The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced

by Stephanie Dalley

  As a result of now understanding Berossus’ account so much better than before, his supposed reference to the Hanging Garden can be eliminated. We can also set aside the mistaken view of the Seleucid kings’ attitude to the ancient civilization they had inherited: that Seleucus I carried out ‘a deliberate policy of degrading Babylon and its shrines’.27 In fact, those kings continued to take an interest in Babylonian traditions, its shrines and its scholarship, as contemporary cuneiform records show.28

  Although it was a Greek custom to refound an old city and to establish a Greek identity by naming a mythological founder, such as Heracles or Aeneas, or an eponymous one such as Ninus or Alexander, in Babylon Seleucus I and his son Antiochus with queen Stratonice, keen to integrate themselves into the prestigious antiquity of Babylonia, conducted a policy rather different from the one that might have been expected. Babylon was not renamed Seleucia—that name was given to a new city founded on the Tigris. Nor was it renamed Alexandria, as one might have expected from it being the place where Alexander died. Babylon remained Babylon. Its most famous indigenous king, whose brilliant reign and magnificent building works were now two centuries old, was Nebuchadnezzar II.

  Nebuchadnezzar’s possessions had been safeguarded throughout more than two centuries of Persian domination and the long civil war that followed Alexander’s death. His royal robe was available to be used for the coronation of a later Seleucid king, Antiochus III, who desired to be associated very closely with the legendary Babylonian emperor. By wearing Nebuchadnezzar’s robe for such an important occasion, the Seleucid king was performing a deeply symbolic act. In stripping off his normal garments, a king prepared for death; in putting on other robes, he transformed himself for a new life.29 The symbolism is explicit in the Babylonian myth Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld, one of the best-known and longest-lasting texts of Babylonian literature: the great goddess is stripped of her various garments and jewellery as she passes through the seven gates into the Underworld, where she then lies naked and dead until she is revived and returns to the world of the living, donning her garments and jewellery at each gate on her way out.

  Those acts of association—the restoration of an ancient temple, and the donning of the most prestigious royal robe for an ancient ceremony—belong within a wider policy to ease the new dynasty into Babylonian traditions and win popular support.30 One of Berossus’ aims in writing his Babyloniaca was therefore to integrate the new regime into past history, showing the new kings as rightful heirs to the throne of Babylon.31 It is thus significant that he did not, we now think, mention the Hanging Garden as one of the glories of Babylon. The analysis of the passage in Josephus allows the possibility that Nebuchadnezzar was not responsible for creating the Hanging Garden, and that Diodorus and Q. Curtius Rufus were correct when they stated that the Hanging Garden was built by an Assyrian king.

  Quintus Curtius Rufus wrote in Latin around the mid to late 1st century AD, in a highly rhetorical style, with a main interest in the character and motives of Alexander the Great. He was certainly careless with some details in the interests of journalistic entertainment, and inserted his description of the garden into a passage about Alexander’s arrival in Babylon.32 The details of construction that he gives appear non-poetic, as if based on a pragmatic account. After describing the Euphrates at Babylon, the embankments built to prevent flood damage, and a stone bridge, he continued:

  On the top of the citadel are the Hanging Gardens,33 a wonder (miraculum) celebrated in the tales of the Greeks, equalling the extreme height of the walls, and made charming by the shade of many lofty trees. Columns of stone were set up to sustain the whole work, and on these was laid a floor of squared blocks, strong enough to hold the earth which is thrown upon it to a great depth, as well as the water with which they irrigate the soil; and the structure supports trees of such great size that the thickness of their trunks equals a measure of eight cubits. They tower to a height of fifty feet, and they yield as much fruit as if they were growing in their native soil. And although lapse of time gradually undermines and destroys, not only works made by the hand of man, but also those of Nature herself, this huge structure, although worked upon by the roots of so many trees and loaded with the weight of so great a forest, endures unchanged; for it is upheld by cross walls twenty feet wide at intervals of eleven feet, so that to those who look upon them from a distance real woods seem to be overhanging their native mountains. There is a tradition that a king of Syria, who ruled in Babylon, undertook this mighty task, induced by love for his wife, who from longing for the woods and groves prevailed upon her husband to imitate in the level country the charm of Nature by a work of this kind.34

  This description confirms that the height of the garden, at the top of the citadel, was equal to that of the city walls. It emphasizes the spectacular growth of the trees, and seems to describe the ones planted above the pillared walkway. Curtius barely mentions the means of irrigation, but relays the romantic story that the garden was built to please the queen. His claim that the gardens were still flourishing centuries after they were constructed could be explained as relating to the time of Alexander rather than Curtius’ own lifetime, or may simply be a rhetorical flourish to make the passage vivid.35 Alternatively, his description could have been based upon a still-visible bas-relief, and the partly ruined palaces that could still be visited.

