Hanging Gardens of Babylon

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World by the Greeks. They were said to be an impressive engineering achievement: a series of stacked, tiered gardens planted with many types of trees, shrubs, and vines, which together looked like a large green hill built from mud bricks. The name comes from the Greek word *kremastós*, meaning "overhanging," which refers to trees growing on a raised terrace, not to gardens suspended in the air.

According to one story, the Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II (who ruled from 605 to 562 BC) built the gardens next to a grand palace called The Marvel of Mankind. He did this for his Median wife, Queen Amytis, who missed the green hills and valleys of her homeland. This account was written around 290 BC by the Babylonian priest Berossus and later quoted by the historian Josephus. Another tradition credits the legendary queen Semiramis with building them, giving them the alternative name the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis.

These gardens are the only one of the Seven Wonders whose location has never been firmly proven. No Babylonian texts mention them, and no clear archaeological evidence has been found in Babylon itself. Three main theories try to explain this: first, the gardens may be purely mythical, with descriptions from Greek and Roman writers (such as Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Quintus Curtius Rufus) reflecting a romantic ideal of an Eastern garden; second, they might have existed in Babylon but were destroyed around the first century AD; third, the legend could actually refer to a well-documented garden built by the Assyrian King Sennacherib (704–681 BC) at his capital, Nineveh, near modern Mosul.

Five classical writers provide surviving descriptions of Babylon. They focus on the gardens' size, design, irrigation, and purpose. Josephus (c. 37–100 AD) quotes Berossus, whose account from about 290 BC is the earliest known. Berossus says Nebuchadnezzar II built high walls supported by stone pillars and planted a "pensile paradise" filled with all kinds of trees, making it look exactly like a mountainous country, to please his queen who missed Media. Diodorus Siculus (active c. 60–30 BC) used earlier texts from Cleitarchus and Ctesias. He says a "Syrian king" built the garden, which was square, each side about four plethra long. It was tiered, with the top gallery 50 cubits high, and walls 22 feet thick made of brick. The bases were deep enough for large trees, and the gardens were irrigated from the nearby Euphrates. Quintus Curtius Rufus (1st century AD) likely used the same sources, placing the gardens on a citadel 20 stadia in circumference, also built by a "Syrian king" for his queen's homesickness. Strabo (c. 64 BC – 21 AD) may have relied on Onesicritus from the 4th century BC. He describes the gardens being watered by an Archimedes' screw drawing water from the Euphrates. The last independent source is Philo of Byzantium's *A Handbook to the Seven Wonders of the World* (4th–5th century AD). He praises the engineering of creating vast, deep soil beds high above the natural ground and the irrigation method, which matches Strabo's screw.

It remains unclear whether the gardens were real or poetic invention, since no contemporary Babylonian records confirm them. There is no mention of Nebuchadnezzar's wife Amytis in Babylonian texts, though a political marriage to a Median or Persian would have been typical. Nebuchadnezzar left many inscriptions about his works, but none mention any garden. Later writers claimed the gardens still existed when they wrote, and some accounts are thought to come from people who visited Babylon. Herodotus, who described Babylon in his *Histories*, does not mention the gardens, possibly because they were not yet known to Greeks when he visited. No archaeological evidence has been found at Babylon so far. It is possible that remains lie beneath the Euphrates, which cannot be safely excavated now. The river flowed east of its current course in Nebuchadnezzar's time, and little is known about the western part of Babylon. Scholar Rollinger has suggested that Berossus may have attributed the gardens to Nebuchadnezzar for political reasons.