The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced

by Stephanie Dalley

  THE MYSTERY OF THE HANGING GARDEN OF BABYLON

  Reconstruction drawing of Sennacherib’s palace garden at Nineveh

  THE

  MYSTERY OF THE

  Hanging Garden of

  BABYLON

  AN ELUSIVE WORLD WONDER TRACED

  STEPHANIE DALLEY

  Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,

  United Kingdom

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  © Stephanie Dalley 2013

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  First Edition published in 2013

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  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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  ISBN 978–0–19–966226–5

  Printed in Great Britain by

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  This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents

  Denys and Katie Page

  who packed me off to Nimrud in northern Iraq in 1962

  for the first of many adventures in archaeology and epigraphy

  Acknowledgements

  So many people have contributed to the development of this work that it is impossible to name them all, for the research began more than eighteen years ago. Since it overturns a long-established understanding, I would like to thank particularly warmly those who were early supporters of the work when doubts were still strong. They include Christopher Dalley especially for discussion of engineering aspects and great help in reading and criticizing successive drafts; Kai Brodersen; Margaret Drower, David Oates and Geza Vermes after hearing lectures; David Stronach; Simon Raikes and his team for making the BBC programme Secrets of the Ancients in 1999, especially Andrew Lacey for discussion of bronze-casting and for drafting reconstruction drawings; Eleanor Robson who pointed to a useful clue in a cuneiform mathematical text; John Dransfield of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew for help with details of date palms; and David Ussishkin for urging me to look for imitators.

  For discussion of particular issues I thank Mark Brown of Spaans Babcock, George Cawkwell, Robin Lane Fox, Norma Franklin, Liz Frood, Joyce Reynolds, John Russell, Sue Sherratt, Grahame Soffe, Arie van der Kooij, Stephanie West and Martin Worthington. For general encouragement I thank John Boardman, Iain Cheyne, Mario Geymonat, Kathryn Gleason, Audrey Gordon-Walker, Sarah Gurr, Elizabeth Macaulay, Arthur MacGregor, David Ottewill and Chris Scarre. The staff and the facilities of the Sackler Library in Oxford were invaluable. Christopher Dalley, Rebecca Dalley and Sarah Shaw read a late draft of the book, and their very different critical insights led to improvements, not least when they tripped up on the jargon of Assyriology, the infelicities compounded by computer-writing, and inadequate explanations for non-specialist readers. I also thank particularly warmly one of the anonymous readers for the Oxford University Press. None of them is to blame for remaining errors of judgement, fact or style.

  In a different way I would like to thank those who opposed the work, initially at least, for they galvanized me to greater efforts. A few of them have already acknowledged conversion.

  I thank the following for inviting and arranging lectures: The British School of Archaeology in Iraq in 1993; the late Rosemary Nicholson for the Museum of Garden History in Lambeth; Elizabeth Foy, Sarah Carthew and Henrietta McCall for the British Museum Society in 1995; Liz Potterton for the Oxford Archaeological Society in 1995; Lutfi Al-Soumi for the Aleppo Historical Society in 1996; Lamia Al-Gailani for the Kufa Gallery in Westbourne Grove, London, in 1998 (in aid of Help the Children of Iraq); Christopher Coleman for the Bloomsbury School, London, in 1999; Lucinda Lewis-Crosby for the Oxford Garden Society in the Sunningwell Art School in 2001; Philippe Talon and the late André Finet for the Institut des Hautes Études de Belgique in 2003; Virginia Hastings for the University of the Third Age, Headington, Oxford, in 2004; the Department for Continuing Education at Rewley House, Oxford, in 2005; Irene Winter of Harvard University in 2005; Kai Brodersen who arranged for me to lecture in Mannheim, Heidelberg, Freiburg and Innsbrück in 2005; the Royal Literary and Scientific Institution in Bath in 2005; the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford in 2007; Lucio Milano at the Advanced Seminar for the Humanities in Venice, 2008; and Diederik Meijer for Ex Oriente Lux in the Netherlands in 2011. On all of those occasions the ongoing research benefited from comments and from questions asked by members of the audience.

