The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced
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44 Drawing showing the innovative triangular design for the sculpture of the siege when Sennacherib captured Lachish. (Drawing by Judith Dekel, reproduced by kind permission of D. Ussishkin, from The Conquest of Lachish (1982), after WA 124906+124907)
45 Demonic gods who guarded palace entrances, windows, and air-shafts. (Layard, Discoveries (1853), 462)
46 Plan of the bīt hilāni, a palace with pillared portico at Tell Halaf in N. Syria. (Drawn by Felix Langenegger c.1911, published by M. von Oppenheim, Der Tell Halaf (1931), reproduced by kind permission of W. Röllig and the Max von Oppenheim Stiftung)
47 (a) Ivory furniture ornament, from Nimrud. (ND 6316, reproduced by kind permission of Georgina Herrmann and the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, from G. Herrmann, Ivories from Nimrud, 5 (1992), pl. 97)
(b) Drawing from a sculptured panel showing architectural details. (Layard, Discoveries (1853), 647)
48 Reconstruction drawing of a portable hearth at Nimrud. (Drawing by Marion Cox, after D. Oates and J. Oates, Nimrud: An Imperial City Revealed (2001), pl. 12c. © author)
49 (a) Palace attendants bringing cakes, grapes, pomegranates, and locusts in the South-West Palace. (Original Drawing IV 69, from WAA 124799. © The Trustees of the British Museum)
(b) Palace attendants bringing drink, drawn from a panel found in Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad. (Botta and Flandin, Monument de Ninive, 1 (1849), 76)
50 (a) Detail from the reconstruction drawing of the palace garden at Nineveh. (Drawing by Terry Ball, © author)
(b) Draft reconstruction drawing by Andrew Lacey. Note the waterfall on the right hand side. (Reproduced by kind permission of A. Lacey)
51 Fish-man as sage, Nimrud. (Layard, Discoveries (1853), 350)
52 Milton adapted Diodorus Siculus’ description of the Hanging Garden for his poetic depiction of the Garden of Eden. (John Milton, Paradise Lost book 4, illustration by G. van der Gucht, after Louis Cheron, edn. of 1720)
53 Attendants bringing vases of flowers into the South-West Palace. (Original Drawing IV 69 British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum)
54 Gossypium arboreum, and Gossypium herbaceum, the cotton-bearing tree and its shrub form. (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)
55 Dalbergia sissoo Roxburgh, a fine hardwood native to Oman, S. India and Pakistan. (R. H. Beddome, The Flora Sylvatica for Southern India, vol. 1 (1869), pl. XXV. (Reproduced by kind permission of the Sherardian Library of Plant Taxonomy, One of the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford)
56 A stone panel of bas-relief with plants, Karnak. (Author’s drawing, after N. Beaux, Le Cabinet de curiosités de Thoutmosis III: Plantes et animaux du ‘Jardin botanique’ de Karnak (1990), pl. III)
57 Detail of Original Drawing IV 77.
58 Ashurbanipal and queen with trophies. (Author’s drawing, after BM 124920)
59 Idealized landscape on a stone panel fragment in the North Palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. (Author’s drawing, after BM 118914)
60 The third winter palace of Herod the Great at Jericho, isometric reconstruction drawing. (E. Netzer, The Palaces of the Hasmoneans and Herod the Great (2001), fig. 77, reproduced by kind permission of Dvora Netzer)
61 View of Nebi Yunus, the second citadel mound at Nineveh. (Groeber, Palästina (1925), 261)
62 View of Nimrud. (Groeber, Palästina (1925), 260)
63 Layard excavated at Nineveh by tunnelling to reach the Assyrian buildings. (Layard, Discoveries (1853), 345)
64 Parthian lintel found in the South-West Palace at Nineveh. (Drawing by Marion Cox, after BM 118896. © author)
65 Impression from a cylinder seal with a Late Elamite inscription. (Author’s drawing after BM 136999; H. Merrilees, Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum: Cylinder Seals VI Pre-Achaemenid and Achaemenid Periods (2005), no. 78 and p. 76)
66 Sketch map showing locations in which Arshama, satrap of Egypt under Darius II, owned estates, c.425 BC. (Author)
67 Graffito with the name Deiogenes in Greek, on a stone wall panel found in Ashurbanipal’s palace at Nineveh. (Author’s drawing, after BM 124895)
68 Limestone statue of Hermes found at Nineveh. (Author’s drawing, after F. Basmachi, Treasures of the Iraq Museum 1975–76 (1976), no. 198, IM 59094)
69 Alabaster base for three small statues. (Author’s drawing, after Reade, ‘Greco-Parthian Nineveh’, Iraq 60 (1998), 71 figs. 5 and 6, WA 115642)
70 Sassanian rock carving in the grotto at Taq-i Bustan in NW Iran. (Reproduced by kind permission of B. Overlaet, from the files of Louis Vanden Berghe, Royal Museums of Art and History, Brussels)
Time-line
Almost all dates are approximate.
