THE HANGING GARDENS OF BABYLON

PROJECT MADE BY THE STUDENTS

1) STEPHANOS XENIOS 2) PANAGIOTOPOULOS THODORIS3) PETROF DIMITAR

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INTRODUCTION

The Seven Wonders of the World (or the Seven Wonders of the Ancient

World) refers to remarkable constructions of classical antiquity listed by various

authors in guidebooks popular among the ancient Hellenic tourists, particularly in the

1st and 2nd centuries BC. The most prominent of these, the versions by Antipater of

Sidon and an observer identified as Philo of Byzantium, comprise seven works

located around the eastern Mediterranean rim. The original list inspired innumerable

versions through the ages, often listing seven entries. Of the original Seven Wonders,

only one—the Great Pyramid of Giza, the oldest of the ancient wonders—remains

relatively intact.

The Greek conquest of much of the known world in the 4th century BC gave

Hellenistic travellers access to the civilizations of the Egyptians, Persians, and

Babylonians. Impressed and captivated by the landmarks and marvels of the various

lands, these travellers began to list what they saw. Such a list of these places made it

easier to remember them.

Instead of "wonders", the ancient Greeks spoke of "theamata" (θεάματα), which

means "sights", in other words "things to be seen". (Τὰ ἑπτὰ θεάματα τῆς οἰκουμένης

[γῆς] Tà heptà theámata tēs oikoumenēs [gēs]) Later, the word for "wonder"

("thaumata" θαύματα) was used, and this is also the case in modern Greek (Επτά

θαύματα του αρχαίου κόσμου). Hence, the list was meant to be the Ancient World's

counterpart of a travel guidebook.

Each person had his own version of the list, but the best known and earliest

surviving was from a poem by Greek-speaking epigrammist Antipater of Sidon from

around 140 BC. He named six of the seven sites on his list—leaving out the

lighthouse—, but was primarily in praise of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus: I have

gazed on the walls of impregnable Babylon along which chariots may race, and on the

Zeus by the banks of the Alpheus, I have seen the hanging gardens, and the Colossus

of the Helios, the great man-made mountains of the lofty pyramids, and the gigantic

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tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the sacred house of Artemis that towers to the

clouds, the others were placed in the shade, for the sun himself has never looked upon

its equal outside Olympus.

— Antipater, Greek Anthology IX.58

Another 2nd century BC observer, who claimed to be the mathematician Philo

of Byzantium, wrote a short account entitled The Seven Sights of the World. However,

the incomplete surviving manuscript only covered six of the supposedly seven places,

which agreed with Antipater's list. Earlier and later lists by the historian Herodotus

(484 BC–ca. 425 BC) and the architect Callimachus of Cyrene (ca. 305–240 BC),

housed at the Museum of Alexandria, survived only as references.

The Colossus of Rhodes was the last of the seven to be completed, after 280

BC, and the first to be destroyed, by an earthquake in 226/225 BC. Hence, all seven

existed at the same time for a period of less than 60 years. Antipater had an earlier

version which replaced the Lighthouse of Alexandria with the Walls of Babylon. Lists

which preceded the construction of the Colossus of Rhodes completed their seven

entries with the inclusion of the Ishtar Gate .

Scope

It is thought that the limitation of the lists to seven entries was attributed to the

special magical meaning of the number. Geographically, the list covered only the

sculptural and architectural monuments of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern

regions, then thought to encompass the "known" world for the Greeks. Hence, extant

sites beyond this realm were not considered as part of contemporary accounts.

The primary accounts, coming from Hellenistic writers, also heavily influenced

the places included in the wonders list. Five of the seven entries are a celebration of

Greek accomplishments in the arts and architecture (the exceptions being the

Pyramids of Giza and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon).

