Where Was the Real Hanging Gardens of Babylon Located?
Ancient historians may have wrongly identified one of the wonders of the world
One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, has been lost to the sands of time. Ancient scholars were mesmerized by its beauty.
What if the Hanging Gardens wasn’t in the city of Babylon?
Ancient sources say Nebuchadnezzar II, ruler of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (from 605 to 562 B.C.), constructed the garden. However, Nebuchadnezzar, who left extensive records of his rule, does not mention building a world-class garden.
Don’t you think this is strange? Why would a king who was meticulous in documenting his reign omit such a remarkable engineering feat? What makes the matter murkier is none of the Babylonian texts mention anything about a garden.
Archaeologists tried to solve this mystery of the missing Hanging Gardens of Babylon. To their surprise, they found no evidence of the gardens as described in the literature.
So the garden was a work of poetic imagination, right?
Not quite.
The gardens existed, just not where we thought them to be. Let’s find out who built the garden and where was it really located.
Fortunately, we don’t need to leave Mesopotamia in order to solve this puzzle. But before we talk about who built this ancient wonder, let’s discuss what ancient sources say about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
What do we know about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?
In this palace he erected very high walls, supported by stone pillars; and by planting what was called a pensile paradise, and replenishing it with all sorts of trees, he rendered the prospect an exact resemblance of a mountainous country. This he did to gratify his queen, because she had been brought up in Media, and was fond of a mountainous situation- Berossus.
Berossus, a Babylonian high priest of the deity Marduk, wrote the first description of the Hanging Gardens in 290 BC. Later, Roman historians such as Josephus, Quintus Rufus, and Strabo cite Berossus as the primary source of information about the gardens.
Berossus claims Nebuchadnezzar built the garden for his queen Amytis. He describes the garden as a tiered square building with solid brick walls.
The garden had waterfalls and imported exotic trees such as cedar, cypress, ebony, walnut, pine, willow, and rosewood. It bloomed with flowers and fruits like quince, pomegranate, and plum.
Strabo says sophisticated screws that transport water from the Euphrates River to the gardens for watering the plants. The Babylonian kings gathered exotic creatures and kept them in the palace gardens. The issue with these accounts of the Hanging Gardens is we haven’t found any archaeological evidence to support the claims.
Nebuchadnezzar makes no mention of constructing the Hanging Gardens. The Babylonian ruler kept detailed records of everything he built, even the names of the streets in Babylon. Why wouldn’t he talk about an engineering marvel?
Many centuries after Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, authors who had no connection to the city penned the tales of Babylon’s gardens. They didn’t have any knowledge of horticulture or engineering. There are question marks if they had access to first-hand accounts.
Archaeological evidence uncovered along the Euphrates’ banks doesn’t support the existence of a spectacular multi-level garden with terraces watered by a complicated irrigation system. Did the Greek and Roman authors create a fantasy version of an ideal eastern garden?
Before we discount the tales of ancient historians as fiction, let’s head north to the modern-day Iraqi city of Mosul.
On the outskirts of Mosul lies Nineveh. The majestic city was the mighty Neo-Assyrian empire’s capital. The Assyrians had a long tradition of collecting exotic animals and creating elaborate gardens. In Nineveh, there was a magnificent palace garden built by Emperor Sennacherib (ruled from 705 to 681 B.C.).
Who built the real Hanging Gardens?
The Mesopotamian civilization was famous for its canal networks and city gardens. So, how can we be certain that Sennacherib built the hanging gardens?
The first piece of evidence comes from the Neo-Assyrian Empire’s legacy of garden construction. Sargon II, Sennacherib’s father, built a lovely garden at Durr-Sharukkin, his new capital. The garden also served as a hunting place for the royals. It was the backdrop of a hill. There was a lake for boating, although it is unclear if it was within or beyond the city walls.
Sennacherib continued his father’s legacy by documenting the splendor of his new garden at Nineveh in meticulous detail. The screws designed to convey water to the trees provide the finest evidence for the garden. They were an early version of the Archimedes screw, which was employed to transport water in the Greco-Roman era.
If you’d like to see how this screw worked, the following video provides a demo.
Though we don’t have details about how these screws worked, it’s clear that they helped water the plants on the artificially raised slopes of the garden.
Sennacherib said that this garden was a “wonder for all people.” He used water engineering that was ahead of its time, and that must have made the garden famous in the ancient world.
Sennacherib’s grandson Ashurbanipal ( ruled from 668 BC to 631 BC), the most famous ruler of the Neo Assyrian Empire, is seen dining in this garden along with his wife.
Archaeological evidence from Nineveh supports the theory of a magnificent palace garden.
Now that I think about it, why was there a confusion about where the gardens were? Why aren’t they better known as the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh?
Why isn’t Sennacherib given credit for its construction?
Why was there confusion in identifying the real Hanging Gardens?
There might be several reasons why ancient writers misidentified the real Hanging Gardens of Nineveh with a supposed one in Babylon. Most of them, like Roman authors, relied on the works of Greek historians. The Greeks relied on Berossus, a Babylonian source. Because the Babylonians were bitter rivals of the Assyrians, it’s possible that they weren’t inclined to give the Assyrians their due credit.
Classical texts often mix up Babylon with Nineveh. Quintus Curtius Rufus was the first Roman writer to identify an Assyrian king as the builder of the Hanging Gardens. But even he acknowledges the location of the gardens was in Babylon.
Another source of confusion might be the Hebrew Bible’s mistaken identification of King Sennacherib with Nebuchadnezzar.
Both Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar had sacked Jerusalem and burned it to the ground. Jewish sources frequently mix up the two. We can see this in the Book of Judith, which says that Nebuchadnezzar was the king of the Assyrians and that he ruled from Nineveh. He was a Babylonian king, and he reigned from Babylon. Other scholars believe Nebuchadnezzar was wrongly identified with Ashurbanipal.
Why did so many authors mix up Nineveh in Northern Mesopotamia with Babylon, in the country’s south? For this, we need to figure out what “Babylon” means. It translates to “God’s Gate.” Sennacherib named the gates of Nineveh after the gods. This might mean that Sennacherib wanted his city to be called Babylon, too.
We can find another important clue in Arabic sources on astronomy. The latitude of “Old Babylon” was used to determine the longest day of the year. This latitude does not pass via Babylon but through Nineveh. There was a lot of confusion about which city people were talking about when they used the word “Babylon” in the past.
A few things are obvious to us regarding the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar did not build it, Sennacherib did. It was not in Babylon but in Nineveh. The sources who discussed the stories may have misidentified the true builders and the city.
Maybe it’s time we settle the dispute on the controversial location of one of the ancient wonders of the world in favor of Sennacherib and the Assyrians.
Should it be named the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh?
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Interesting. We've always heard about the hinging garden of Babylon. Thanks for clarifying who actually built the garden and where it is located.
I love Nineveh and the surrounding Assyrian culture, especially their stylized art. So cool!
It's hard to imagine why people would believe something for so long without any contemporaneous evidence, but there are lots of examples throughout history (and even present-day beliefs) based on this. Interesting stuff!