BC
Sammu-ramat, the first Semiramis
floruit 805
Sennacherib built SW Palace and garden at Nineveh
c. 700
Ashurbanipal showed garden on palace sculpture
c. 660
Fall of Nineveh to Babylonians and allies
612
Nebuchadnezzar II built palace in Babylon
before 562
Fall of Babylon to Cyrus the Great
539
Nakht-hor’s journey through Assyria
c. 410
March of Xenophon’s Ten Thousand
401
Xenophon’s Anabasis written
c. 370–367
Alexander at battle of Gaugamela
331
Berossus
floruit c. 290
Stratonice became queen of Seleucus I
c. 290
Archimedes
floruit c. 287–212
Latest known copy of Gilgamesh Epic
c. 127
Philo of Byzantium the Engineer
floruit c. 200
Apollonios altar inscription at Nineveh
c. 100–200?
Tigranes of Armenia conquered Nineveh
90
Diodorus Siculus
floruit c. 56–30
Rome defeated at battle of Carrhae (Harran)
53
Apollophanes strategos at Nineveh
c. 31
Herod built palaces in Palestine
ruled 73–04
Antipater, poet, writing
c. 4
Strabo
64 BC–after AD 24
AD
Quintus Curtius Rufus
floruit c. 43
Mithridates captured Nineveh
c. 50
Nero built Domus Aurea
c. 64–68
Josephus wrote
c. 93
Deiogenes sculptor of Heracles’ statue at Nineveh
c. 100 (?)
Deiogenes graffito on bas-relief in N. Palace at Nineveh
c. 100 (?)
Plutarch
floruit 100
Trajan made Mesopotamia a province
115–17
Statue of Hermes from Nineveh
c. 200
Bahram II (rock carvings)
ruled 276–93
Philo of Byzantium the Paradoxographer
c. 350?
Ammianus Marcellinus
c. 330–395
Not all our power is gone—not all our Fame—
Not all the magic of our high renown—
Not all the wonder that encircles us—
Not all the mysteries that in us lie—
Not all the memories that hang upon
And cling around about us as a garment
Clothing us in a robe of more than glory.
Edgar Allen Poe, ‘The Coliseum’ (1833)
Fig. 1 Sketch map showing rainfall zones and rivers around Mesopotamia
Introduction
From th
e water and alluvial mud of the mighty rivers Tigris and Euphrates arose two of the earliest great powers in the world, Babylonia in the south and Assyria in the north. Both lay in ancient Mesopotamia within the borders of modern Iraq. Babylonia included territory along both rivers and had access to the sea at the head of the Arabian Gulf, whereas Assyria began as a small, landlocked state based on the upper Tigris. One of the few things known to the general reader is that Babylon was the city where the famous Hanging Garden was located, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, built by Nebuchadnezzar the Great (see Plate 1).
As an Assyriologist I work on clay tablets written in cuneiform script by Babylonians and Assyrians, whether they have been freshly excavated by archaeologists working in Iraq and Syria, or languish in the great museums and collections of the world. Most of them were only sun-dried, not baked, and they are usually damaged, often badly broken. It is a slow job, with frustrations as well as excitements, to piece together the material remains and their written contents. Some ancient sites have yielded thousands of tablets within a few seasons, so there is always new work to be done, and old interpretations have to be revised in the light of new discoveries. A recent word-count estimates that the body of known writings in Babylonian and Assyrian already matches that of the entire body of Latin texts, and there is more to come from future excavations.1 My work deals primarily with such cuneiform texts, although other kinds of information, especially Greek and Hebrew literature, and scenes on panels of bas-relief sculpture, help with interpretation in this piece of research.
