Hanging Gardens of Babylon

The Hanging Garden of Babylon is one of the lost wonders of the world

Image - Flickr / Study of Archepoetics and Prospective Visualistics

During Antiquity, numerous gardens were created. In fact, we can assume that if not in all of them, in the vast majority of palaces and temples in the world there were plants or representations of these that embellished the place. Although in Mesopotamia they must not have had it easy, since the climate is very hot and dry during the summer.

But on the banks of the Euphrates river high humidity helped one of the seven wonders of the ancient world to flourish: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Gardens that, although it is known when they began to be built, it is still not clear why they were built.

History of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are 2700 years old

They were unique, and one of the first to have a clear design and use that, while still being for consumption, already included plants that also stood out for their ornamental value, such as coconut palms or date. We know this thanks to the remains that have survived to this day. A) Yes, construction started about 2700 years ago, as explained The Telegraph.

At that time Sennacherib reigned, who ordered the Assyrians to build the gardens in the capital, Nineveh, which is now Mosul, in the north of the country.

Discarded theories about its author

Before that study, there were two theories about the origin and author of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. One of them, the most accepted, was the one that said they were built around 600 BC. This time coincides with the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, of the Chaldean dynasty of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. As it was believed, the king gave it to his wife Amitis, since he wanted to show his love by recreating landscapes of the place where she came from.

But there is another that says that these gardens were actually built around 810 BC. C., by queen Sammuramat of Assyria and Babylon. It is believed that he conquered India and Egypt, but his son conspired to seize the throne and end it, and that is something he could not bear.

As they were?

The gardens were watered with water from the Euphrates River

These gardens had the characteristic that they could only be visited and enjoyed by the royal family, but the townspeople were not forbidden from seeing it. It's more, the plants were arranged in such a way next to the palace that it must have been easy to see it from afar. But the Hanging Gardens of Babylon didn't really "hang", but they did stick out.

And it is that whoever had it built, was very clear that he wanted both his people and travelers to see it, hence numerous terraces were built, one on top of the other, on cubic pillars.

All this was made with fired brick and asphalt, as described by Strabo, a Greek geographer in the XNUMXst century BC. C. The irrigation was done with water brought from the river, so the plants received good quality water.

How tall are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

These gardens, as Greek historians tell us, they were more than 100 meters long and wide, and had a height of between 25 and 90 meters. They were, therefore, an exuberant sample of vegetation of those years.

How did the Hanging Gardens of Babylon disappear?

The disappearance or death of a garden is usually slow. As the Neo-Babylonian Empire came to an end, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon became increasingly neglected. Thus, when Alexander the Great arrived in Babylon in the XNUMXth century BC. C., they were already abandoned; Y in the year 125 a. King Evemero burned them.

How are they today?

Currently there is nothing left, beyond the remains that archaeologists can find. The flames that Evemero caused in his time left nothing that can be seen today. And it is that the conquests always end up damaging or, in this case, eliminating important places that are part of human history.

Enjoy this video in which you can see how these gardens were, or could have been:

Note: when this video was made it had not yet been discovered that they had been built around 2700 years ago.

Have you heard of these gardens? What do you think?


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