Hanging Out in the Hanging Gardens

I got the chance to travel back in time to 590 B.C. and meet Queen Amytis. I talked to her about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had married Amytis to create an alliance with Persia (modern Iraq). Amytis had been reluctant to marry a stranger, but her father, the king of Persia, convinced her to help keep her country safe from invasion. The gardens were a gift to her from her new husband. I asked her if I could see them. I told her that sometime in the future archeologists might want to find them. She did not like the idea of her gardens being excavated. So that I would not know the location of her special garden, she insisted that I was blindfolded on our journey. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you where to look, but I can tell you what the gardens looked like. I recreated them as best as I could with LEGOs. Although we have no present-day tangible evidence of their existence, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon existed in ancient times.

The queen told me that when she first arrived in Babylon she was feeling extremely homesick. She longed to go back to her home in the mountains of Persia. King Nebuchadnezzar wanted her to feel better so he decided to build her a mountain with lush gardens in the flat land of Babylon. He declared that thousands of workers would help him haul slabs of rock from far away. When his workers were finished getting rocks, they realized that they didn’t have enough to build the whole mountain. The king had his workers mix clay with dried straw to make bricks for walls on the inside. The bricks were coated in lead to be waterproof so that the plants would hold water better. After the building was laid out, the king had plants put in. He ordered that each story have all kinds of vegetation to beautify the queen’s viewing experience.

Queen Amytis was so happy that the king had built her a terraced garden wonderland, she declared it the most exquisite place in the world. She was amazed at how each level hung down on to the next one. That is how the gardens got their name, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Every morning she would come out of the palace and look at the view of her beautiful mountain from her palace balcony. The gardens brought a little bit of Persia to the queen, and quelled her homesickness. The king went to a lot of trouble to make sure of that.

The queen told me a lot about the vast size of the gardens, and from what I could see at the time, I think she was correct. It has been reported that the gardens were over 320 feet tall, and they did look about as high as a football field to me. (Some historians think they were as high as four football fields.) The gardens were also quite wide. “They were wide enough for two four horse carriages too pass each other,” wrote a Greek historian named Herodotus from 450 BCE. I was amazed at how lush the plants appeared. Queen Amytis explained how her plants were watered, and that her husband came up with the watering system. The water was carried from the Euphrates River to the top of the gardens using a chain pump. The gardens were truly a work of inspiration and genius.

Although no visible remains exist today, there is poetry and other written accounts of the gardens from that time period. Additionally, some archaeologists have found sites that could have been where the gardens had been located. I learned from Queen Amytis that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon really did exist, and that they were a very special gift to her. It seems to me that the king’s gift to her served its purpose, and was so great that we are still fascinated today. In fact, not only were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon pleasing to Queen Amytis, they were so amazing as to be named one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the Ancient World.

By: Adele Wells

Sources used:

"Mesopotamia." The British Museum. n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2011

http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/

"Hanging Gardens of Babylon." The Museum of Unnatural Mystery. n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2011

http://www.unmuseum.org/hangg.htm

Spielvogel, Jackson J. Journey Across Time. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. Print.

Bauer, Susan Wise. The Story of the World. Virginia: Peace Hill Press, 2006. Print.

(Chain pump picture courtesy of Google Images.)