  I am deeply indebted to the late Terry Ball for the fine drawing he made after careful discussion on how to reconstruct the garden at Nineveh, and to Andrew Lacey for a draft drawing; also to Marion Cox for drawing the brazier with the dog.

  Most of all I warmly acknowledge the tremendous work on many facets of the history and archaeology of Nineveh done by other scholars, especially Julian Reade. It will be clear not least from the bibliography that much of this book could not have been written without his detailed studies which span the years from 1967 until recently.

  Stephanie Dalley

  The Oriental Institute

  University of Oxford

  March 2012

  Contents

  List of Colour Plates

  List of Figures

  Time-line

  General Map

  Introduction

  1. Drawing a Blank in Babylon

  2. Classical Writers and their Testimony

  3. Three Pictures, and Archimedes

  4. Sennacherib’s Great Invention

  5. Engineering for Water Management

  6. Confusion of Names

  7. The Unrivalled Palace, the Queen and the Garden

  8. Symbolism and Imitators

  9. Defeat and Revival: Nineveh after 612 BC

  Conclusion

  Appendix: The Section of Prism Inscription Describing the Palace and Garden

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  List of Colour Plates

  1. View from Nebuchadnezzar’s Summer Palace at Babylon. (Author’s colour slide, 1967)

  2. The Negoub tunnel, made in the 9th century BC. (Author’s colour slide, 1962)

  3. The Chicago prism of Sennacherib Museum no. A11255. (© Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago)

  4. Chamaerops humilis, a type of palm tree. (Author’s colour slide)

  5. Andrew Lacey’s casting of a mini-screw in bronze, for the BBC programme Secrets of the Ancients. (Author’s colour slide)

  6. Wooden full size screw under construction. (Reproduced by kind permission of John Oleson)

  7. The wooden screws set up over cisterns. (Reproduced by kind permission of John
Oleson)

  8. Pebble mosaic floor at Tushhan, modern Ziyaret Tepe. (Reproduced by kind permission of T. Matney and J. Macginnis)

  9. The river at Khinnis. Looking upstream.

  10. Looking downstream. (Author’s colour slides, 1967)

  11. Large panel of sculpture on a rock face at Khinnis. (Author’s colour slide, 1967)

  12. Ruins of the stone aqueduct at Jerwan. (Author’s colour slide, 1967)

  13. The sculptured block of rock at the weir. (Author’s colour slide, 1967)

  14. Shalmaneser III clasps hands with the king of Babylon on the throne-base at Nimrud. (Author’s colour slide, 1962)

  15. Cast bronze panel showing Sennacherib’s widow Naqia, from Hilleh near Babylon. (Louvre, AO 20185, reproduced by kind permission, © RMN (Musée du Louvre)/Franck Raux)

  16. Gossypium arboreum, and Gossypium herbaceum. (J. F. Royle, Illustrations of the Botany and Other Branches of the Natural History of the Himalayan Mountains and of the Flora of Cashmere, vol. 2 (1839), T.23. (Reproduced by kind permission of the Sherardian Library of Plant Taxonomy, One of the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford)

  17. Statue of Heracles Epitrapezios (BM GR 1881-7-1. © The Trustees of the British Museum)

  List of Figures

  Frontispiece: Reconstruction drawing of Sennacherib’s palace garden at Nineveh. (Drawing by Terry Ball, © author)

  1 Sketch map (Author, after A. M. Bagg, Assyrische Wasserbauten (2000), pl. 1a)

  2 East India House inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II, (BM 129397. © The Trustees of the British Museum)

  3 Plan showing the location of Nebuchadnezzar’s Southern Palace on the citadel of Babylon (From D. J. Wiseman, ‘Mesopotamian gardens’, Anatolian Studies 33 (1983), pl. XXXIII b, reproduced by kind permission of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara)

  4 Cartoon of Robert J. Day from the New Yorker, 1960.

  (Reproduced by kind permission of the New Yorker.

  © The Cartoon Bank)

  5 Cylinder seal impressions showing ziggurats

  (a) From Tell Muhammed Arab, Late Bronze Age.

  (Reproduced by kind permission of Dominique Collon)

  (b) A. H. Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (1853), 539; BM WA 89311.

