Hanging Gardens of Babylon

An architectural wonder created in Babylon by the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II in the early sixth century B. C. Ancient sources claim that Nebuchadnezzar’s wife, Amytis, daughter of the Median king Umakishtar, missed the trees and hills of her homeland, Media, and her husband erected the gardens to make her happy. Supposedly they consisted of a

An illustration depicting the Hanging Gardens of Babylon during the early sixth century B. C. © Bettmann/Corbis

Series of massive terraces, some hundreds of feet high. Workmen covered them with soil and planted trees and bushes, which were irrigated with water brought in from the Euphrates River. According to one of the more detailed ancient accounts of the gardens, that of the first-century b. c. Greek historian Diodorus siculus, when the tiers of the structure were 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. ... the roofs of the galleries were covered over with beams of stone sixteen feet [5m] long. .. . The roof above these beams had first a layer of reeds laid in great quantities of bitumen [tar], over this two courses of baked brick bonded by cement, and as a third layer a covering of lead, to the end that the moisture from the soil might not penetrate beneath. on all this again the earth had been piled to the depth sufficient for the roots of the largest trees; and the ground. . . was thickly planted with trees of every kind. . . . The galleries. . . contained many royal lodges of every description; and there was one gallery which contained openings leading from. . . machines [mechanically operated pumps] for supplying the gardens with water, the machines raising the water in great abundance from the river. (Library of History 2.10)

Not surprisingly, modern excavators have long sought to find the remains of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which were listed among the seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The burning question has always been where to search in

Babylon’s extensive ruins. Curiously, the Greek historian Herodotus, who visited the city in the fifth century b. c., made no mention of the gardens. One early modern theory was that the large ziggurat he described in his Histories had originally borne the gardens but they had disappeared by his time. The noted German excavator Robert Koldewey later proposed that a structure scholars call the Vaulted Building was the Hanging Gardens. A more recent proposal, by University of London Assyriologist D. J. Wiseman, suggests that the gardens rested on some terraces atop an outer city wall near the Euphrates River. Insufficient evidence exists to prove any of these theories; so for the time being, the exact location of this renowned ancient architectural wonder remains uncertain.

See Also: Amytis; Babylon; Nebuchadnezzar II in which the Roman nobleman Marcus Crassus was defeated and killed. From a cultural standpoint, Harran was important as the home of the chief Mesopotamian temple of the moon god, Sin (or Nanna). Called the Ehulhul, or “House of Rejoicing,” it was refurbished and expanded by a number of Assyrian and Babylonian kings. Harran is also mentioned in the biblical book of Genesis as the place where Terah, father of the prophet Abraham, lived after fleeing from Ur.