The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, although they enjoyed such a wide fame as to be counted among the Seven Wonders of the World, have never been definitively identified, indeed, their existence has never even been proven. The testimonies in our possession are late "simple classical allusions, taken from pagan authors", to paraphrase Dr. Chasuble. Babylon was the capital of the region of the same name, located on the Euphrates River, approx 650 kilometres northwest of the Persian Gulf, and beyond 1000 B.C. in the eastern Mediterranean (today's Iraq). The city began to emerge in the ancient world under the reign of the famous king Hammurabi (1792-1750 B.C.) who promulgated a code of laws to which his name remains forever linked, and which is now kept in the Louvre Museum.
In the centuries following the reign of Hammurabi, the city underwent various fortunes, but reached the apex of its fame under the kings of the Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean dynasty. This was a time of outstanding rulers, so memorable that their names survived the demise of Mesopotamian civilization. The founder of the dynasty, Nabopolassar (625-605 B.C.) was, with his Medes and Scythians allies, the author of the definitive collapse of Assyria (612 B.C.), whose power had dominated the political and private life of an entire generations.
His son, Nebuchadnezar II (604-562 B.C.), the Nebuchadnezzar of the Book of Daniel, was one of the most illustrious and efficient rulers of Mesopotamia. He actively pursued a policy of expansion and security for his empire, fighting in Syria, Palestine and Egypt. According to the chronicles of the Bible, this led to the dethronement of Joakin king of Judah and the deportation of many captives to Babylon in 597 (Second book of Kings, 24. 14-16) and later to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem as well as the mass deportation of the Jews to Babylon in 586.
The last king of the dynasty was Nabonidus (555-539 B.C.). Nebuchadnezar was an indefatigable builder at home. He employed a massive manpower in the production of an incalculable quantity of mud brick, a material which, under the direction of the royal architects, was transformed into palaces, temples, gates and imposing city walls, of such dimensions as to astound high dignitaries in visit and the subject peoples themselves.
A particular feature of this architecture was the use of blue glazed bricks for the covering of the more imposing works, while other similar bricks, with bas-reliefs of lions, bulls and dragons were added to increase the splendor and power of the royal city. Herodon's classic description of Babylon reflects the rise of the city of Nebuchadnezar and the monuments that still survive today are largely the work of this sovereign.
Thanks mainly to the excavations carried out at the beginning of this century by the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey, a large part of the city has been brought to light. In addition to the remains of the monuments, the historian of Babylon possesses contemporary written testimonies in cuneiform characters, dictated by the kings themselves, who, for the desire to fix their exploits in the minds of the gods, and certainly for the pleasure of handing them down to posterity, have provided very long descriptions of their building projects, restorations and innovations.
The inscriptions on the buildings are characteristic of the dynasty; the classification and reconstruction of cuneiform texts, often reduced to fragments, constitute a source of uninterrupted work for modern scholars. In addition to personal tales of kings, another gift to us is a composition known as the Topography of Babylon, composed of five tablets that intend to describe the city in depth, naming its streets and sacred places, gates and temples, in short, a source of incalculable value for those interested in Babylon of the first millennium B.C.
Continuing then in our search for the Hanging Gardens, we must stop and reflect on the unexpected silence on the part of all these original cuneiform texts on any link with the fabulous Wonder. There is no Babylonian inscription that refers to a building that can be connected to a royal garden of great effect, a garden which, if we are to believe the later reports that we will quote shortly, was an extraordinary technological novelty.
So let us see what can be gleaned from the later authors regarding the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Five are those who have left us a description capable of providing us with some elements that give substance to our idea of the Gardens. On Babylon the most reliable witness is undoubtedly Berossus, who lived at the time of Alexander the Great (his date of birth is around 350 B.C.). He, originally from Chaldea, tells us that he was a priest of Bel (ie Marduk, the national god of the Babylonians). When he became an adult, he abandoned Babylon and went to live on the island of Cos. In the 280 B.C. he produced a work of considerable importance, Babyloniaká, combined with another that concerned Assyria; his intention was to explain to the Greeks the culture of Mesopotamia, a knowledge which was closed to them because of the cuneiform writing.
