HISTORY OF LANDSCAPE DESIGN BABYLON

This period in the history of humanity

bears the name Assyrian and Babylonian
culture, begins its rise in the VIII c. B.C.
and concludes in the VII c. B.C. During
this period Babylon reached the apex of
its bloom.
Famous Tower of Babel was built with a
height of 91 meters. It was a six floor
multicoloured structure and contained
the Gold Temple of the God Marduk at
the apex.
 The city was guarded by two defensive
walls with a width of 6-7 meters. The
main gates of city, dedicated to the
goddess Ishtar, were a miracle of
architecture.
Cities with the regular arrangement of
streets and a system of channels
appeared, curvy by-streets were replaced
by straight and wide streets.
ZIGGURATS
 pyramidal towers, which took the form of stepped towers.
 Such temples consisted of a series of smoothly diminishing square or rectangular platforms.
As a rule the upper platform usually housed a temple.
On the protruding parts of the lower platforms the plants were planted on the perimeter
into specially designated pits which were filled with special soil.
The densely packed houses, enclosed by several fortress walls, did not include plants.

 Gardens were guarded by high unapproachable

walls and were decorated with ponds,
sculptures, gazebos, arbours.

 In the gardens the flowers were planted and

beautiful birds lived here.
They were built in the ancient city-state of Babylon, near present-day Iraq in between
the Tigris and the Euphrates in the naked sandy plains 90 kilometres from modern
Baghdad of around 600 B.C.
HANGING GARDENS OF BABYLON
The walls of Babylon and its tower are famous, but the Hanging Gardens of Babylon occupied
their place as one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world.
It had gardens on its terraces, grown with the application of a unique technical-engineering water
supply system. elements of landscape design and construction were already being adopted at this
time.
The Hanging Gardens had a pyramidal shape, which was arranged into four stepped
terraces, which became narrower each level
In the court of southern palace (605-562 B.C.) of Nebuchadnezzar II.
A garden was arranged on each terrace on which they grew flowers that had never been
seen in Babylon before and trees in which the birds that had been brought from overseas
sat and sang while swans swam on the surface of the ponds the stretched between the
gardens.
 The main garden was arranged on the upper terrace.
Terraces were connected by spiral staircases.
 The exteriors of the terraces served as galleries and the interiors as grottos for
relaxation in the hot hours
Decorated with colour glazed tile and frescoes.
The terraces were small in size, the roof of the lower terrace was almost level with the
walls of city and had a height of 8 m and an area of 45x40m. The second platform with
the height of 13m it had an area of 40x30m. The overall height of the gardens above the
level of walls was 22m.
 water supply system.
Through an opening in one of the columns the water of the Euphrates rose by pumps to the
upper level of the pyramid, where a pond was located.
The water then flowed via small waterfalls downward onto the ledges, watering the plants
growing on it.
Many slaves watered the garden at all times with the aid of the water-lifting wheels,
scooping up water from the Euphrates and from the deep wells (dug out under the first floor
of gardens) with leather buckets.
 The base of each floor was made of flat stone plates, they were covered with the layer of
reeds, flooded with asphalt and covered with sheets of lead which had to withstand the
pressure of the soil (on which they planted gardens with big trees) and keep the water from
filtering into the lower floor.
 The bushes, flowers and vines grew and covered the terraces. On the lower terraces they
planted trees, and bushes and flowers on the higher ones.
HUNTING PARKS
Also in the Assyrian and Babylonian culture there was a skill of surrounding their home
with excellent parksas, for example, the expansive park, created by Assyrian king
Sargon II in the 8th century B.C. in the new city of Dur-Sharrukin (now Khorsabad).
In it many trees brought from other countries were planted:cypresses, cedars,
sycamore, willow, poplar, box-tree and some fruit trees.
 There were very large parks, intended for hunting and horseback riding.
These parks are the predecessors the large parks we have today that can contain entire
forests and more.