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The Seven Ancient Wonders

WonderDate of

constructionBuilder

Date of destruction

Cause of destruction

Modern location

Pyramid of Giza 2584–2561 BC EgyptiansStill in

existence

Giza Necropolis, Egypt

Hanging Gardens of Babylon

c. 69 BC (evident)

BabyloniansAfter 1st century BC

Earthquakes

Hillah, Babylon Province, Iraq orNineveh, Nineveh Province, Iraq

Temple of Artemis at Ephesus

c. 550 BC; and again at 323 BC

Lydians, Greeks

356 BC (by Herostratus)AD 262 (by the Goths)

Arson by Herostratus, Plundering

near Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey

Statue of Zeus at Olympia

466–456 BC (Temple)435 BC (Statue)

Greeks5th–6th centuries AD

Disassembled; later destroyed by fire

Olympia, Greece

Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

351 BCCarians, Greeks

by AD 1494 EarthquakesBodrum, Turkey

Colossus of Rhodes

292–280 BC Greeks 226 BC EarthquakeRhodes, Greece

Lighthouse of Alexandria

c. 280 BCPtolemaic Egypt, Greeks

AD 1303–1480

EarthquakeAlexandria, Egypt

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THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF THE HANGING GARDENS The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World are

documented to have been built approximately 2500 years ago in 600 BC. There is

much speculation about whether or not the gardens really existed. Substantial

evidence of the gardens remains has not been found to prove they really existed.

Some people who think that the gardens didn't exist, believed that soldiers who had

passed through Babylon, were fascinated by the gardens because their hometowns

were nothing like this and they may have exaggerated when describing the gardens.

This could have easily been done because Nebuchadnezar, the king who had the

Hanging Gardens built, did have many amazing structures built. Others argue that the

documentation of the gardens was written in Greek or Latin so the translation of these

writings could be incorrect. Another reason people think the gardens didn't exist is

because documentation has been found that listed all of the structures in Babylon at

that point in time, and the gardens are not mentioned. If they did exist, the gardens are

the second oldest of the Seven Wonders.

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Others believe that the Hanging gardens really existed. The countless ancient

writings reveal the truth behind this wonder. In ancient writings the Hanging Gardens

of Babylon were first described by Berossus, a Babylonian priest of Marduk who

lived in the late 4th century BC, although his books are known only from quotations

by later authors (e.g., Flavius Josephus). There are five principal writers (including

Berossus) whose descriptions of Babylon are extant in some form today. These

writers concern themselves with the size of the Hanging Gardens, why and how they

were built, and how the gardens were irrigated.

Josephus (ca. 37–100 AD) quoted Berossus (writing ca. 280 BC), when he described

the gardens. Berossus described the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, the king he credits

with the construction of the Hanging Gardens. In this palace he erected very high

walks, supported by stone pillars; and by planting what was called a pensile paradise,

and replenishing it with all sorts of trees, he rendered the prospect an exact

resemblance of a mountainous country. This he did to gratify his queen, because she

had been brought up in Media, and was fond of a mountainous situation.”

Diodorus Siculus (active ca. 60–30 BC) seems to have consulted the early 4th

century BC texts of Ctesias of Cnidus for his description of the Hanging Gardens:

There was also, beside the acropolis, the Hanging Garden, as it is called, which was

built, not by Semiramis, but by a later Syrian king to please one of his concubines; for

she, they say, being a Persian by race and longing for the meadows of her mountains,

asked the king to imitate, through the artifice of a planted garden, the distinctive

landscape of Persia. The park extended four plethra on each side, and since the

approach to the garden sloped like a hillside and the several parts of the structure rose

from one another tier on tier, the appearance of the whole resembled that of a theatre.

When the ascending terraces had been built, there had been constructed beneath them

galleries which carried the entire weight of the planted garden and rose little by little

one above the other along the approach; and the uppermost gallery, which was fifty

cubits high, bore the highest surface of the park, which was made level with the

circuit wall of the battlements of the city. Furthermore, the walls, which had been

constructed at great expense, were twenty-two feet thick, while the passage-way

between each two walls was ten feet wide. The roof above these beams had first a

layer of reeds laid in great quantities of bitumen, over this two courses of baked brick

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bonded by cement, and as a third layer of covering of lead, to the end that the

moisture from the soil might not penetrate beneath. On all this again earth had been

piled to a depth sufficient for the roots of the largest trees; and the ground, when

levelled off, was thickly planted with trees of every kind that, by their great size or

other charm, could give pleasure to the beholder. And since the galleries, each

projecting beyond another, all received the light, they contained many royal lodgings

of every description; and there was one gallery which contained openings leading

from the topmost surface and machines for supplying the gardens with water, the

machines raising the water in great abundance from the river, although no one outside

could see it being done.

