The Hanging Gardens of Babylon: A Royal Oasis or a Figment of Imagination?

The truth appears ever more complicated…

‘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 labour of cultivation is suspended above the heads of the spectators.”

— Philo of Byzantium

As we know them, the gardens, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, were a leafy green oasis in the dry desert city of Babylon, an ancient Mesopotamian city founded in 1894 BCE, the remains of which are now a UNESCO World Heritage site in modern-day Iraq. The grand scale of these gardens and the engineering feat of their irrigation would have been immense. But that’s if they ever really existed…

For most of my life, I’d been told that the ancient gardens of Babylon were pure mythology, a fairytale that had been passed down and exaggerated over hundreds of years. But it turns out that the truth isn’t as cut and dry as that. After all, we’re dealing with something which has no physical remains and only exists in the brief, sometimes divergent mentions of ancient writers and the conflicting opinions of modern historians.

If they were here they would have supposedly been inside the walls of the royal palace of Babylon. But that’s a big if. Babylon is where Classical authors placed them but modern historians and archaeologists aren’t so convinced and have a different, rather compelling idea of their real home. (More on that later.)

Additionally, historians still aren’t sure what the hanging gardens actually were. Some believe that they were rooftop gardens, others think that the gardens decorated the platforms of ziggurat temples, reminiscent of mountains. This version would make more sense when imagining the ‘hanging’ of the gardens as foliage which could drape over the sides of the platforms. It also makes more sense when considering that the gardens would likely have been irrigated by the nearby Euphrates River through a series of pumps. Ancient writers describe the gardens as being irrigated by a complex system which would keep the abundance of plants healthy in the arid desert conditions and some think that the gardens may have used a version of what would later be named the Archimedes screw. The copious amounts of water involved in this were apparently kept from sinking through the ground and into the spaces below by using layers of reeds, bitumen (crude petroleum) and lead.

The water machines [raised] the water in great abundance from the river, although no one outside could see it.

— Diodorus Siculus

It’s equally unknown who is to thank for the gardens. Different individuals have been put forward for credit. One suggestion is Neo-Assyrian queen Shammuramat (c. 850 BCE — 798 BCE), another is the more well-known Nebuchadnezzar II, a Neo-Babylonian king who lived from 605 BCE to 562 BCE. The latter supposedly dedicated the gardens to his wife, Amytis, as a place for her to enjoy and remember the greenery of her home country of Media.

The hanging gardens are the only one of the ancient wonders whose demise is undocumented and unknown. The other magnificent structures on the list are known to have been destroyed, sometimes by earthquakes, sometimes by fire, but for the Babylonian gardens, there is simply no definitive answer for their destruction.

Remains of the gardens have never been found, although some discoveries have been made which have led to speculation. Foundation chambers and vaults, one containing a well, have been found at the palace of Babylon which may have been connected to the gardens but the interpretation of these finds is up for debate and very few are sold on their significance.

The first mention of the gardens that we have comes from a Babylonian priest, Berossus of Kos around 290 BCE. Although his original writing doesn’t exist today, we can still read his testimony in quotes from later writers. He placed the gardens within Babylon itself, but it should be noted that Berossus was writing long after the gardens supposedly existed. Looking optimistically, however, his statements about other parts of Babylon can be backed up by archaeology, so if this part of his writing is accurate, perhaps his reference to the gardens was also true. These, he described as terraces with trees and flowers.

As stated earlier, not everyone is convinced that the gardens were even in Babylon. Some historians believe that somewhere down the line, wires have crossed and the hanging gardens of Nineveh (an Assyrian kingdom north of Babylon and one of the oldest, most impressive civilisations we know of) became the gardens of Babylon, and the evidence for this theory is quite strong. To begin with, we have actual contemporary archaeological indications for gardens existing at Assyrian Nineveh such as the image below, copied from a relief panel in the British Museum. The image clearly shows the irrigation of water being carried up to the trees and foliage, reminiscent of the ancients’ descriptions. There is also written evidence of gardens at Nineveh and the rather telling fact that the city was sometimes nicknamed ‘old Babylon’.

One believer of this theory who is convinced that the gardens should be accredited to Nineveh is Dr. Stephanie Dalley, a British Assyriologist. Her book The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced outlines her research which she believes proves that the gardens cannot be found in Babylon because they never existed there but in ‘Old Babylon’, Nineveh. Dalley has read texts from the time of the Assyrian King Sennacherib in which his palace is described as a ‘wonder for all peoples’, they also describe a bronze screw which raised water, reminiscent of the aforementioned Archimdes’ screw.

Excavations around Nineveh have also unearthed ancient aqueducts, backed up by written evidence, which would have carried water to the city from the mountains. The environment of Assyria would have also made more sense in regard to irrigation and carrying water up to the gardens than the flatter Babylon.

No written or archaeological evidence from Babylon itself makes reference to the gardens, despite there being detailed information on other building projects around the time the gardens would have likely been built. However, as anyone who has spent any amount of time learning about archaeology will know the cry of archaeology professors everywhere, “Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence”. Perhaps one day, someone will find something, either physical or in writing, that confirms that the gardens did exist and existed at the place we call Babylon today.

I personally believe that great gardens may have existed in both places at some time and that over the years, their legends have intertwined together, muddied by a loss of physical and written evidence. After all, what exists today in the historical record can only be a fraction of what once was and who knows how many countless treasures we have lost to time.

References

Cartwright, M. (2018, July 27). Hanging Gardens of Babylon — World History Encyclopedia . Retrieved from World History Encyclopedia : https://www.worldhistory.org/Hanging_Gardens_of_Babylon/

Hanging Gardens of Babylon . (n.d.). Retrieved from Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/place/Hanging-Gardens-of-Babylon

Hanging Gardens of Babylon — New World Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved from New World Encyclopedia: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Hanging_Gardens_of_Babylon

Klen, C. (2023, August 9). Hanging Gardens Existed — But Not in Babylon. Retrieved from History Channel: https://www.history.com/news/hanging-gardens-existed-but-not-in-babylon