Throughout the ancient Near East, royal inscriptions would sometimes intentionally conflate different cities to make political or religious statements. However, there is also a historical basis for this conflation of the two imperial cities. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Within Jewish literature, Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar are often similarly conflated, which could explain Josephus’s attribution of the gardens to Nebuchadnezzar.īabylonis Muri (The Walls of Babylon) by Philip Galle, 1572. Herodotus, for example, considered the Assyrians and Babylonians to be the same kingdom. Part of this is due to foreign authors’ poor understanding of Mesopotamian history. ![]() How is it possible that the classical sources unanimously got the location of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon wrong? As mentioned by Dalley, later writers frequently conflated the two cities of Babylon and Nineveh. In examining the archaeological remains of Sennacherib’s palace, Dalley likewise suggests that the ruins of Sennacherib’s garden closely follow the classical description of the Babylonian gardens. More importantly, several of Sennacherib’s inscriptions mention that he constructed a palace in Nineveh with an incredible garden that he called “a wonder for all peoples.” Sennacherib’s inscriptions also describe a revolutionary new irrigation system, which Dalley argues is incredibly similar to the system that supplied the supposed Hanging Gardens of Babylon, as mentioned by Strabo and others. While there is a stark absence of any mention of large garden works within any texts from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, texts from the time of Sennacherib speak extensively about his horticultural projects within Nineveh. Austen Henry Layard, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.Īnother factor in favor of identifying the Hanging Gardens with Nineveh is that the Assyrian sources depict just such a garden. It is also important to note that many classical and Greek descriptions of Babylon do not make any mention of the Hanging Gardens, which surely would have been noted if they were actually to be found in Babylon.Īssyrian Palace at Nineveh by Austen Henry Layard, 1853. While most descriptions of the Hanging Gardens state that they pulled water directly from the Euphrates, this water source would have long dried up by the time the Greek accounts were written. One issue with identifying the gardens with Babylon is that after the fall of the Babylonian empire in 539 B.C.E., the course of the Euphrates River was intentionally diverted away from the city. According to Dalley, despite the name given to them by later writers, the Hanging Gardens fit much better with the archaeological and textual evidence from Nineveh. 1 Specifically, these gardens were constructed not by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II, but by Sennacherib, king of Assyria (r. As first proposed by Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley, these famous gardens might instead have been constructed in the Assyrian city of Nineveh. One proposed solution to the problem of where are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is that they were not located in Babylon at all. So where are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Unfortunately, the area is poorly preserved and provides no definitive archaeological evidence for the presence of a garden. Recently, some scholars have suggested that maybe the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were located at Nebuchadnezzar’s Outer Palace, where there is sufficient space for such a monumental feature. This idea, however, has been soundly rejected based on ancient depictions of ziggurats that show them unadorned by plants or foliage. The problem is even more troubling when looking at native Mesopotamian sources, where no such monumental gardens are ever recorded as having been constructed in Babylon.įollowing famed archaeologist Leonard Woolley, earlier generations of scholars suggested that perhaps the ziggurat of Babylon was the garden. ![]() Despite years of excavation at the Babylonian capital city, no surefire locations for the famous gardens have been identified. With all these writings, the lack of any definitive location for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is certainly a puzzle. Although their details vary, several other ancient authors also wrote about the gardens, including Ctesias and Strabo. According to the Jewish historian Josephus ( Antiquities 10.220), the gardens were constructed by the infamous Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II as a gift to his wife.
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