Quintus Curtius Rufus (active 1st century AD) referred to the writings of

Cleitarchus, a 4th century BC historian of Alexander the Great, when writing his own

History of Alexander the Great: "The Babylonians also have a citadel twenty stades in

circumference. The foundations of its turrets are sunk thirty feet into the ground and

the fortifications rise eighty feet above it at the highest point. On its summit are the

hanging gardens, a wonder celebrated by the fables of the Greeks. They are as high as

the top of the walls and owe their charm to the shade of many tall trees. The columns

supporting the whole edifice are built of rock, and on top of them is a flat surface of

squared stones strong enough to bear the deep layer of earth placed upon it and the

water used for irrigating it. So stout are the trees the structure supports that their

trunks are eight cubits thick and their height as much as fifty feet; they bear fruit as

abundantly as if they were growing in their natural environment It has a substructure

of walls twenty feet thick at eleven foot intervals, so that from a distance one has the

impression of woods overhanging their native mountains.

Strabo (ca. 64 BC – 21 AD) described the Hanging Gardens as follows, in a

passage that was thought to be based on the lost account of Onesicritus from the 4th

century BC: "Babylon, too, lies in a plain; and the circuit of its wall is three hundred

and eighty-five stadia. The thickness of its wall is thirty-two feet; the height thereof

between the towers is fifty cubits; 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 in

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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."

Philo of Byzantium (writing ca. 250 BC), whose list of the Seven Wonders of

the Ancient World we use today was credited with the following description: "The

Hanging Gardens [is so-called because it] has plants cultivated at a height above

ground level, and the roots of the trees are embedded in an upper terrace rather than in

the earth. This is the technique of its construction. The whole mass is supported on

stone columns, so that the entire underlying space is occupied by carved column

bases. The columns carry beams set at very narrow intervals. The beams are palm

trunks, for this type of wood – unlike all others – does not rot and, when it is damp

and subjected to heavy pressure, it curves upwards. Moreover, it does itself give

nourishment to the root branches and fibres, since it admits extraneous matter into its

folds and crevices. This structure supports an extensive and deep mass of earth, in

which are planted broad-leaved trees of the sort that are commonly found in gardens,

a wide variety of flowers of all species and, in brief, everything that is most agreeable

to the eye and conducive to the enjoyment of pleasure. The whole area is ploughed in

just the same way as solid ground, and is just as suitable as other soil for grafting and

propagation. Thus it happens that a ploughed field lies above the heads of those who

walk between the columns below. Yet while the upper surface of the earth is trampled

underfoot, the lower and denser soil closest to the supporting framework remains

undisturbed and virgin. Streams of water emerging from elevated sources flow partly

in a straight line down sloping channels, and are partly forced upwards through bends

and spirals to gush out higher up, being impelled through the twists of these devices

by mechanical forces. So, brought together in frequent and plentiful outlets at a high

level, these waters irrigate the whole garden, saturating the deep roots of the plants

and keeping the whole area of cultivation continually moist. Hence the grass is

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permanently green, and the leaves of trees grow firmly attached to supple branches,

and increasing in size and succulence with the constant humidity. For the root

[system] is kept saturated and sucks up the all-pervading supply of water, wandering

in interlaced channels beneath the ground, and securely maintaining the well-

established and excellent quality of trees.

WHEN, WHY AND BY WHO?

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. A recent theory proposes that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon

were actually constructed by the Assyrian king Sennacherib (reigned 705 – 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.

According to accounts, the gardens were built to cheer up Nebuchadnezzar's

homesick wife, Amyitis. Amyitis, daughter of the king of the Medes, was married to

Nebuchadnezzar to create an alliance between the two nations. The land she came

from, though, was green, rugged and mountainous, and she found the flat, sun-baked

terrain of Mesopotamia depressing. The king decided to relieve her depression by

recreating her homeland through the building of an artificial mountain with rooftop

gardens.

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The Hanging Gardens probably did not really "hang" in the sense of being

suspended from cables or ropes. The name comes from an inexact translation of the

Greek word kremastos, or the Latin word pensilis, which means not just "hanging",

but "overhanging" as in the case of a terrace or balcony.

