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

by Stephanie Dalley

  Further evidence that Nineveh was officially a Greek polis comes from a Greek dedication ‘to the polis’ by Apollonius son of Demetrius—a different man?—‘the archon’, a title used alongside stratēgos at Palmyra. The inscription, carved on a massive stone altar, had been added beside an Assyrian cuneiform dedication to the Sibitti-gods, ‘The Seven’, which had been inscribed in the 9th century BC, and never erased.78 The altar, 0.68 m high, 1.03 long and 0.74 wide, imitates a piece of wooden furniture with lion’s paws for feet set into the stone block. The Assyrian inscription proclaims the power of the Seven Gods, the Pleiades, in Nineveh:

  To the Seven, great gods, noble warriors, lovers of reed thickets, who patrol mountain tracks(?), surveyors of heaven and earth, who maintain shrines, heed prayers, accept pleas, receive entreaties, fulfil desires; who fell foes—compassionate gods to whom it is good to pray, who dwell in Nineveh, … I, Shalmaneser, appointee of the god Enlil, vice-regent of the god Ashur … dedicated this to the Seven, my lords, for my life, that my days might be long, my years many, for the prosperity of my seed and land, security of my vice-regal throne; for burning my foes, destroying all my opponents, to make the kings who oppose me kneel at my feet, I dedicated (this altar) to the Seven.

  The Greek inscription has a simple dedication:

  Apollonios son of Demetrios the archon. To the City (polis).

  The addition was superficial here. In the temple of the Seven Gods at Khorsabad an iwan (a type of hall characteristic of the Parthian and Sassanian periods) was built on to the courtyard, implying continuity of use and perhaps of worship.79 The presence of a stratēgos/archon at Nineveh perhaps implies that the city was refounded as a polis during the Seleucid period, whether around 300 BC under Seleucus I or under one of his successors.80

  Under Seleucid rule, the stratēgos had a variety of responsibilities: the defence of his region, implying that troops were garrisoned in or near Nineveh under his command; the management of royal land; and the distribution of royal documents.81 But not every holder of the title had the same remit, and Apollonius may not have served a Seleucid king, since the title continued in use as the Seleucid empire fragmented. Coins of Antiochus IV (175–164 BC) found at Nineveh give one possible reign when the stratēgos would have held office, but no better evidence has come to light for dating his tenure.

  At very roughly the same time as Apollonius governed Nineveh, the poet Antipater of Thessalonica travelled to ‘Asia’ to visit his patron in Cilicia, ‘O Phoebus, … grant me to go with fair sailing through the waves to the Asian land in the wake of Piso’s long vessel’, and claimed to have seen the Hanging Garden.82 He probably went to Hierapolis—Castabala in Cilicia, a significant location because not far away in Tarsus was a temple built by Sennacherib whose typically Assyrian images of deities were still used on plaques of the Seleucid period and on Roman imperial coins including those of Hadrian and Gallienus—evidence that some kind of legacy from Sennacherib still exercised a fascination in Cilicia, even if it had evolved into the stuff of legend.83

  Seven metres down below the surface in one of the palaces at Nineveh Rassam found a fine statue of Heracles Epitrapezios ‘(sitting) on a table’, dated to the 1st or 2nd century AD, inscribed with the name Sarapiodorus son of Artemidorus, and signed by one Deiogenes (see Plate 17). It is just over half a metre high. This is excellent evidence for elite occupation of that palace building in the Parthian period. The name Deiogenes—the same man?—had been added in Greek beside the mouth of a beardless man on a sculpture in the North Palace of Ashurbanipal, dated roughly to the same period, and there seems to have been an earlier, mainly erased inscription alongside it (see Figure 67).84 In proximity to the donkey, the inscription may be interpreted: ‘Deiogenes is an ass!’85

  A substantial piece of evidence for Graeco-Assyrian worship at Nineveh comes from the second citadel mound of Nineveh, Nebi Yunus, which faces Kouyunjik (the other citadel mound) across the Khosr river. A shrine there contained a limestone statue 1.35 m tall, of a slender winged figure identified as Hermes (see Figure 68). It stood originally on a pedestal inside a small mud-brick shrine built to an Assyrian-style plan. This building proved to be a part of a much bigger complex containing several other shrines.86 The statue had hair painted orange-red, wings red and blue, eyes inlaid with mother-of-pearl and blue glass, although it had no caduceus—the snake-entwined wand that he usually held as herald of the gods. It is dated to the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD.87

  Fig. 67 Graffito with the name Deiogenes in Greek as if emerging from the mouth of a beardless boy, on a stone wall panel found in place in a sloping passage in Ashurbanipal’s palace at Nineveh.