  6 Cartoon by ‘Knife’. (Reproduced by kind permission of Private Eye/Duncan McCoshan, from issue no. 879, p. 18)

  7 Barrel cylinder of Nebuchadnezzar II. (AM 1939-432.

  Reproduced by kind permission of the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford)

  8 Two rock sculptures at Wadi Brisa, Lebanon, showing Nebuchadnezzar II (a) killing a lion, (b) cutting down trees, (Reproduced by kind permission of J. Börker-Klähn, from Altvorderasiatische Bildstelen und vergleichbare Felsreliefs (1982), vol. 2, nos. 259 and 260)

  9 Drawing showing a man raising water by shaduf (Author’s drawing, after R. D. Barnett et al., The Sculptures from the Southwest Palace of Sennacherib (1998), pl. 111, no. 152b, WA 124820)

  10 Sketch to show a water-raising (Archimedean) screw. (Author’s drawing)

  11 Drawing of a stone panel carved in bas-relief, found in the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad (P.-E. Botta and E. Flandin, Monument de Ninive, vol. 2 (1849), 114)

  12 (a) Obverse of cuneiform tablet with the text listing plants in the garden of Merodach Baladan. (BM 46226, © The Trustees of the British Museum)

  (b) Hand-copy of the obverse. (Reproduced from L. W. King, Cuneiform Texts in the British Museum, vo1. 15 (1902), pl. 5)

  13 A garden at Nineveh, drawn from damaged stone panels of bas-relief. (Layard, Discoveries (1853), 232, now Original Drawing IV 77)

  14 Part of the garden at Nineveh two generations after planting. (Author’s drawing, from WAA 124939)

  15 Pillared façade, probably depicting part of Sennacherib’s South-West Palace. (Detail from WA 124938. © The Trustees of the British Museum)

  16 Sennacherib in his chariot. (Detail from WA 124825. © The Trustees of the British Museum)

  17 The Chicago prism of Sennacherib. (© Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago)

  18 A group from the 270 engaged columns of mudbrick laid in a spiral pattern in a temple façade at Tell al-Rimah, NW Iraq, early second millennium BC. (Reproduced from D. Oates, ‘The excavations at Tell al Rimah 1966’, Iraq 29 (1967), pl. xxxii.b, by kind permission of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq)

  19 Spiral-patterned engaged columns of mudbrick in a temple façade at Tell Leilan in NE Syria. (Author’s drawing, after H. Weiss, Biblical Archaeologist 48/1 (1985), 8)

  20 (a) Stone sculpture of a bearded god with a palm tree showing a spiral-pattern trunk, Tell al-Rimah, mid second millennium BC. (Reproduced from C. Postgate, D. Oates and J. Oates, The Excavations at Tell Al-Rimah: The Pottery (1997), pl. 8a. IM 73921. © British Institute for the Study of Iraq. Reproduced by kind permission of C. Postgate and BISI)

  (b) Stone sculpture of a goddess with a palmtree showing a scallop-trunk palm, Tell al-Rimah, mid second millennium BC. (Reproduced from T. Howard-Carter, ‘An interpretation of the sculptural decoration of the second millennium temple at Tell al-Rimah’, Iraq 45 (1983), pl. IIa, IM 69732, by kind permission of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq)

  21 (a) Impression from a limestone cylinder seal showing spiral columns around the temple of the sun-god. (From D. McCown et al., Excavations of the Joint Expedition to Nippur (1967), pl. 109. 11, reproduced by kind permission of the Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago)

  (b) Drawing of part of a design incised on an ivory pyxis found at Assur. Dated c.1400 BC. (After A. Haller, Die Gräber und Grüfte von Assur (1953), tomb 45)

  22 Barrier of cast bronze found at Susa. (Louvre, author’s photo)

  23 (a) Reconstruction drawing of ziggurat at Khorsabad with an external spiral staircase. (V. Place, Ninive et l’Assyrie (1867), pl. 37)

  (b) Minaret with external spiral staircase at Samarra, near Baghdad. (K. Groeber, Palästina, Arabien und Syrien: Baukunst, Landschaft, Volksleben (1925), 267)

  24 Sketch of an eroded rock sculpture at Ayni on the upper Euphrates, reign of Vespasian. (Author’s drawing, after V. Chapot, ‘Antiquités de la Syrie du Nord’, Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 26 (1902), 205)