The Greek geographer Strabo, who described the gardens in first century BC,

wrote, "It consists of vaulted terraces raised one above another, and resting upon

cube-shaped pillars. These are hollow and filled with earth to allow trees of the largest

size to be planted. The pillars, the vaults, and terraces are constructed of baked brick

and asphalt. The ascent to the highest story is by stairs, and at their side are water

engines, by means of which persons, appointed expressly for the purpose, are

continually employed in raising water from the Euphrates into the garden."

The Water Problem

Strabo touches on what, to the ancients, was probably the most amazing part

of the garden. Babylon rarely received rain and for the garden to survive, it would

have had to been irrigated by using water from the nearby Euphrates River. That

meant lifting the water far into the air so it could flow down through the terraces,

watering the plants at each level. This was an immense task given the lack of modern

engines and pressure pumps in the fifth century B.C. One of the solutions the

designers of the garden may have used to move the water, however, was a "chain

pump." The chain pump is two large wheels, one above the other, connected by a

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chain. On the chain are hung buckets. Below the bottom wheel is a pool with the

water source. As the wheel is turned, the buckets dip into the pool and pick up water.

The chain then lifts them to the upper wheel, where the buckets are tipped and

dumped into an upper pool. The chain then carries the empty buckets back down to be

refilled.

The pool at the top of the gardens could then be released by gates into

channels which acted as artificial streams to water the gardens. The pump wheel

below was attached to a shaft and a handle. By turning the handle, slaves provided the

power to run the contraption.

An alternate method of getting the water to the top of the gardens might have

been a screw pump. This device looks like a trough with one end in the lower pool

from which the water is taken with the other end overhanging an upper pool to which

the water is being lifted. Fitting tightly into the trough is a long screw. As the screw is

turned, water is caught between the blades of the screw and forced upwards. When it

reaches the top, it falls into the upper pool. Turning the screw can be done by a hand

crank. A different design of screw pump mounts the screw inside a tube, which takes

the place of the trough. In this case the tube and screw turn together to carry the water

upward.

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Screw pumps are very efficient ways of moving water and a number of

engineers have speculated that they were used in the Hanging Gardens. Strabo even

makes a reference in his narrative of the garden that might be taken as a description of

such a pump. One problem with this theory, however, is that there seems to be little

evidence that the screw pump was around before the Greek engineer Archimedes of

Syracuse supposedly invented it around 250 B.C., more than 300 years later.

Garden Construction

The 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.

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.

Archaeological Search

These were probably some of the questions that occurred to German

archaeologist Robert Koldewey in 1899. For centuries the ancient city of Babel had

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been nothing but a mound of muddy debris never explored by scientists. Though

unlike many ancient locations, the city's position was well-known, nothing visible

remained of its architecture. Koldewey dug on the Babel site for some fourteen years

and unearthed many of its features including the outer walls, inner walls, foundation

of the Tower of Babel, Nebuchadnezzar's palaces and the wide processional roadway

which passed through the heart of the city.

While excavating the Southern Citadel, Koldewey discovered a basement with

fourteen large rooms with stone arch ceilings. Ancient records indicated that only two

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locations in the city had made use of stone, the north wall of the Northern Citadel, and

the Hanging Gardens. The north wall of the Northern Citadel had already been found

and had, indeed, contained stone. This made Koldewey think that he had found the

cellar of the gardens.

He continued exploring the area and discovered many of the features reported

by Diodorus. Finally, a room was unearthed with three large, strange holes in the

floor. Koldewey concluded this had been the location of the chain pumps that raised

the water to the garden's roof. The foundations that Koldewey discovered measured

some 100 by 150 feet. This was smaller than the measurements described by ancient

historians, but still impressive. While Koldewey was convinced he'd found the

gardens, some modern archaeologists call his discovery into question, arguing that

this location is too far from the river to have been irrigated with the amount of water

that would have been required. Also, tablets recently found at the site suggest that the

location was used for administrative and storage purposes, not as a pleasure garden.

WHEN AND HOW WERE THEY DESTROYED? When king Nebuchadnezzar died, Babylon a few years later was destroyed.

The buildings were in ruins. There is a report that in the second century B.C. the

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hanging gardens were destroyed by an earthquake. If so, the jumbled remains, mostly

made of mud-brick, probably slowly eroded away with the infrequent rains.

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