  A Handbook to the Seven Wonders of the World, written by Philo of Byzantium, is by far the latest in date of all the Classical sources. There are two possible writers named Philo, which has caused confusion in the past.36 Both men acquired the epithet ‘of Byzantium’, which caused further confusion.37 Our man is not the engineer of the 3rd century BC, but a much later Philo, the so-called Paradoxographer of the 4th–5th century AD. A paradoxographer can be defined as writer of a ‘semi-scientific study of the origins and causes of contemporary wonderful happenings’.38 Rather than being an engineer, the latter Philo of Byzantium was a writer who described marvels throughout the known world, but did so with a considerable understanding of construction and materials. This contributed to the confusion with the earlier writer who bore the same name. On the other hand, his use of language was quite flowery, a characteristic that allowed some scholars to dismiss him as an unreliable source. His account, written in Greek but also known in an early Latin translation, appears to be independent of earlier Greek texts, although it repeats the statement of Curtius that the gardens still flourished. As we have seen, this claim need not mean literally what it says, but could be a rhetorical device, or a quotation from a much earlier writer, or could imply ecphrasis based on a surviving panel of sculpture. Survival of the actual garden into the 4th century AD seems unlikely, as it would imply an unbroken existence with many intermittent restorations. In particular the trees planted on top of the pillared walkway would have had to be replaced on a regular basis.

  Philo also provided a technical, if rather poetic, description of how the Colossus of Rhodes, another World Wonder, was made. Although scholars in the past were sceptical of his account, doubting that he had real knowledge of the casting processes involved in such a gigantic work, his account has been carefully analysed to show that it is indeed of practical value, and records accurately an unusual technical process.39

  Philo’s text had not been edited since 1858, when fewer manuscripts were known than is now the case.40 The challenge of incorporating new texts was taken up by Kai Brodersen, who published an edition with a German translation in 1992.41 Even then he did not have available the understanding of the cuneiform inscription that is analysed in the next chapter. With the benefit of Brodersen’s edition, an English translation of the Greek text is given here.42

  The so-called Hanging Gardens have plants above ground, and are cultivated in the air, with the roots of trees above the (normal) tilled earth, forming a roof.43 Four stone columns are set beneath, so that the entire space through the carved pillars is beneath the (artificial) ground. Palm trees lie in place on to
p of the pillars, alongside each other as (cross-) beams, leaving very little space in between. This timber does not rot, unlike others; when it is soaked and put under pressure it swells up and nourishes the growth from roots, since it incorporates into its own interstices what is planted with it from outside. Much deep soil is piled on, and then broad-leaved and especially garden trees of many varieties are planted, and all kinds of flowering plants, everything, in short, that is most joyous and pleasurable to the onlooker. The place is cultivated as if it were (normal) tilled earth, and the growth of new shoots has to be pruned almost as much as on normal land.44 This (artificial) arable land is above the heads of those who stroll along through the pillars. When the uppermost surface is walked on, the earth on the roofing stays firm and undisturbed just like a (normal) place with deep soil. Aqueducts45 contain water running from higher places; partly they allow the flow to run straight downhill, and partly they force it up, running backwards, by means of a screw;46 through mechanical pressure they force it round and round the spiral of the machines.47 Being discharged into close-packed, large cisterns, altogether they irrigate the whole garden, inebriating the roots of the plants to their depths, and maintaining the wet arable land, so that it is just like an ever-green meadow, and the leaves of the trees, on the tender new growth, feed upon dew and have a wind-swept appearance. For the roots, suffering no thirst, sprout anew, benefiting from the moisture of the water that runs past, flowing at random, interweaving along the lower ground to the collecting point, and reliably protects the growing of trees that have become established. Exuberant and fit for a king is the ingenuity, and most of all, forced, because the cultivator’s hard work is hanging over the heads of the spectators.

  By the time that account was penned, Mesopotamia had been penetrated and lost many times by Parthians, Romans and Lakhmids, when military and mercantile travels would have given further opportunities for eye-witness reports. Philo’s description of how water is raised matches the screw explicitly claimed by Strabo (but very differently expressed), and would not match any other way of raising water. His extraordinary detail of stone columns roofed with trees on top matches details preserved in a drawing made of a lost group of panels found in the mid 19th century at Nineveh, discussed in the next chapter.

  What we have learned from the Classical texts alone is quite a useful description of the garden as a World Wonder. Set beside the king’s palace high up on the citadel, it imitated natural hillside by means of artificial terraces and was planted with forest trees; water flowed on to the upper terraces, raised by machinery involving screws. It was shaped like a Greek theatre, about 120 m on each side—roughly the size of two football pitches set side by side—and the top terrace supported a pillared walkway which had trees planted on its roof. A homesick queen inspired the design.

  3

  Three Pictures, and Archimedes

  When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

  Maynard Keynes

  In 1854 a now famous panel of sculpture showing a garden was found at Nineveh in the North Palace of Ashurbanipal, grandson of Sennacherib, king of Assyria. Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson saw it there, and exclaimed that it must show the fabled Hanging Garden at Babylon, because it had several features in common with the descriptions of Classical authors (see Figure 14).1 His immediate reaction gave way to the idea that the garden depicted there was a prototype for a later one.

