Fruits and flowers… Waterfalls… Gardens hanging from the palace terraces… Exotic animals… This is the picture of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in most people’s minds. It may be surprising to know that they might have never existed except in the minds of Greek poets and historians! The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (also known as the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis) and the walls of Babylon (present-day Iraq) were considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. They were both supposedly built by Nebuchadnezzar II around 600 BC. It is said that the Gardens were built by Nebuchadnezzar to please his homesick wife, Amyitis,  who had been “brought up in Media and had a passion for mountain surroundings”. To satisfy her, the King decided to recreate her homeland by building an artificial mountain with rooftop gardens.
This wonder is said to be located on the east bank of the River Euphrates, about 50 km south of Baghdad, Iraq. Could this be true? We will see at the end of this article. The Hanging Gardens are extensively documented by Greek historians such as Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, but otherwise there is little evidence for their existence. In fact, there are no Babylonian records of any such gardens having existed. Some (circumstantial) evidence gathered at the excavation of the palace at Babylon has accrued, but does not completely substantiate what looks like fanciful descriptions of the garden. Some schools of thought think that through the ages the location may have been confused with gardens that existed at Nineveh as tablets from there clearly show gardens have been found. Writings on these tablets describe the possible use of something similar to an Archimedes’ screw as a process of raising the water to the required height. The Hanging Gardens probably did not really “hang” in the sense of being suspended from cables or ropes. The name comes from an inexact translation of the Greek word kremastos or the Latin word pensilis, which means not just “hanging” but “overhanging,” as in the case of a terrace or balcony. Recent findings showed that the gardens were far from the river Euphrates which was earlier stated by Strabo. Archealogists who surveyed the palace some time ago uncovered its foundation and reconstructed the building and called it the Vaulted Building. This building was found to be located quite some distance from the River Euphrates and so there is an uncertainty as to the actual location of the “hanging garden”

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