Hanging Gardens of Babylon
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Definition: There seems to be some factual basis for the other wonders of the ancient world, however distorted they may have been, but the hanging gardens of Babylon may be one wonder that did not have a basis in fact. It could simply have been the luxurious appearance of a greenery covered ziggurat that led writers to claim that a hanging garden existed. Diodorus Siculus described the hanging gardens as a "series of superimposed terraces of reducing size, rising to a height of 75 feet." [H.W.F. Saggs Civilization Before Greece and Rome, p. 55.] Strabo said it was much larger, with a a square base with each side 400 feet long. The water could have been brought from the Euphrates to the garden by irrigation and a series of bucketsr pulleys.
The hanging gardens are said to have been built in the sixth century by Nebuchadnezzar for his wife or in the ninth century, by the Assyrian Queen Semiramis. Hanging probably meant the gardens were overhanging or terraced.
Related Resources:
Nebuchadnezzar
Ancient Iraq
Elsewhere on the Web:
The Story of the Hanging Gardens May Be Just That
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
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