  Rawlinson’s exclamation resulted from his knowledge of the Classical authors who had described the Hanging Garden of Babylon. Several of them, notably Josephus and Diodorus Siculus, described the garden as imitating mountain and forest scenery, a description ignored in most reconstructions and at variance with the type of garden found in Babylonia. It does, however, match the type known in Assyria including the one at Khorsabad made by Sargon II, father of Sennacherib (see Figure 11).

  A high garden imitating the Amanus mountains in which are planted all the aromatic trees of northern Syria, all the mountain’s fruits, I created alongside (Khorsabad).2

  Sennacherib used an identical simile for his own palace garden at Nineveh. This comparison with the tree-clad mountains of northwest Syria and southern Turkey was common in Assyrian inscriptions at that time because Assyrian armies were crossing through that terrain as they extended the empire into Cilicia. The Amanus range lies from north to south, forming a natural barrier between modern Syria and Turkey; catching rainfall between the Mediterranean and Asia, its slopes are covered in fine trees, many aromatic pines, cedars and junipers, streams of water, lovely glades for picnics. Tired and overheated soldiers must have been glad to rest there. Sargon’s garden at Khorsabad is illustrated on a sculpture found in his palace, and shows some of those features. Prototypes for the later Hanging Garden in the city of Babylon were thus thought by some scholars to have been designed in Assyria, both at Khorsabad and Nineveh.

  Fig. 11 Drawing of a stone panel carved in bas-relief, found in the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad, showing his garden. Ht. 98 cm.

  The various writers who described the garden in Greek and Latin gave descriptions that are consistent in some important respects, but do not have close matches with each other in vocabulary and phrases that might arouse a suspicion of a common source. We are hampered by being uncertain whether the gardens were still visible when they wrote, and whether they relied on written sources of information that had begun in the time of Alexander or at an earlier date. But we can say that they were describing a type of garden known from northern Mesopotamia, which was very different from the type characteristic of southern Mesopotamia, where Babylon lay.

  Josephus among others described the garden as an imitation of a natural landscape. This is an important point because Babylonian gardens were designed in a style quite different from those of Assyria. Two distinct garden traditions can be discerned from cuneiform inscriptions written on behalf of Babylonian and Assyrian kings and from differences in landscape: a southern one and a northern one. Owing to the type of terrain in southern Iraq, Babylonian gardens were set in a flat alluvium, where networks of little irrigation ditches favour rectangular parcels of land. Often they featured parallel rows of date palms which are not only beautiful and productive in themselves, but also afford shade to the smaller plants. They are watered from the river by means of shadufs. The land is unremittingly flat, desperately featureless to the eyes of a traveller coming from the east Mediterranean. Therefore the river Euphrates, which ran through the middle of Babylon, has no tributaries but splits into various branches that change their course from time to time, and there were no nearby hills or mountains such as might allow an aqueduct of some kind to bring water into the city by gravity from higher up. (See Figure 1) The natural river banks generally lie low, and are easily breached when the warmth of spring brings melt-water down from its source in the mountains of eastern Turkey—hence the need for the Western Outwork, to protect the Southern Palace from erosion. (See Figure 3) The city was almost entirely built with mud brick, since that was the traditional building material, copiously available; but bricks are easily damaged and often need replacing. In the course of time, repeated demolition and rebuilding caused the whole area to rise high above the plain upon which the first buildings were presumably located.

  By the time Nebuchadnezzar built his palaces in Babylon, the Processional Way on the citadel stood 13 m above the level of the plain through which the river runs. Such an elevation made it difficult to bring enough water from the river to the citadel, to augment the supply hauled up from deep wells. Therefore provision of water to the height of the citadel was done partly through the arduous use of rows of shadufs drawing water from the river, nodding and creaking on the bank of the river; and partly by means of wells with pulleys within buildings and their courtyards. An enormous elevated reservoir was discovered to the north of the palaces, presumably supplied partly through the careful collection of winter rain-water, and partly from shaduf-raised water. An elaborate system of conduits,
sturdily built in terracotta and bitumen, helped to distribute the water.3 The terrain in and around Babylon, therefore, was not suitable for the kind of landscape garden described by the Classical writers.

  Fig. 12 (a) Obverse of the cuneiform tablet with the text listing plants in the garden of Merodach Baladan, king of Babylon in the time of Sennacherib. The ruled lines separating sections of text may correspond to the layout of the plants in their beds. (b) Hand-copy of the obverse. 6.5×4.0 cm.

  A type of design for southern gardens may be deduced from the cuneiform text in which groups of similar plants are named in sections divided by ruled lines (see Figure 12). That clay tablet is a copy made in antiquity, not long after the original composition which names the king whose ownership is recorded: he was Marduk-aplaiddina II, also known as Merodach Baladan early in the 7th century BC. His was probably a formal kitchen garden, in which the beds were criss-crossed by irrigation channels to form a kind of parterre. The text suggests a type of physic garden, in which one bed contains varieties of mint, another has types of onion, garlic and leek, another has different kinds of thyme and origanum, and so on. Such an arrangement requires a piece of flat land with a network of small water channels for irrigation on the same level as the plants by opening and closing gaps in the channels.