Introduction

Fruits and flowers... Waterfalls... Gardens hanging from the palace terraces... Exotic animals... This is the picture of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in most people's minds. It may be surprising to know that they might have never existed except in Greek poets and historians imagination!

The ancient city of Babylon

Located on the east bank of the River Euphrates, ¹

the ancient city of Babylon, must have been a wonder to the traveler's

eyes. "In addition to its size," wrote Herodotus², "Babylon surpasses in splendor

any city in the known world."

Herodotus claimed the outer walls were 90 kilometer in length, 25 meters thick and 98 meters high. Wide

enough, he said, to allow a four-horse chariot to turn. The inner walls were "not so thick as the first, but

hardly less strong." Inside the walls were fortresses and temples containing immense statues of solid

gold. Rising above the city was the famous Tower of Babel, a temple to the god Marduk, that seemed to

reach to the heavens.

While archaeological examination has disputed some of Herodotus's claims (the outer walls seem to be

only 16 kilometer long and not nearly as high) his narrative does give us a sense of how awesome the

features of the city appeared to those that visited it. Interestingly enough, though, one of the city's most

spectacular sites is not even mentioned by Herodotus: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Background

The Babylonian kingdom flourished under the rule of the famous King, Hammurabi ³. It was not until the reign of Naboplashar ⁴ of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty that the Mesopotamian civilization reached its ultimate glory. His son, Nebuchadnezzar II ⁵ is credited for building the legendary Hanging Gardens. It is said that the Gardens were built by Nebuchadnezzar to please his wife or concubine⁶ who had been "brought up in Media and had a passion for mountain surroundings".

While the most descriptive accounts of the Gardens come from Greek historians⁷, Babylonian records stay silent on the matter. Tablets from the time of Nebuchadnezzar do not have a single reference to the Hanging Gardens, although descriptions of his palace, the city of Babylon, and the walls are found. Even the historians who give detailed descriptions of the Hanging Gardens never saw them. Modern historians argue that when Alexander's soldiers reached the fertile land of Mesopotamia and saw Babylon, they were impressed. When they later returned to their rugged homeland, they had stories to tell about the amazing gardens and palm trees at Mesopotamia.. About the palace of Nebuchadnezzar.. About the Tower of Babel and the ziggurats. And it was the imagination of poets and ancient historians that blended all these elements together to produce one of the World Wonders.

The Hanging Gardens

Ancient Greek sources⁸ provides us with detailed descriptions of the gardens. Here are some excerpts from their accounts:

"The Garden is quadrangular, and each side is four plethra⁹ long. It consists of arched vaults which are located on checkered cube-like foundations.. The ascent of the uppermost terrace-roofs is made by a stairway..."

"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".

New foundings

New theories suggest that the The Hanging Gardens of Babylon was an ancient plant support system, where water was supplied by a pump.
More recent archaeological excavations at the ancient city of Babylon in Iraq uncovered the foundation of the palace. Other findings include the Vaulted Building with thick walls and an irrigation well near the southern palace. A group of archaeologists surveyed the area of the southern palace and reconstructed the Vaulted Building as the Hanging Gardens. However, the Greek historian Strabo had stated that the gardens were situated by the River Euphrates. So others argue that the site is too far from the Euphrates to support the theory since the Vaulted Building is several hundreds of meters away. They reconstructed the site of the palace and located the Gardens in the area stretching from the River to the Palace. On the river banks, recently discovered massive walls 25 m thick may have been stepped to form terraces.¹⁰

Hydroponics

Hydroponics may be an ancient form of growing plants. The Hanging

Gardens of Babylon were a series of terraces filled with plants.

Excavations have found an elaborate tunnel and pulley system that

apparently brought water from the ground level to the top terrace.

Whether the Hanging Gardens were hydroponic depends upon a simple

question of whether nutrients were added to the water. The plants were

thought to be growing in soil, which would at first glance remove these

gardens from consideration as a hydroponic system, but soil could be

used as the media, with water and nutrients delivered from the water

system.

There is an intriguing possibility that the water used for the plants may

have been waste water from the human inhabitants. If so, the system

would qualify as hydroponic (because nutrients were added to the water)

and would be an example of technology we are just beginning to

rediscover - using our household gray water (from bathing and washing

etc.) for irrigating gardens, golf courses, and landscaping.

Archaeologists are still struggling to gather enough evidence before reaching the final conclusions about the location of the Gardens, their irrigation system, and their true appearance.