The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

Babylonia was the first of the great kingdoms of Western Asia and with the exception of Egypt Babylonia was the first of the great kingdoms on earth. One writer of the book of Genesis called the country "the land of Shinar." In Shinar Nimrod, "the mighty hunter”, began to be a mighty one of the earth. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel (Babylonia), and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar."
The second Babylonian empire, the empire of Nebuchadrezzar, is home to the building of the famous Hanging Gardens. Nebuchadrezzar, in the spectacular manner characteristic of the East, designed the gardens to honor and delight his beautiful Median queen, daughter of Cyaxeres. Cyaxeres was the prince whose arms and whose loyal support had raised his house to power.

The city of Nebuchadrezzar, built for the most part by master craftsmen brought as slaves from Nineveh, amazed all who beheld it. Babylon was a city, not as we have cities today, nor was it a place where men lived herded in narrow streets and gloomy squares. It was a city of gorgeous temples, palaces, and halls that stood in stately parks. There were great hunting grounds in its midst. It was a place of extravagance beyond ordinary computation, of wicked luxury, and of pride that inevitably led to the undoing of an arrogant and conquering race.

But in all Babylon there was no building to rival the Hanging Gardens. On this, all who saw and have described the city are unanimous. The framework of the gardens was made largely of stone. That is not their least remarkable feature. The Hanging Gardens were the only Babylonian structure in which hewn stone was used to any considerable extent; and if it is hard for us to appreciate the limitations under which architects worked in the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates where—in the words of Professor Myers—"a stone door-socket was a rich gift of a king to his god, and was rescued from one ruin after another, to be re-used and proudly rededicated," it is still harder for us to imagine whence, and at what cost, all the stone that must have been required for the gardens was obtained.

The use of the term "hanging" in connection with these gardens is, though generally accepted, in many ways unfortunate. The word gives a false impression, and it is not a fair translation either of the Greek "kremastos" or of the Latin "pensilis." To the Romans "pensilia" conveyed the idea of balconies.

Balconies—balconies raised one above another; that is exactly what the Hanging Gardens were. They comprised, in fact, a series of wide, stone terraces, supported by arches, and rose, like a giant stairway, to a height of 350 feet, the whole structure being strengthened by a surrounding wall 20 feet thick. On each of the terraces were layers of mulch so deep as to make it possible not only for plants and flowering shrubs to be grown, but fruit-bearing trees as well.

The gardens were irrigated by means of hydraulic pumps, which raised water to a reservoir on the highest terrace. To prevent compaction and to provide an adequate supply of oxygen, the builders on top of the numerous arches, had laid reeds and bitumen, and, above these, thick sheets of lead. This served to stop moisture from the soil leaking through and so damaging the spacious and superbly decorated apartments constructed in the vaulted spaces between the arches below.