When I was an undergraduate studying Assyriology at Cambridge in 1962–6 the Hanging Garden was not mentioned in my studies. Many years later, as part of a weekend course on ancient gardens, I gave a lecture to the Department of Continuing Education in Oxford. In preparing for the talk, I was surprised to find nothing intelligent to say about the Hanging Garden of Babylon; but plenty of other interesting material about the gardens of Assyria allowed me to concentrate on what was positive, and I omitted mention of the famous World Wonder. At the end of the lecture, a lady in the audience said, with reproachful indignation, that she had come expecting to hear about the World Wonder-garden, so I sheepishly exculpated myself by saying that there was nothing much to be said from the viewpoint of Babylonian texts or archaeology. I don’t think she believed me. She was disappointed, I was embarrassed. That unsettling experience led me to try at least to analyse the problem, without at that time trying to solve it. Chapter 1 describes how archaeologists and Assyriologists made strenuous attempts to find the garden in Babylon, sometimes distorting or ignoring genuine information. Several Greek and Latin sources described the garden—they are the subject of Chapter 2—but they were written many centuries after the time when the garden was supposedly built. Most attempts to locate the garden in Babylon, using the results of excavation there, were forced to brush aside those Classical texts, because no information of any kind allowed a connection. The excavations too were disappointing. I could see no way through the difficulties. For several years the problem remained at the back of my mind while other work took precedence.
Meanwhile, working on a lecture about forms of currency before the invention of coinage for an undergraduate course at Oxford, I found much confusion in translations of a text written for an Assyrian king. Some lines were taken to mean that he had cast coins early in the 7th century BC, several centuries earlier than the earliest known coinage in that area. The anomaly was striking, and impelled me to look again at the text. There I found that a different interpretation, avoiding the anachronistic introduction of coinage, was more likely. The king was describing how his workmen cast gigantic animal figures in solid bronze by a new method which was so successful that the production was as easy as if the figures had weighed a mere half-shekel each rather than 43 tons.2 The old translation was ‘as easily as if they were half-shekel coins’. The text was also striking because royal inscriptions hardly ever show an interest in a technological innovation or mention the skill of craftsmen. Not until I could talk with Andrew Lacey, an experimental bronze-caster, in the course of making a programme for the BBC many years later, did I find out how to understand some of the detail given in that inscription, related to the king’s new method of casting bronze. From that experience I became interested in problems of recognizing technical details in cuneiform texts, and in the use of similes and metaphors to describe innovations. The results of the new understanding were included in a paper written for a conference on ancient bronze-working,3 and the implications for this book are discussed in Chapter 4.
As a royal city the prominence of Babylon can be highlighted by contrast with the royal cities of Assyria. During the first four centuries of the first millennium BC the Assyrians moved northwards from the western bank of the middle Tigris, where their old capital city Ashur bore the same name as the national god, still preserved in our word Assyria. They transferred their royal residence to the eastern bank of the Tigris, first to Nimrud, ancient Calah, then to Khorsabad, ancient Dur-Sharrukin, and lastly to the largest and oldest city of them all: Nineveh, which bears its ancient name to this day. Those three cities all lay within a short distance of each other. The Babylonians, by contrast, remained faithful throughout to their traditional capital city Babylon. At times Assyrian kings brought Babylonia under their control, but Babylon never conquered Assyria.
The two powers had much in common, not least language and a cuneiform system of writing, much of their literature and most of their gods and goddesses. Building with mud bricks, and writing on damp clay, they recorded literature, history and administrative details. But they differed greatly in their surroundings: Assyria was a land with several tributaries flowing through hill country into the Tigris from the mountains of Persia, past fertile valleys and plains benefiting from reliable rainfall. Babylon, on the other hand, lay in flat territory, criss-crossed by canals, fed by the abundant lower Euphrates and Tigris, lacking reliable rainfall. In Assyria the use of cuneiform (wedge-shaped) script died out in the 6th century BC, much earlier than in Babylonia where it continued in use for many centuries.4
The cuneiform script and the languages of Mesopotamia began to be deciphered a little more than 150 years ago. The work of understanding, editing, and making reliable translations of their texts continues to this day. So much information is now at our disposal that the failure to find the Hanging Garden of Babylon has been extremely frustrating.