  Fig. 68 Limestone statue of Hermes, painted in red, blue and orange; eyes inlaid with glass and mother-of-pearl, found at Nineveh. Ht. 135 cm.

  Alabaster was valuable, for it had to be imported from far away, so it was a material suitable only for the top of society. This is relevant for a finely carved alabaster base made for two or three statues, long broken away (see Figure 69). It bore a dedication in Greek, perhaps to be translated ‘Be lucky!’ as well as ‘To Eutyche’—the goddess of good fortune.88 If the latter, by analogy with sculpture panels dedicated to Tyche ‘Fortune’ found at Palmyra and Dura Europus, a reconstruction might show the city goddess centrally placed and seated, with the Tyche figure standing on her left holding a palm of victory. This would then be evidence for officially refounding the city.

  Fig. 69 Alabaster base for three small statues, Greek inscription translated either ‘for Eutyche’, deity of good luck, or ‘Good luck!’. Length 19.6 cm, ht. 8.0 cm.

  Fine Parthian gold jewellery of the 2nd century AD came from tombs, of a richness to indicate ‘that they are those of very important members of the settlement at Nineveh, or even perhaps its leaders’.89 A coin of Tiberius (42 BC–AD 30) and impressions of a coin of Trajan (AD 98–117) on gold leaves, also found in the tombs, show that Roman objects were valued as grave goods. The discovery at Nineveh of a list of Macedonian month names dated to the 3rd century AD shows the persistence of Seleucid influence.90

  A comparison for Nineveh’s fate may be made with Khorsabad. Even today many scholars refer to the city as one abandoned at the death of Sargon in 705 BC, perpetuating the misleading certainty of the archaeologists who excavated there, both in the mid 19th and the mid 20th century. But dated cuneiform records, still unpublished,91 show that it remained an administrative centre for a century after Sargon’s death. Moreover, all its main buildings and rooms are now thought to have been used after 612 BC.92 An inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II names it as one of the cities of Assyria,93 and it was presumably the provincial capital of Halahhu district during the Achaemenid period when Arshama the satrap owned estates there.94 The clean-living Persians left very little of their own debris behind, and did not clear away relics of Assyrian residence.

  In all three of the great northern capitals, Nineveh, Nimrud and Khorsabad, it is significant that the conquerors and later occupiers apparently left many important vestiges of Assyrian power, especially clay tablets and objects of ivory and other precious materials, as if to pay homage to its greatness. In Fort Shalmaneser, a huge building at Nimrud, two rooms in the south-west area containing ivories of the 9th and 8th centuries were not cleared when that part of the building was in use after the fall of Assyria.95 In Babylon too, administrative records from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar remained in his palace and were still not cleared out when the building was used by Hellenistic rulers who repaired the roof with Greek-style tiles.96 It was simply wrong to deduce that dated texts, objects of metal, stone and ivory found in a damaged building gave the date of destruction.

  During the Roman period a new kingdom named Adiabene sprang up and became a strong power based in its capital Arbela, and the description of Nineveh as ‘a great city of Adiabene’, given by Ammianus Marcellinus, cannot be doubted. The deity Issar-Bel/Sharbel worshipped there in the 4th century AD has been identified as an Assyrian fo
rm of Ishtar with the honorific title Bel attached.97