From what remains of Berossus' work, it appears that he had first-hand knowledge of Sumerian and Accadian literature now thousands of years old and still current in the Babylonian academies. The author dedicated his Babyloniaká to Antiochus I (281-260 B.C.) known for his favorable disposition towards the temple and the priests of Marduk, and in general towards everything concerning the Babylonian culture. In the eyes of the Greeks the other peoples appeared mostly barbarians, therefore the work of Berossus probably was not widely read, nor, for that matter, has it come down to us. But fortunately for us it was widely cited by later authors, so that much of this invaluable book survives and largely covers the thought and traditions of Mesopotamia, known in cuneiform texts. In his notes, Berossus attributes the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar and his text is quoted by Josephus, the writer who attempted to describe Jewish history and culture with the same spirit with which Berossus had approached the narration of the story of Babylon.
“At his palace he had stones piled upon stones, until he obtained the appearance of real mountains, and he planted all kinds of trees there, setting up the so-called "hanging paradise" because his wife, originally from Media, had a great desire for it, being such is the custom of his country.”( Jewish Antiquities X 226; and Against Apion I 141)
Babylonian sources are silent on the subject of the wife of Nebuchadnezar, but a dynastic marriage between the Babylonians and the Medes is historically very plausible. Berossus informs us that this middle princess was named Amytis.
The other four descriptions of the gardens worthy of mention contain more precise technical details.
The description of Diodorus Siculus, who lived around the middle of the first century B.C.:
“Then there was also, near the acropolis, the so-called «hanging» garden, built not by Semiramis but by a later Syrian king, to please one of his concubines: in fact, they say that this one, who was of Persian origin and wanted the meadows of his mountains, asked the king to imitate, through the skilful technical realization of the garden, the characteristic of the Persian land. The park extends on each side for four plethrae [c.3500 meters square] with the typical ascending line of the mountains and the buildings one after the other, so as to have a theater-like appearance.Under the artificially constructed slopes, galleries had been built which bore the whole weight of the garden, and which gradually became one higher than the other as the ascent progressed: the uppermost gallery, fifty cubits high, was holding the top floor of the garden, placed at a level equal to that of the protective wall. Moreover the walls, sumptuously executed, were twenty-two feet thick [c. 7 meters], and each passage was ten feet wide. The roofs were covered with stone beams, sixteen feet long, with projecting ends, and four feet wide. The covering above the beams first comprised a layer of reeds with plenty of bitumen, then a double series of fired bricks connected together with plaster, and as a third superimposed layer it had lead canopies, because the humidity coming from the earth accumulated above did not go deep. Above these layers a sufficient thickness of earth had accumulated, to suffice for the roots of the largest trees: the earth, levelled, was filled with trees of every kind they could find, by their greatness and their other beauties, to rejoice whoever beheld them. The galleries, which received light from being one higher than the other, contained many royal rooms of all kinds: there was one which on the top floor had holes and machines for draining the waters, thanks to which a large quantity of water was pulled up from the river, without anyone outside being able to realize what was happening.”
(Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library II 10)
Scholars have come to the conclusion that this description of Diodorus derives in part from a lost History of Alexander, written by a Clitarch of Alexandria in the later years of the 4th century B.C. Born himself at the time of the defeat inflicted by Alexander on the Persians of Darius III, it is probable that, even without having had the opportunity to visit Babylon in person, he was offered the opportunity to speak with some soldier who had served in the file of Alexander and personally visited the city. Other information comes from Ctesias, a Greek doctor who, taken prisoner of war, seems to have carried out his profession at the Persian court around 400 B.C. The same sources probably inspire the following testimony, that of Quinto Curzio Rufo, author of a History of Alexander:
“On the top of the fortress, a marvel celebrated in Greek fables, there are the hanging gardens, which equal the highest level of the walls and are enchanting due to the shade and height of many trees. The pillars which bear all the weight are built of stone; on them is laid a floor of squared stones capable of supporting the earth that is distributed over it in a deep layer and the water with which this is irrigated; these structures support trees so strong that their trunks are eight cubits thick [c. 4 meters], rise to a height of fifty feet [c. 15 meters] and are just as productive as if they were fed from their natural soil. And although time destroys not only the works made by the hand of man, but also those of nature itself, consuming them little by little, this mass, although it is subjected to the pressure of the roots of many trees and is burdened by the weight of such a large forest, it lasts intact; it is supported by walls twenty feet wide, placed at a distance of eleven, so that, from a distance, it looks like a forest overhanging its mountains. It is tradition that this building was conceived by a king of Syria, reigning in Babylon, for the love of his bride, who, regretting the woods and forests in those places on the plains, induced her husband to imitate, with such a construction, the beauty of nature."(Quintus Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander V 1.32-35)
It is believed Strabo, copying from a lost text by Onesicritus, another author of the reign of Alexander the Great, wrote the following:
“Babylon also lies in a plain; and the circle of its walls measures 385 stadia. The thickness of the wall is 32 feet [10 meters], while the height of the section between one tower and another is 50 cubits [c. 22 meters], of each tower 60 cubits [c. 26 meters]. The space at the top of the bastion is such that two chariots in motion can easily pass each other; therefore the walls and hanging gardens are considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The garden is square in shape, with four plethrae on each side [c. 130 meters]. It is made of arches and vaults that follow one another on checkerboard cubic blocks. The bases, quincunx and hollowed out, are so thickly filled with earth that they can easily accommodate the largest trees, built as they are, both the bases and the vaults and the arches, of burnt bricks and bitumen. The last terrace is accessed by means of a staircase, along which there ran spirals through which water was continuously carried from the Euphrates up into the garden by those employed for this purpose, as the river, one stadium wide, runs through the middle of the city, and the garden is on the river bank”.(Strabo, Geography XVI 1.5)
Finally there is Byzantine Philo, probably active around 250 B.C., whose description of the Seven Wonders of the World is one of the most used.
Concerning the famous gardens of Babylon, he says:
“The so-called Hanging Garden, made of plants raised from the ground, is worked in the air, the ground being a suspended terrace where the plants take root. Below, stone columns stand up for support, and the whole space is occupied by historiated columns. Then some palm wood beams are placed at very close intervals. Palm wood is the only one not to rot, indeed, moistened and compressed by heavy weights, it bends upwards; moreover it nourishes the filaments of the roots drawing other substances from the outside between its interstices. Above these beams a deep layer of earth is piled up, and there are planted broad-leaved trees of the most widespread in gardens, every variety of multicolored flowers, and in short, everything that delights the eye and the palate with its sweetness. The site is worked like any other field and adapts to propagation work like any terrain. Thus the plowing takes place above the head of whoever is walking under the columns, and while the surface of the ground is trampled on, in the lower layers near the beams the earth remains intact. Rivers of water coming from higher sources flow directly with a beautiful gush, or they flow by being lifted up by a spiral and turned by penstocks by helical machines; then placed in thick and large jets, they irrigate the whole garden, irrigate the deep roots of the trees and keep the soil moist. Therefore, as can well be imagined, the grass is always green, and the leaves that sprout from the soft branches of the trees have great mood and durability. In fact, the roots, never thirsty, absorbing and conserving the widespread humidity of the water and intertwining their underground coils, guarantee a firm and lasting life for the plants. Exquisite, voluptuous and truly regal work, where everything is artificial and the farmers's toil hangs over the head of those who contemplate it."
It says a lot about Philo, the great technician, who, if he really lived around the 250 B.C. didn't even own a second-hand account of the Hanging Gardens. After all, Nebuchadnezar's palace was still quite well preserved when Alexander died there in the year 323. This, therefore, is essentially what is handed down to us by pagan authors regarding the knowledge of the Hanging Gardens. If we believe their combined accounts, archaeological evidence speaks in favor of what Berossus affirmed, namely that the merit of these gardens can be traced back to Nebuchadnezar. But before we turn our attention to the city of Babylon itself, it is good to say a word about other royal gardens of ancient Mesopotamia, for which we have ample evidence that even earlier kings valued and cared for their gardens.
Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.), «the Assyrian who broke into the sheepfold like the wolf» according to Byron's words, was notoriously interested in botany. He had designed a large garden near his palace in Nineveh and went to other districts to be able to supply it with rare and exotic plants, herbs and trees brought in in some cases from remote countries. He even seems to have imported the cotton from India, if the strange phrase 'trees that produce wool' which he uses, is correct. Sennacherib had serious difficulties in supply Nineveh with water sources by damming the river Khosr, perhaps also to protect himself from the eventuality of a siege. He had even gone so far as to build several miles of aqueduct to replace the previous one; today notable traces remain. Other older Assyrian kings have left evidence of their gardens in inscriptions. Earlier Tiglath-pileser I of Nineveh (1115-1077 B.C.) had boasted of opulent gardens and orchards, while in another Assyrian capital, Nimrud (the Calahof the Bible), Ashurnazirpal II (883-859 B.C.) has left us a long inscription on a stone stele, in which he describes how he proceeded to plant the royal gardens near the citadel and the Tigris river; he had also accumulated vast reserves of plants from foreign countries following vigorous military campaigns:
“The channeled water descended from above to the gardens; the avenues are very fragrant, the little waterfalls shine like the stars in the sky in this garden of delights. Pomegranates, covered with clusters of fruit like grape vine, enhance the scent. I, Assur-na¯sir-apli, do not stop picking fruit in the garden of joy, like a squirrel [?].”(Stele of Assurnazirpal)
A complete cuneiform tablet, now at the British Museum, is a later copy of an ancient manuscript listing the plant varieties found in the garden of the Babylonian king Marduk-apla-iddina (721-710 B.C.), the biblical Merodach-Baladan. Sixty-seven varieties are enumerated, mostly vegetables. A famous bas-relief of the last great Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal (668-627 B.C.) also in the British Museum, shows us part of the royal gardens in the capital Nineveh.
Now, given the attention paid by later authors to the Hanging Gardens, and the well-documented tradition of royal gardens in Mesopotamia, let us set aside our skepticism for a moment and admit that at its heyday Babylon offered extraordinary visions. So let's take a look at the city itself, to see where they could be placed.
Babylon is the largest city in ancient Mesopotamia, even larger than Nineveh. It has an area of approx 850 hectares, as it appears from a schematic plan of the city center dating back to the time of Nebuchadnezar. The city had a double wall, founded by Nabopolassar and completed by Nebuchadnezar. Even seen from far away, these walls must have presented a truly impressive sight: we read above that, at least from Strabo, these walls were rightfully one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Towering above the city stood the ziggurat at the center of the vast temple complex dedicated to Marduk, near his shrine of Esagila.
The Histories of Herodotus have given us news of Babylon in the century after Nebuchadnezar. Of course the ziggurat sets the tone for Mesopotamian civilization. As Herodotus also reports, it has the shape of a stepped tower of mud bricks, and is surmounted by a small sacellum. In more or less substantial numbers, the ziggurats are still found in many ancient Iraqi cities, but that of Babylon is the best known. In the historical tradition it is often identified with the tower of Babel of the Book of Genesis: indeed, in the last century there has been much discussion where precisely Babel was. Of the authors we have cited, Herodon is the one who comes closest to the time of Nebuchadnezar, and it is surprising that, in his narration, he does not mention the Hanging Gardens at all. It is an objection that is difficult to answer.
Someone has imagined that the gardens were located on the ziggurat itself, which would agree at least in one respect with what we have reported, namely that the function of the ziggurat was, in a broad sense, to bring man as close as possible to the divinity. The stepped architecture may have led to the theory of a man-made imitation of a large mountain. This is certainly an argument, but it does not take into account the insurmountable difficulties of irrigation, and would therefore exclude that the ziggurat of Babylon was constantly covered with greenery.
Those who discard the Hanging Gardens, considering them only legend, instead find in the ziggurat the solid reality behind the work of poets. Inside, Babylon was characterized by a fusion of magnificence and orderliness. The streets are drawn parallel to the river and cross each other at right angles, with a strangely modern urban vision. Eight gates give access to the city: the best known of them is the one usually called the Ishtar Gate. It stood roughly in the center of the northern walls and opened onto the no less famous Procession's way.
In Nebuchadnezar's time, many palaces stood in Babylon. Immediately beyond the walls is the North Palace, while little remains of the so-called Summer Palace. The most important was the South Palace, in which five large courtyards were in turn surrounded by a maze of rooms and apartments. Here was also the throne room, the scene of Belshazzar's feast described in the Bible; there Alexander died while still mourning the death of Hephaestion. The same resplendent bricks were used to adorn the palace.
