Hanging Gardens of Babylon

1. Hanging Gardens of Babylon By: Madison Baroch

2. Why was it made? King Nebuchadnezzar II created the Gardens for his homesick wife, Amyitis, who came from Medes where it is green and mountainous. She thought the dry, flat land of Mesopotamia was depressing. Nebuchadnezzar built the Hanging Gardens to remind his queen of her homeland.

3. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

4. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

5. The Hanging Gardens contained many exotic plants and animals.

6. What did they look like? We are unsure however what the Gardens actually looked like, but many artists have used their imaginations to show us what they think they looked like. Herodotus, a historian, wrote that the garden’s outer walls were 80 feet thick, 320 feet tall, 56 miles long, and wide enough for a four-horse chariot to turn.

7. The plants weren’t really hanging though. They were really just sitting on terraces and balconies which gave the illusion that the plants were hanging. They got the word hanging from the mistranslation of the Greek word “kremastos” or the Latin word “pensilis” which not only mean hanging but also overhanging.

8. How were they watered? The Hanging Gardens were watered by what is called a chain pump. It had two large wheels, one on top of the other. They were connected by a chain. On the chain were buckets which were continuously dipped into water and dumped into a pool on the top terrace. There were channels leading from the pool that led throughout the garden and watered all the plants.

9. When they were discovered • Robert Koldewey, a German archaeologist, in 1899 dug on the Babel site for fourteen years. • He unearthed many of its features including the outer walls, inner walls, foundation of the Tower of Babel, Nebuchadnezzar’s palaces, and the wide processional roadway that led through the city. • Then one day while excavating the Southern Citadel, Koldewey came across a basement with fourteen large rooms with stone arch ceilings. This made Koldewey believe that he had found the cellar of the Hanging Gardens. • Finally he discovered a room with three large holes in the floor. So Koldewey concluded that this had been the location of the chain pumps.

10. How was the structure kept intact? If Nebachadnezzar didn’t have some type of drain in the gardens the structure probably wouldn’t be here today. Archaeologists are still trying to find out where and if the gardens had drains.

12. Were they real? Some people say that the gardens weren’t even real, they say that the gardens could have been just a figment of Greek poets’ imaginations. They question if one of the seven wonders of the ancient world even existed. But archaeologists have proof that they did in fact exist. If they didn’t would we have the ruins of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon still today?

13. Today's Inspiration Though there are many mysteries concerning the Hanging Gardens of Babylon one thing’s for sure, the gardens are an archaeologists’ dream come true and the inspiration of many artists’ paintings.

14. References • Babylon: The Hanging Gardens of Semiramis. (n.d.). Retrieved March 27, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLlroENeNHk • “The Hanging Gardens of Babylon”. (2010). Retrieved March 20, from http://www.Hanginggardensofbabylon.org • “The Hanging Gardens of Babylon”. (n.d.). Retrieved March 20, from http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/worldhistory/hanginggardens1.htm • “The Hanging Gardens of Babylon”. (2001). Retrieved March 20, from http://www.angelfire.com/ny/anghockey/hanginggardens.html • “7 Wonders of the World”. (n.d.). Retrieved March 20, from http://library.thinkquest.org/J002388/babylon.html