  Exactly how long the South-West Palace, or a part of it, remained accessible to visitors is uncertain. At Taq-i Bustan in northwestern Iran a rock sculpture shows the Sassanian king Khusrau II (AD 591–628) hunting boar in marshes (see Figure 70).98 It bears a very strong resemblance to Sennacherib’s sculpture in the South-West Palace showing his campaign against Babylonians in the marshes of southern Babylonia: the background of reeds in which the boats of huntsmen make their attack, and the way that different episodes are shown alongside and above one another, are too similar to be dismissed as coincidental. They are markedly different from the normal heraldic arrangements in Sassanian art, of figures with lateral symmetry. Similarly a rock sculpture at Sar Mashhad in Fars province, dating to the late 3rd century AD, shows the Sassanian king Bahram II (AD 276–293) on foot stabbing a rearing lion while another lion dies at his feet, in a scene that resembles the lion hunts of Ashurbanipal on bas-relief panels from the North Palace at Nineveh.99 If the comparison is valid, some of the bas-reliefs of Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal would still have been visible in the 6th century AD.

  Scholars have counted on a variety of factors to ‘explain’, with hindsight, the collapse of an empire.100 Theological and moral corruption of the Deuteronomic kind favoured by blood-and-thunder preachers, Ctesias and Sidney Smith, was once popular but is currently out of fashion; socio-economic explanations arising from pure theory often have no textual or archaeological support; climate change and tectonic events have recently become popular explanations for swift and total decline, but are still impossible to date with precision.

  There is no doubt that Nineveh itself suffered a severe decline. Resources would have been diverted away from the old centres of power. The virtual civil war that divided the ruling powers just before the final defeat would have made the efficient collection and use of taxes impossible. Enormous expense needed to support competing armies, diminishing returns from tribute-paying vassals, let alone the impossibility of new conquests, must have meant a swift degradation of buildings and the infrastructure of communications.101 Agriculture would inevitably have declined, leading to shortages within the cities. Whether disease or climate change contributed to hardships is impossible to say for lack of reliable evidence.102

  Fig. 70 Sassanian rock carving in the grotto at Taq-i Bustan in NW Iran, scene of hunting in marshes, reminiscent of Sennacherib’s marshland scenes in the South-West Palace at Nineveh.

  A huge city, such as Nineveh was in the late 7th century BC, does not become deserted overnight. Due to its position on a main road commanding the crossing over the Tigris, as a city maintained for thousands of years, its people would not have abandoned it. Nineveh’s enormous palace walls would not be destroyed even by the fiercest conflagration.

  For certain the powerful ideological values centred upon the national god Ashur and Assyrian kingship broke down, but that did not stop the cult continuing to be celebrated in a more modern building set on top of the Assyrian temple of Ashur, worship that lasted to the beginning of the Sassanian period. Even at that time people were still using the name of the god in their own names written in Aramaic script.103 Worshippers of the Assyrian goddess Ishtar of Nineveh and Arbela, known to Herodotus as Mylitta, also perpetuated traditional beliefs through the medium of Aramaic. It is possible that Nineveh remained impoverished throughout the Neo-Babylonian period (612–539 BC) and through much or all of the Achaemenid period (539–333 BC)—lying more or less dormant for some two centuries until a revival eventually took place under Seleucid rule. But during that time the monumentally sturdy buildings—its walls, palaces and temples—remained standing, if damaged, and its water-channelling schemes too, for the admiration of visitors: for the inspiration that Achaemenid Persians derived from late Assyrian art and architecture, manifest at Pasargadae and at Persepolis, and for the amazement of scouts in Alexander’s army encamped at Gaugamela.

  Literary hyperbole must take some of the blame for misleading historians for so long. Whenever a city was captured, it was a catastrophe which could only be understood as abandonment by its gods. Deserted by the deities, it was compared to a city ruined by a devastating flood, its people scattered, a haunt for owls and jackals. Throughout Near Eastern history the theme recurs: Ur, Nippur, Babylon, Jerusalem—all great, ancient cities, all in turn abandoned by their gods, utterly ruined. Archaeology, and occasionally texts too, sometimes tell a different story.

  In conclusion, the Hanging Garden itself was not necessarily still visible and visited as a marvel in Hellenistic and later times, but the palaces with some of their sculptured panels portraying the garden could still be visited, at least in part, and the great works at Bavian and Jerwan were still highly visible. The evidence collected in this chapter leaves open the possibility that people could still visit Nineveh in the centuries after 612, and see some evidence for the World Wonder built by Sennacherib.