The idea of seven wonderful places in the known world, exceptional sights to visit, is known from Greek and Roman texts from the 2nd century BC onwards. That is several centuries after the famous garden was created. The earliest text is a fragment of papyrus found when a mummy from an Egyptian tomb was unwrapped, for it was common to use old, discarded rolls of text to enshroud corpses. Its text preserves, with gaps, the words: ‘the seven sights, the temple of Artemis in Ephesus, (… gap …) the Pyramids … (gap) … the funerary monument of Mausolus in Halicarnassus … (gap) …’5 Around the same time a scholar known as Callimachus of Cyrene (305–240 BC) wrote A Collection of Sights in Lands throughout the World from his seat in the great library of Alexandria in Egypt. Whether he had a list of seven is uncertain because his work is known only from its title and some fragments, but Diodorus Siculus, writing in the following century, mentioned an obelisk installed in Babylonia by Semiramis ‘beside the most famous street’ which, he said, people included ‘among the seven sights of the world’,6 and Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC) wrote a work on ‘Seven works to be marvelled at in the world’. This shows that the number seven was by then a well-known attachment to the idea of marvellous sights to see. No later writers who listed seven sights included Semiramis’ obelisk, an omission which indicates that the listing was a flexible one, presumably prone to the vagaries of fashion and availability.7 As time went on, the original wonders were updated; new wonders were added to the list, enlarging the total number of famous places ‘to see before you die’, but with the number seven s
till attached. Various different lists are known: Romans and Byzantines added their own marvels, such as the Colosseum in Rome, and the Church of Santa Sophia in Constantinople.8
As for the main Greek and Roman writers who mentioned or described the Hanging Garden, most of them, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Antipater, Josephus and Quintus Curtius Rufus, were contemporary with Roman rulers from Julius Caesar to Nero, and all except the last wrote in Greek. During that time Roman armies and administrators were moving around western parts of the Near East, stimulating a popular interest in the marvels of the Orient. Many centuries later, writing in Greek during the Byzantine period, was Philo of Byzantium ‘the Paradoxographer’. All of those writers had access to earlier texts and legends that are now lost, so there is no definitive account—the origin of the concept of listing seven World Wonders is lost in the mists of early antiquity. Some of those earlier writers whose books are lost actually served under Alexander the Great, suggesting that the tradition may first have arisen when there were many Macedonian and other Greek soldiers and administrators in Mesopotamia. In any case, the earliest listings date from many centuries after the time of Nebuchadnezzar the Great (604–562 BC).
The Hanging Garden of Babylon, the walls of Babylon, and the Obelisk of Semiramis are by far the easternmost of the early candidates to be included in lists of seven World Wonders. All the others are easily accessible from the east Mediterranean. Egypt claimed the great pyramid and the lighthouse known as the Pharos in the harbour at Alexandria; the Aegean island of Rhodes had its Colossus, a gigantic bronze-cast man whose huge legs spanned the harbour entrance; western Anatolia boasted of the huge Mausoleum with its fabulous sculptures made for the satrap of Caria at Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum), and the Artemisium of Ephesus with its extraordinary statue of Diana—Artemis (her many ‘breasts’ are now thought by some to be pollen sacks representing her role as patron of apiculture in an area where honey is still famous); Olympia on mainland Greece claimed the statue of Zeus crafted by the great Athenian sculptor Phidias. All of those lie between longitude 21 and 31, and could be visited with relative ease by travellers from the Greek and Roman world whose writers publicized the tradition of seven, and added others to it; whereas Babylon lies between longitude 44 and 45, far beyond easy reach of the Mediterranean. It is remarkable that Babylon is the location of three early World Wonders. All the other wonders lie in lands more likely to be on a tourist route for Greeks and Romans; one might suppose that remoteness and great antiquity gave Babylon a specially romantic allure, allowing the imagination to roam, free from the smells, dust and epidemics of reality.