Hanging Gardens of Babylon

This hand-coloured engraving, probably made in the 19th century after the first excavations in the
Assyrian capitals, depicts the fabled Hanging Gardens, with the Tower of Babel in the background.

Timeline and map of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the other Wonders of the Ancient World
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, a term
given to it by ancient Hellenic culture. The Hanging Gardens were described as a remarkable feat of
engineering with an ascending series of tiered gardens containing a wide variety of trees, shrubs,
and vines. The gardens were said to have looked like a large green mountain constructed of mud
bricks.
The Hanging Gardens is the only one of the seven ancient wonders for which the location has not
been definitively established.[1] Traditionally they were said to have been built in the ancient city of
Babylon, near present-day Hillah, Babil province, in Iraq. The Babylonian priest Berossus, writing
in about 290 BC and quoted later by Josephus, attributed the gardens to Neo-Babylonian King
Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled between 605 and 562 BC. There are no extant Babylonian texts
which mention the gardens, and no definitive archaeological evidence has been found in Babylon.
[2][3]
Because no physical evidence for the Hanging Gardens has been found at Babylon, two theories
have been suggested. One is that they were purely mythical, and the descriptions found in ancient
Greek and Roman writers including Strabo, Diodorus Siculus and Quintus Curtius Rufus represent
a romantic ideal of an eastern garden.[4] If it did indeed exist, it was destroyed sometime after the
first century AD.[5][6] The other theory is that they were actually in the city of Nineveh,
constructed by the Assyrian king Sennacherib.[7]
According to one legend, Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens for his Median wife, Queen
Amytis, because she missed the green hills and valleys of her homeland. He also built a grand
palace that came to be known as "The Marvel of the Mankind". Stephanie Dalley suggests that the
original garden may have been a well-documented one that Assyrian King Sennacherib (704681
BC) built in his capital city of Nineveh on the River Tigris, near the modern city of Mosul.[8]