of the reasons to doubt is that there are not Sumerians
tablets of the Nebuchadnezzar’s time which reference to the famous
gardens. Altough there are several descriptions of the palace and the
city in the government of this king. This fact is very bizarre, since
if Greeks wrote so much about this wonder; it would be logical that
hanging gardens’ creators write much more about them. Besides, there
are not vestiges of the gardens in the archaeological excavations
realized in the location where scientists believe, ancient Babylon was.
According to modern historians a possible explanation would be that the soldiers
of Alexander the Great were very impressed when they saw the fertile and amazing
land of Babylon; therefore when soldiers returned to Greece; they recounted stories
about incredible gardens with palms and trees and higher ziggurats; which inspired
the imagination of the Greek poets, who created the legend of one of the Seven Wonders
of the ancient world.
Besides, archaeological excavations in Iraq have found vestiges of a building with
vaults, but this location is quite far from the supposed location, where Greek historians
placed the gardens on the banks of the Euphrates River.
Another theory proposes that the hanging gardens would be constructed by Sennacherib
who was king of Assyria from 705 to 681 BC and they would be located in Nineveh
on the bank of the Tigris River. Recent excavations which have found vestiges of
ancient gardens placed near the entrance to a palace support this idea. According
to this theory because of the centuries, the real location of the gardens would
have been confused.
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