Hanging Gardens of Babylon

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, including the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (altgr. οἱ [τῆς Σεμιράμιδος] Κῆποι Κρεμαστοὶ Βαβυλώνιοι (hoi tes Semirámidos Kepoi Kremastoí Babylônioi), Latin Semiramidis Horti Pensile or Horti Pensile Babylonis, Arabic الحدائق المعلقة) had an elaborate gardens of Babylon on the Euphrates (Mesopotamia, located in present-day Iraq) and one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The Greek mythology of Babylon is sometimes identified with the Assyrian Queen Schammuramat.

Written sources
The oldest description of floating gardens goes back to a poem by Antipater of Sidon (the beginning of the 2nd century BC). This however does not mention any place.
The descriptions, which we owe our idea of these gardens date back to five authors:

* The Chaldeans Berossos (about 350 BC), quoted extensively from his lost works Babyloniaka the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus.
* Diodorus Sikulos, his description about the middle of the 1st Century AD, wrote.
* The Greek physician Ctesias who came around 400 BC in Persian prisoner of war and the personal physician of King Artaxerxes II was active. He left behind an extensive and imaginative in parts work entitled Persika. What he wrote is about Babylon, is largely lost, except for quotations in the writings of Diodorus and Quintus Curtius Rufus.
* Strabo, a Greek scholar who was in the 1st Century BC, wrote his geography.
* Philo of Byzantium, who wrote probably about 250 BC a kind guide to the "Seven Wonders of the World".

According to ancient writers, the Hanging Gardens were next to or on the palace and formed a square with a side length of 120 m. The terraces reached a height of about 25 to 30 m. The thick walls and pillars of the building frame were mostly made of fire bricks, are among the level of individual paragraphs are courses have been. The floor consisted of three layers of soil. A layer of pipe with a lot of asphalt, on a double layer of baked bricks, which were embedded in plaster, and at the top thick plates made of lead. Thus, a penetration of moisture was prevented. In this design we could afford to plant different tree species and humus. An irrigation was possible from the nearby Euphrates River.

Excavations
Often, the excavated by Robert Koldeway in the northeast part of the southern palace complex, whose foundation is made up of several vaulted rooms was, interpreted as a remnant of the hanging gardens. This building consisted of fourteen chambers. The foundation walls were a trapeze with edge lengths of 23 to 35 meters [1]. In addition, the building had a fountain. Striking were mainly paternosterähnlichen buildings, apparently transported the water between several floors. They found that this water sprang from several sources. The excavated area is assigned to Nebuchadnezzar II.

Wolfram Nagel located the Gardens in the west of the Southern Citadel, probably in the range of the outwork, and then takes a new development in the Persian period by Atossa, the mother of Xerxes I, it had thus placed on their "great-aunt Amyitas" for which Nebuchadnezzar Gardens Setup can remember, wanted.

Julian Reade located the Gardens in the northern outpost of the so-called palace, east oriented toward the palace.

Stephanie Dalley suggested that the model was the Hanging Gardens of the Palace of Sennacherib at Nineveh Garden. This was built for his wife Tāšmetun-Sarrat and irrigated with an Archimedean screw.

Other interpretations
Professor Kai Brodersen has been suggested that these gardens never existed, but that Nebuchadnezzar II had an inaccessible palace garden, took in the imagination of writers over the centuries, always marvelous shapes. As evidence, he argues that these buildings still could not be satisfactorily located, that one of the garden irrigation subordinate forms were invented only after Nebuchadnezzar II, and that neither the report nor Herodotus contemporary Babylonian texts from such a construction. Other authors (eg Jursa 2004, 77) now cast doubt on the interpretation Koldeweys.