The ancient city of Babylon, under King Nebuchadnezzar II, must have been a wonder to the

traveler's eyes. "In addition to its size," wrote Herodotus, a historian in 450 BC, "Babylon
surpasses in splendor any city in the known world."

Herodotus claimed the outer walls were 56 miles in length, 80 feet thick and 320 feet high. Wide
enough, he said, to allow a four-horse chariot to turn. The inner walls were "not so thick as the
first, but hardly less strong." Inside the walls were fortresses and temples containing immense
statues of solid gold. Rising above the city was the famous Tower of Babel, a temple to the god
Marduk, that seemed to reach to the heavens.

While archaeological examination has disputed some of Herodotus's claims (the outer walls seem
to be only 10 miles long and not nearly as high) his narrative does give us a sense of how
awesome the features of the city appeared to those that visited it. Interestingly enough, though,
one of the city's most spectacular sites is not even mentioned by Herodotus: The Hanging
Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Accounts indicate that the garden was built by King Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled the city for 43
years starting in 605 BC (There is a less-reliable, alternative story that the gardens were built by
the Assyrian Queen Semiramis during her five year reign starting in 810 BC). This was the
height of the city's power and influence and King Nebuchadnezzar constructed an astonishing
array of temples, streets, palaces and walls.

According to accounts, the gardens were built to cheer up Nebuchadnezzar's homesick wife,
Amyitis. Amyitis, daughter of the king of the Medes, was married to Nebuchadnezzar to create
an alliance between the nations. The land she came from, though, was green, rugged and
mountainous, and she found the flat, sun-baked terrain of Mesopotamia depressing. The king
decided to recreate her homeland by building an artificial mountain with rooftop gardens.

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 mean not just "hanging", but "overhanging" as in the case of a terrace
or balcony.

The Greek geographer Strabo, who described the gardens in first century BC, wrote, "It consists
of vaulted terraces raised one above another, and resting upon cube-shaped pillars. These are
hollow and filled with earth to allow trees of the largest size to be planted. The pillars, the vaults,
and terraces are constructed of baked brick and asphalt."

"The ascent to the highest story is by stairs, and at their side are water engines, by means of
which persons, appointed expressly for the purpose, are continually employed in raising water
from the Euphrates into the garden."

Strabo touchs on what, to the ancients, was probably the most amazing part of the garden.
Babylon rarely received rain and for the garden to survive it would have had to been irrigated by
using water from the nearby Euphrates River. That meant lifting the water far into the air so it
could flow down through the terraces, watering the plants at each level. This was probably done
by means of a "chain pump."

A chain pump is two large wheels, one above the

The pool at the top of the gardens could then be

Construction of the garden wasn't only complicated by getting the water up to the top, but also
by having to avoid having the liquid ruin the foundation once it was released. Since stone was
difficult to get on the Mesopotamian plain, most of the architecture in Babel utilized brick. The
bricks were composed of clay mixed with chopped straw and baked in the sun. The bricks were
then joined with bitumen, a slimy substance, which acted as a mortar. These bricks quickly
dissolved when soaked with water. For most buildings in Babel this wasn't a problem because
rain was so rare. However, the gardens were continually exposed to irrigation and the foundation
had to be protected.

Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian, stated that the platforms on which the garden stood
consisted of huge slabs of stone (otherwise unheard of in Babel), covered with layers of reed,
asphalt and tiles. Over this was put "a covering with sheets of lead, that the wet which drenched
through the earth might not rot the foundation. Upon all these was laid earth of a convenient
depth, sufficient for the growth of the greatest trees. When the soil was laid even and smooth, it
was planted with all sorts of trees, which both for greatness and beauty might delight the
spectators."

How big were the gardens? Diodorus tells us it was about 400 feet wide by 400 feet long and
more than 80 feet high. Other accounts indicate the height was equal to the outer city walls.
Walls that Herodotus said were 320 feet high.

In any case the gardens were an amazing sight: A green, leafy, artificial mountain rising off the
plain. But did it actually exist? After all, Herodotus never mentions it.

This was one of the questions that occurred to German archaeologist Robert Koldewey in 1899.
For centuries before that the ancient city of Babel was nothing but a mound of muddy debris.
 Though unlike many ancient locations, the city's position was well-known, nothing visible
remained of its architecture. Koldewey dug on the Babel site for some fourteen years and
unearthed many of its features including the outer walls, inner walls, foundation of the Tower of
Babel, Nebuchadnezzar's palaces and the wide processional roadway which passed through the
heart of the city.

While excavating the Southern Citadel, Koldewey discovered a basement with fourteen large
rooms with stone arch ceilings. Ancient records indicated that only two locations in the city had
made use of stone, the north wall of the Northern Citadel, and the Hanging Gardens. The north
wall of the Northern Citadel had already been found and had, indeed, contained stone. This made
it seem likely that Koldewey had found the cellar of the gardens.

He continued exploring the area and discovered many of the features reported by Diodorus.
Finally a room was unearthed with three large, strange holes in the floor. Koldewey concluded
this had been the location of the chain pumps that raised the water to the garden's roof.

The foundations that Koldewey discovered measured some 100 by 150 feet. Smaller than the
measurements described by ancient historians, but still impressive.

While Koldewey was convinced he'd found the gardens, some modern archaeologists call his
discovery into question arguing that this location is too far from the river to have be irrigated
with the amount of water that would have been required. Also tablets recently found at the site
suggest that the location was used for administrative and/or storage purposes, not as a pleasure
garden.

Wherever the location of the gardens were, we can only wonder if Queen Amyitis was happy
with her fantastic present, or if she continued to pine for the green mountains of her homeland.