Hanging Gardens of Babylon

The Gardens

Hanging Gardens

Some of the monuments of the ancient world so impressed visitors from far and wide with their beauty, artistic and architectural ambition, and sheer scale that their reputation grew as must-see (themata) sights for the ancient traveller and pilgrim

Hanging Gardens

the first one we have
Gardens of Babylon 

Babylon, located about 80 km (50 miles) south of modern Baghdad in Iraq, was an ancient city with a history of settlement dating back to the 3rd millennium BCE. The greatest period in the city’s history was in the 6th century BCE during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar

he Hanging Gardens of Babylon were the fabled gardens which adorned the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, built by its greatest king Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605-562 BCE). One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, they are the only wonder whose existence is disputed amongst historians. Some scholars claim the gardens were actually at Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire, some stick with the ancient writers and await archaeology to provide positive proof, and still others believe they are merely a figment of the ancient imagination. Archaeology at Babylon itself and ancient Babylonian texts are silent on the matter, but ancient writers describe the gardens as if they were at Nebuchadnezzar’s capital and still in existence in Hellenistic times. The exotic nature of the gardens compared to the more familiar Greek items on the list and the mystery surrounding their location and disappearance have made the Hanging Gardens of Babylon the most captivating of all the Seven Wonders .

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were sometimes referred to as the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis

Hanging Gardens

Some theories
The Hanging Gardens are the only one of the Seven Wonders for which the location has not been definitively established.There are no extant Babylonian texts that mention the gardens, and no definitive archaeological evidence has been found in Babylon.some theories have been suggested to account for this.

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that they were purely mythical, and the descriptions found in ancient Greek and Roman writers including Strabo, Diodorus Siculus and Quintus Curtius Rufus represent a romantic ideal of an eastern garden

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 that they existed in Babylon, but were completely destroyed sometime around the first century
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- that the legend refers to a well-documented garden that the Assyrian King Sennacherib  built in his capital city of Nineveh on the River Tigris, near the modern city of Mosul

Hanging Gardens

One proposal is that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were actually constructed by the Assyrian king Sennacherib (reigned 704 – 681 BC) for his palace at Nineveh. Stephanie Dalley posits that during the intervening centuries the two sites became confused, and the extensive gardens at Sennacherib's palace were attributed to Nebuchadnezzar II's Babylon. Archaeological excavations have found traces of a vast system of aqueducts attributed to Sennacherib by an inscription on its remains, which Dalley proposes were part of a 80-kilometre (50 mi) series of canals, dams, and aqueducts used to carry water to Nineveh with water-raising screws used to raise it to the upper levels of the gardens.

and also ,,,

- Accounts indicate that the garden was built by King Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled the city for 43 years starting in 605 BC (There is an alternative story that the gardens were built by the Assyrian Queen Semiramis during her five year reign starting in 810 BC). This was the height of the city's power and influence and King Nebuchadnezzar is known to have constructed an astonishing array of temples, streets, palaces and walls.

so ,,, We can not be sure which of these theories or others is the most accurate and correct .

and

Were the Hanging Gardens Actually in Nineveh
But did they actually exist? Some historians argue that the gardens were only a fictional creation because they do not appear in a list of Babylonian monuments composed during that period. It is also a possibility they were mixed up with another set of gardens built by King Sennacherib in the city of Nineveh around 700 B.C..

Garden Construction

Construction of the garden wasn't only complicated by getting the water up to the top, but also by having to avoid having the liquid ruining the foundations once it was released. Since stone was difficult to get on the Mesopotamian plain, most of the architecture in Babel utilized brick. The bricks were composed of clay mixed with chopped straw and baked in the sun. These were then joined with bitumen, a slimy substance, which acted as a mortar. Unfortunately, because of the materials they were made of, the bricks quickly dissolved when soaked with water. For most buildings in Babel this wasn't a problem because rain was so rare. However, the gardens were continually exposed to irrigation and the foundation had to be protected

Hanging Gardens

Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian, stated that the platforms on which the garden stood consisted of huge slabs of stone (otherwise unheard of in Babel), covered with layers of reed, asphalt and tiles. Over this was put "a covering with sheets of lead, that the wet which drenched through the earth might not rot the foundation. Upon all these was laid earth of a convenient depth, sufficient for the growth of the greatest trees. When the soil was laid even and smooth, it was planted with all sorts of trees, which both for greatness and beauty might delight the spectators."

How big were the gardens? Diodorus tells us they were about 400 feet wide by 400 feet long and more than 80 feet high. Other accounts indicate the height was equal to the outer city walls, walls that Herodotus said were 320 feet high. In any case the gardens were an amazing sight: A green, leafy, artificial mountain rising off the plain 

References

wikipedia

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