Later in his reign, Nebuchadnezar built a second palace north of his main residence, where archaeologists have discovered, among other things, what must have been a museum of ancient inscriptions, dating from the late 3rd millennium B.C., carefully collected and kept. It was while excavating the northeastern corner of the South Palace that Koldewey came across the building known as the vaulted building which he hypothetically identified with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The shape was that of an underground crypt, composed of fourteen vaulted rooms, which Koldewey describes as follows:
“Fourteen cells, similar to each other in shape and size, line parallel to either side of a central corridor, surrounded by massive walls. Around this somewhat irregular square runs a narrow passage whose extreme north and east side is formed to a large extent by the outer wall of the Fortress, while other rows of similar cells face west and south. In one of these west side cells is a well unlike any other well known in Babylonia or anywhere in the ancient world. The well has three small openings close to each other, the central one square and the others rectangular at the sides: an arrangement for which I can see no other explanation than that there was a hydraulic machine there, functioning on the same principle as a chain pump, where buckets attached to a chain work around a wheel placed on top of the wall that surrounds the well. A winch gives the wheel a continuous rotation. This found, which is still used there today, and is called a dolab, i.e. water bucket, provides a continuous flow of water.”
Having proposed the identification of this building with the Gardens area, Koldewey observes that «once studied in detail, the identification appears fraught with difficulties; but this can surprise no one who has repeatedly attempted to reconcile the information of the ancients with today's discoveries. In advancing the hypothesis for the first time, Koldewey made no claim to offer a certainty: he had merely set forth the idea for consideration. The discussion of the Seven Wonders of the World tends to no longer question the identification, and today, visitors who go to the site are shown the remains of the palace as the surviving ruins of the famous construction commissioned by Nebuchadnezar. The Baghdad Directorate General of Antiquities recently restored the crumbling brickwork of the Vaulted Building, following other searches of the palace. As a result of these excavations, Koldewey's measurements were fine-tuned and a few more details added; but essentially nothing new emerged that helps to identify the original use of the building. We can summarize the points made by Koldewey in favor of his identification as follows:
- a ) the use of worked stone, rarely used elsewhere;
- b ) the unusually thick walls, evidently intended to support heavy superstructures;
- c ) the presence of a unique well of its kind.
After collecting all possible data, Koldewey produced a reconstruction drawing of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon as conceived by him. The topic was abandoned by most scholars for many years after the publication of the final reports of the German team's excavations, probably because little else remained to be said in the absence of new documentation. In recent times, however, several scholars have returned to the problems of the Hanging Gardens again, especially Dr. W. Nagel and Professor DJ Wiseman. In general it has been shown that the complex of vaulted rooms of the Edifice had other, more prosaic uses. There is a tendency to believe that they were more likely warehouses, since an entire archive of cuneiform tablets was found there, dated between the tenth and thirty-fifth year of Nebuchadnezar's reign. The texts give lists of food, oil and barley, with which to feed exiles and foreigners held captive in Babylon at that time. It is curious that in some of these tablets mention is made of Joachin king of Judah and his followers, a fine example of how the cuneiform writing sources coincide exactly with the story in the Bible. Reference is also made to other groups of prisoners, and for this reason the hypothesis has been advanced that, behind the project of such massive walls, a security purpose was hidden. Furthermore, it has been questioned whether the strength of these walls was capable of supporting a garden, intended rather to support an extension of the Procession's street.
Another crucial point is the distance between the vaulted building and the water supply of the river. Note in this regard Strabo's clear statement that the gardens were located near the river. Finally, one last consideration: how to explain this location in the overall picture of the South Palace? Anyone entering the Gardens from Nebuchadnezar's palace would have had to pass the administrative offices and apartments, which would have sacrificed the privacy certainly desired by the king and his family, let alone the harem. In conclusion, the scholars have directed their research elsewhere in the city, to find a more suitable location.
While admitting the easy credulity of ancient travelers and the repetition from one text to another of information not personally verified, the testimony of the classics on the Hanging Gardens is impressive and cannot easily be set aside. As we have seen, Berossus attributes the work to Nebuchadnezar, and this would agree with what we know of the king's building activities; we also know that, traditionally, a royal park was a precise feature of a Mesopotamian palace. That it is not mentioned in the cuneiform tablets is undoubtedly a difficulty, perhaps even more serious than the omission in Herodotus' description of Babylon. However, new discoveries are constantly being made in the field of Assyriology, and it is always possible that the relentless excavations of Babylon by the Iraqi State Organization for Antiquities and Tradition will one day unearth a text that sheds full light on the matter. Thus, while the problem still remains open for the moment, the possibility remains that at sunset, against the background of the Babylonian sky, the Hanging Gardens were looming.
Although, after all, the Gardens, as described to us, never existed, the walls of Babylon did, and in part still exist; and according to what Strabo says, Babylon itself possesses in any case all the requisites to be counted among the Seven Wonders of the World.