  Conclusion

  But I shall let the little I have learnt go forth into the day in order that someone better than I may guess the truth, and in his work may prove and rebuke my error. At this I shall rejoice that I was yet a means whereby this truth has come to light.

  Albrecht Dürer: quoted by Karl Popper,

  Conjectures and Refutations

  This book has shown that the Hanging Garden was built at Nineveh, not Babylon, by Sennacherib, not Nebuchadnezzar or Semiramis. At long last specific evidence has come to light to reveal the solution to a complex question. The correct decipherment of a 7th-century BC Assyrian inscription gives a match with the crucial elements in descriptions of later Greek authors. Sennacherib’s palace garden fulfils the criteria for a World Wonder: the whole project is magnificent in conception, spectacular in engineering, and brilliant in artistry, from the start at Khinnis through the aqueduct at Jerwan, into the citadel at Nineveh, the garden itself, and the palace with wall sculptures showing scenes from the garden.

  When in 1854 Hormuzd Rassam excavated at Nineveh in the North Palace, he uncovered a sculpture showing a garden with ‘a bridge having three pointed arches’, and noted, ‘This has been identified by Assyrian scholars as a representation of the hanging gardens of Babylon.’1 (See Figure 13) He thought that the Nineveh sculpture showing the garden was a picture of a scene in Babylon.2 Despite its recognizable similarity to the Greek descriptions of the Hanging Garden, there were three main reasons why nobody pursued the possibility that it was connected directly with the World Wonder. Josephus had expressly claimed that Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon was the builder. Besides, there was no reason to think that Nineveh was ever known as ‘Babylon’, nor that Sennacherib was called ‘Nebuchadnezzar’. Nineveh was supposed to have been utterly destroyed in 612 BC; if that were the case, the palace garden of Sennacherib would have been abandoned and neglected long before it had a chance to enter into Greek tradition.

  But the famous Hanging Garden was said by Q. Curtius Rufus to have been so well built that it flourished for many centuries, and since Babylon was continuously occupied into the Islamic period, scholars could take his words at face value:

  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 those reasons many people supposed the match between the Assyrian evidence and the Greek descriptions showed that Sennacherib’s garden was a forerunner to the real Hanging Garden built by Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon a century and a half later.

  All the arguments to be found in this book stem from the better understanding of an original Assyrian text. The sculptured stone panel from the palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, now in the British Museum, displays other elements from those later descriptions. The drawing made of another panel, now known as Original Drawing IV 77, displays yet another extraordinary feature in accord with the Greek authors (s
ee Figure 13).3 With this core of evidence, other apparent difficulties can be resolved, leaving no doubt that the Assyrian king Sennacherib built the garden, which he himself proclaimed as a wonder for all peoples, in his capital city Nineveh. The concept of building a World Wonder dates from this period, and continued into the following rule of the great Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II.

  In support of the new understanding comes some evidence for survival at Nineveh, and the evidence that cities other than Babylon proper could also be known as ‘Babylon’. Above all, the whole complex of palace, garden and watering system are self-evidently brilliant enough to qualify as a marvel, as Sennacherib himself described them.

  Several scenarios could be called up to explain the survival of knowledge and interest for eleven centuries, from around 700 BC when Sennacherib built the garden and wrote his prism text, to c. AD 400 when Philo wrote his description.

  Supposing the garden was wrecked completely in 612 BC, the bronze screws melted down and their emplacements smashed, one might posit that all the details of construction and appearance became known to Alexander’s men in 331 BC by local knowledge at Jerwan and Gaugamela, but with legends already proliferating over whether an Assyrian king, or Semiramis, or Nebuchadnezzar, was the builder. Later, during the Seleucid and early Parthian periods when Nineveh was once again a great city and governed by a stratēgos, the appearance of the garden was still visible on the two bas-reliefs in the two partially ruined palaces to maintain public interest in a vanished marvel. In this case the supposed eye-witness accounts of Classical authors are not to be taken literally. However, it is still a problem that knowledgeable guides would have been needed to explain that water was raised invisibly by screws from the aqueduct to the top of the garden, since presumably they were not to be seen on the sculptured panels.