The Hanging Garden of Babylon

Submitted by:MOHAMMED ABDUL NOOR CK

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

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Introduction .Seven Quick Facts .Location .The Mysterious Gardens ..Gift for A Homesick Wife ..Garden Construction .Irrigation system ..A Problem .How big were the gardens ..My Opinion .... References ..Content

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The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are perhaps the most mysterious of the seven wonders. They are remarkable in that they compose the only wonder whose very existence has been very seriously called into question.Introduction

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Location:City State of Babylon (Modern Iraq)Built:Around 600 BCFunction:Royal GardensDestroyed:Earthquake, 2nd Century BCSize:Height probably 321 ft. (98m)Made of:Mud brick waterproofed with lead.Other:Only wonder whose archaeological remains cannot be verified.Seven Quick Facts

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Location

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Babylon was the capital of the Neo-Babylonian empire, which thrived in the region of Mesopotamia (a regioncovering todays Iraq, part of Syria, southeastern Turkey and Southwestern Iran) from 612 B.C.The Mysterious Gardens

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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 two nations.Gift for A Homesick Wife

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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 relieve her depression by recreating her homeland through the building of an artificial mountain with rooftop gardens.Gift for A Homesick Wife

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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 wordkremastos, or the Latin word pensilis, which means not just "hanging", but "overhanging" as in the case of a terrace or balcony.

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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."Garden Construction

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"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."Garden Construction

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A chain pump is two large wheels, one above the other, connected by a chain.On the chain are hung buckets. Below the bottom wheel is a pool with the water source. As the wheel is turned, the buckets dip into the pool and pick up water. The chain then lifts them to the upper wheel, where the buckets are tipped and dumped into an upper pool.The chain then carries the empty ones back down to be refilled.

Irrigation system

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Construction of the gardens was not only complicated by the need to get water to the top of the gardens, but also by the fact that the water would destroy the foundation if it were allowed to reach the bricks. Since stone was hard to find on the Mesopotamian Plain, most of the architecture in Babylon was made out of brick. The bricks were composed of clay mixed with chopped straw, which were then baked in the sun. The bricks were joined with bitumen, a slimy substance that acts like glue between the bricks. These bricks quickly dissolved when soaked with water.A Problem

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How big were the gardens!!

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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 distant homeland.

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WikipediaInternet

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