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Two goals set me off on this project. Firstly, I wanted to find out about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Secondly, as a teacher excited by the web, I wanted to find out how well it can be used for an unprepared research project—i.e. The jury is still out on whether the Hanging Gardens of Babylon ever existed or were in fact no more than a fabulous myth, but that’s not stopping one ambitious developer from borrowing a little. The second was the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. 2 According to the Bible (the Book of Genesis 11: 1-9), the Babylonians had an ambitious plan. In order to make a name for themselves, they wanted to build a splendid city and a giant tower in the land of Shinar (Babylonia). Hanging Gardens of Babylon, ancient gardens considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World and thought to have been located near the royal palace in Babylon. The site of the Hanging Gardens has not been established. Nevertheless, many theories persist regarding their structure and location.
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus.Hanging Gardens of Babylon:
see BabylonBabylon, ancient city of Mesopotamia. One of the most important cities of the ancient Middle East, it was on the Euphrates River and was north of the cities that flourished in S Mesopotamia in the 3d millennium B.C.
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Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
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Hanging Gardens Of Babylon Project
Babylon Hanging Gardens Of Babylon
In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it.
– Daniel 1:1 (ESV)In elementary school, a dear teacher told me the famed Hanging Gardens of Babylon were real. In fact, she said they were one of “The Seven Wonders of the World.” These extraordinary gardens were described by Roman and Greek historians as terraced with trees suspended in the air and flowering plants hanging from the terraces. One account suggests they measured 400 feet long and 400 feet high with walls as high as 80 feet. Never mind that these Gardens have not survived to the present day. In fact, only one of the ancient Seven Wonders, the Great Pyramid of Giza, may still be visited and appreciated.
In recent years, archaeologists have speculated as to whether the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were demolished by war or simply by the wear and tear of a harsh climate in what is today central Iraq. Indeed, some question whether the Hanging Gardens ever existed.
Nebuchadnezzar also carried part of the vessels of the house of the LORD to Babylon and put them in his palace in Babylon.
– 2 Chronicles 36:7 (ESV)The Hanging Gardens have traditionally been attributed to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. It seems fitting for him to be their builder, because he was one of the most powerful rulers of the ancient world. Nebuchadnezzar also figured prominently in the biblical account. It was King Nebuchadnezzar who was reigning when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple, ending the Kingdom of Judah in 587/586 BC.
Nebuchadnezzar was responsible for deporting the prophet Daniel to Babylon and training him along with his friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. These three went through Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. Later, after boasting of his own majesty, he was humbled by a madness that caused him to act like a beast before recovering and repenting.
The problem is that despite accounts by historians hundreds of years after their supposed 600 BC creation, the Hanging Gardens are not mentioned in any of Babylon’s own historical records. This includes the writings of King Nebuchadnezzar II who supposedly had them built for his wife, Amytis. Legend has it that Amytis was homesick for the green, mountainous region where she grew up, so the king built this immense, terraced green space for her. Ancient History Encyclopedia.
Nebuchadnezzar’s writings mentions neither the gardens nor the queen, but he does describe the other great things he accomplished. In fact, only a single Roman historian credits Nebuchadnezzar as the creator of the Hanging Gardens, and the king’s queen as his motivation.
More importantly, for the intellectual satisfaction of today’s scholars, there is no evidence in the ground, at the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace along the Euphrates River, or anywhere else in central Iraq, of this artistic and engineering marvel. None!
The absolute absence of artifacts to prove their existence has led many to believe the Hanging Gardens were a fictional story spun for an audience hungry for romance—or at least an idealized account of a much less spectacular green space.
Then along comes Oxford University’s Stephanie Dalley, with a new twist on this very old idea. What if the Hanging Gardens are real, but we are just looking in the wrong place and in the wrong time period? This line of reasoning was advanced by Victoria Wollaston in an article in the Daily Mail called “The Mystery of the Missing Hanging Gardens of Babylon Solved.” She proposes that the Hanging Gardens actually belonged to another king, Sennacherib of Assyria.
For the past 20 years, Dr. Daley has pursued this theory, employing her knowledge of cuneiform (an ancient script) to decipher the personal chronicles of King Sennacherib. According to Daley, Sennacherib wrote of building a magnificent palace and lush gardens about a century earlier than Nebuchadnezzar, around 700 BC. The location of these opulent construction projects was 350 miles north of Babylon, in the ancient capital city of Assyria, Nineveh.
Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Your prayer to me about Sennacherib king of Assyria I have heard… Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went home and lived at Nineveh.
– 2 Kings 19:20, 36 (ESV)King Sennacherib of Assyria was the son of Sargon II who had destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and taken many of its people into captivity. Sennacherib followed up his father’s victories by invading the southern kingdom of Judah and capturing all of its fortified cities. The Bible tells of King Hezekiah praying for deliverance and the forces of Sennacherib being miraculously defeated causing his retreat from Jerusalem to his palace in Nineveh. NOTE: For news about the discovery of evidence of the prophet Isaiah, who was tightly connected to King Hezekiah, see our recent Thinker on this topic HERE.
Sennacherib described as “a wonder for all people” his palace and the adjoining terraced garden as high as the palace walls. That fits the description of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. But did King Sennacherib, who lived 100 years before Nebuchadnezzar, have the engineering expertise to carry out such a project?
