Where is it?
Mahaweel, Iraq
Ancient Babylon, Address
Ancient Babylon, Address
when was it built?
605 BC
Who was the civilisation that built it?
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). This was the height of the city's power and influence and King Nebuchadnezzar is known to have constructed an astonishing array of temples, streets, palaces and walls. 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. The Hanging Gardens were said to have been built to please King Nebuchadnezzar's wife, Amyitis. 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 wordkremastos, 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."
Why do you think it is one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World?
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 Greek tourists, particularly in the 1st and 2nd centuries BC. The Wonders were all found in or around the Mediterranean and are highly biased towards Greek achievements - the Pyramids of Giza and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are the only non-hellenistic wonders. The Ancients wondered at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon because they were a lush, verdant garden in the middle of the Mesopotamian desert. Irrigation was known but the ability to move water up (vertically) was an engineering marvel