  25 Brick-built drains in Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad. (V. Place, Ninive et l’Assyrie (1867), pl. 38)

  26 Map of Nineveh made by Felix Jones in 1852. (F. Jones, ‘Topography of Nineveh’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15 (1955), 297–397, Sheet 1)

  27 Diagram to show a qanat: aerial view and side section. (Author’s drawing)

  28 Sketch map to show rivers, canals and roads to the north-east of Nineveh. (Author’s drawing, adapted from T. Jacobsen and S. Lloyd, Sennacherib’s Aqueduct at Jerwan (1935), fig. 9)

  29 Drawing of a great rock sculpture at Maltai. (Reproduced from F. Thureau-Dangin, ‘Les Sculptures rupestres de Maltai’, Revue d’Assyriologie 21 (1924), 187)

  30 (a) Large panel of sculpture on a rock face at Khinnis. (Author’s colour slide, 1967)

  (b) Reconstruction drawing of the panel. (Drawing by P. Arad, reproduced by kind permission of Tallay Ornan, from ‘The god-like semblance of a king’, eds. J. Cheng and M. Feldman, Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context (2007), fig. 2)

  31 (a) Aerial view of the Jerwan aqueduct. (Crown ©, from Jacobsen and Lloyd, Sennacherib’s Aqueduct at Jerwan (1935), frontispiece)

  (b) Perspective restoration drawing of the Jerwan aqueduct. (Jacobsen and Lloyd, Sennacherib’s Aqueduct at Jerwan (1935), fig. 6)

  32 (a) Tentative reconstruction of the stone block at the weir where the canal led off, front and side views. (Jacobsen and Lloyd, Sennacherib’s Aqueduct at Jerwan (1935), fig. 12)

  (b and c) Reconstruction drawings, front and side views of the sculptured block that stood between the canal and a weir at Khinnis. (Drawing by P. Arad, reproduced by kind permission of Tallay Ornan, from ‘The god-like semblance of a king’, eds. Cheng and Feldman, Ancient Near
Eastern Art in Context (2007), figs. 3 and 4)

  33 (a–c) Decorative scheme of colour-glazed brick in the main court of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace in Babylon. (R. Koldewey, Die Königsburgen van Babylon, 1 (1931), Abb. 4 and Tafeln 37 and 38)

  34 (a) Sketch plan of the citadel of Babylon. (Reproduced from Antiquity 67 (1993), fig.3 by kind permission of Andrew George and the editors of Antiquity)

  (b) Sketch plan of the citadel of Nineveh. (Author’s sketch, after D. Stronach, Assyria 1995 (1997), 312)

  35 Drawing from a sculpture panel from Khorsabad showing models of cities carried as tribute. (Place and Thomas, Ninive et l’Assyrie (1867–70), pl. 48)

  36 Cylinder inscription of Antiochus and Stratonice. (BM 36277, © Trustees of the British Museum)

  37 (a) Panel showing Semiramis with Gordis as legendary founders of Aphrodisias

  (b) Showing Ninos as a founding father of Aphrodisias. (© NYU-Aphrodisias Excavations, reproduced by kind permission of Bahadir Yildirim and R. R. R. Smith)

  38 Sargon II with his son Sennacherib. (Botta and Flandin, Monument de Ninive, 1 (1849), 12)

  39 Plan of part of Sennacherib’s South-West Palace at Nineveh. (A. Paterson Assyrian Sculptures: Palace of Sinacherib 1915)

  40 Aerial photo of Nineveh taken in 1932. (Crown © 1932)

  41 Sketch map of the citadel mound at Nineveh. (R. Campbell Thompson and R. W. Hutchinson, ‘The excavations on the temple of Nabu at Nineveh’, Archaeologia 79 (1929), pl. 62, with author’s modifications)

  42 Pattern carved on a stone threshold slab from the South-West Palace. (BM, Original Drawing I 53. ©Trustees of the British Museum)

  43 Sennacherib presiding over the capture of Lachish, south of Jerusalem, detail. (Drawing by Judith Dekel, reproduced by kind permission of D. Ussishkin, from The Conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib (1982), after WA 124911+124912)