Dr. Dalley heard that King Sennacherib had built an elaborate aqueduct with two million limestone blocks, the ruins of which may still be seen in northern Iraq. This aqueduct was a key element in a 50-kilometer-long canal stretching from the Khenis gorge in the north to Nineveh. According to Dalley, this canal dropped one meter in elevation for every kilometer of distance. She surmises it channeled the water necessary to grow the king’s lush garden, which if it was the famed Hanging Gardens described by Greek and Roman historians, would have required a large and consistent quantity of water—8,200 gallons per day by some accounts. The Daily Mail
So in 2013, Dr. Dalley set out to investigate. the U.K.’s Channel 4 followed her to northern Iraq where she visited the beginning of the canal. Here King Sennacherib had inscribed his name and a reference to “automatic sluice gates” diverting part of a river into the king’s waterway.
She traced the canal on satellite maps and then on foot to the ruins of the huge limestone stone aqueduct in the Valley of Jerwan, 30 kilometers north of Nineveh. Here, she read the following inscription:
“Sennacherib king of the world king of Assyria. Over a great distance I had a water course directed to the environs of Nineveh . . . over steep-sided valleys, I spanned an aqueduct of white limestone blocks. I made these waters flow over it.” Wikipedia
Even in it’s disrepair, the aqueduct which channeled water across a deep valley, can be seen as an engineering marvel.
Dr. Dalley and Channel 4 then traced the waterway to Nineveh (near present-day Mosul, Iraq) where years of warfare and the encroachment of both urban life and agriculture has eroded evidence of Sennacherib’s capital city.
Still, the footings of Sennacherib’s once great palace may be seen. And although the Hanging Gardens no longer adjoin those ruins, Dr. Dalley has identified a landscape adjacent to the palace where they most likely stood.
“That’s the best place for it to be,” Dr. Dalley is quoted as saying in The Telegraph. “It looks like a good place for a garden.”
But the recent war with ISIS and the land’s current use by the military has restricted access to the grounds, and it is uncertain when the area will again be open for exploration.
“More research is required at the site,” said the retired Oxford academic, again quoted in The Telegraph, “but sadly, I don’t think that will be possible in my lifetime.”
More Insight
The Hanging Gardens Of Babylon School Project Ideas
Dr. Dalley has pulled together other evidence supporting her theory that the location of the Hanging Gardens was mistaken by Roman and Greek historians, who did not actually see what they were writing about. Wikipedia
For one thing, the accounts of two of these historians mention the creator of the Gardens as “a Syrian King,” which would fit Sennacherib and rule out Nebuchadnezzar.
For another, Sennacherib and his armies actually destroyed the city of Babylon in 689 BC. After that conquest, Sennacherib renamed the gates of Nineveh after gods. The word “Babylon” means “Gate of the Gods” so there is compelling evidence that the Assyrian King considered his capital the “New Babylon”—which probably added to the confusion of the historians writing hundreds of years later about the Hanging Gardens. History.com
Moreover, we know from the cuneiform writings of Sennacherib, which still exist, that he understood water management and employed advanced technology to lift water from a lake in front of his palace to the terraced garden. The technology involved a screw mechanism in a spiral tube. It has been attributed to the Archimedes, who lived 350 years later, although there is some question as to whether the concept was original to that Greek inventor. Daily Mail
Interestingly, at least two of the Roman and Greek historians who wrote about the Hanging Gardens mentioned that a screw mechanism was used to water the vegetation.
Then, there is the carved wall panel from the palace of Sennacherib’s grandson, Ashurbanipal, which depicts a lush, terraced garden and a nearby waterway. Wikipedia
Evidence is mounting that the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh may have been mis-named the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which would explain why there is no evidence of these gardens in Nebuchadnezzar’s writings about his personal accomplishments—or in the ground, where some archaeologists continue to dig for it.
Epilogue
This development reminds us, as Thinkers, of the current contention of many archaeologists that there appears to be no evidence in the ground for the early history found in the Bible, especially the Exodus. In fact, many scholars of antiquity insist there is no evidence of the Children of Israel arriving in Egypt, multiplying, becoming enslaved, evacuating Egypt at a time of severe troubles, and then 40 years later conquering the land of Canaan. This contributes to their skepticism of Moses’ writings. Instead, they describe the Exodus as a fabrication or at least a romantic embellishment concocted hundreds of years later from bits of faded legends and myths.
Could it be that, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, these scholars are looking in the wrong time or place for evidence of the Exodus?
In the case of present-day Egyptologists, they believe (because of the standard accepted chronology) that the Exodus should have occurred around 1250 BC, during the reign of the New Kingdom’s most famous pharaoh, Ramesses II. But, perhaps they are looking in the wrong strata of soil.
As showcased in the film Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus, archaeologists digging in the same region the Israelites were said to have lived, have found ample evidence for the existence of a massive Semitic population in Egypt with a history that uncannily matches the major events of the Exodus story—though in the deeper strata belonging to the Middle Kingdom. However, accepting this as evidence of an Israelite community would mean looking centuries earlier than conventional thinking holds. Adopting an older date for the Exodus or a new chronology for Egypt’s past, are things that most of the academic community has, so far, been unwilling to consider.
If the Hanging Garden controversy teaches us anything, it’s that not all stories currently believed to lack archeological evidence can be dismissed as idealized or simply untrue. Sometimes, in order to uncover the truth of the past, we must be willing to question whether we’ve been looking in the right place or not.
Keep Thinking!
Top Photo: As one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the gardens (pictured above) were called hanging because they were built high above the ground on split-level stone terraces. Ancient texts refer to the plants in the gardens as “floating” but they were believed, instead, to have hung from these different terraces. (Credit: Bettmann CORBIS/Daily Mail)