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

by Stephanie Dalley

  This may be the reality that lies behind Diodorus Siculus’ claim that the Hanging Garden was built for ‘a Syrian Queen’, or the ‘Median queen’ in the account given by Josephus.

  Sennacherib’s wife may have been involved in the creation of the gardens, giving a romantic angle that would have been taken up with enthusiasm by Greek writers who adapted the theme to suit different purposes. Sennacherib’s second official wife Naqia, however, would have taken over from Tashmetu-sharrat as possessor of the garden, so the legend may have been transferred to her. The analysis of her name shows that she came from the west, but probably not from the Amanus area.41 Naqia was one of the queens who conformed to the archetype ‘Semiramis’, as we have seen.

  Festive occasions allowed foreign emissaries and local dignitaries to view the marvels of the Unrivalled Palace (see Figure 49). Inevitably there would have been a splendid feast of dedication when the palace was completed, with thousands of guests eating and drinking from sets of drinking vessels: great mixing-bowls of wine, lion-headed rhyta, and fluted drinking-bowls without handles, vessels of gold and silver balanced on carved ivory stands.42 Every year a great ceremony was held, at which vassals brought tribute and renewed their oaths of loyalty. For all of them the sculptures around the walls more than any other features would serve to reinforce the message of conquest and diplomacy, assuring native Assyrians as well as foreigners that supremacy could not lightly be challenged; that they served the richest, most powerful man on earth, with all the benefits that obedience could bring: law and order, peaceful trade, and the inspiration of greatness. Many of the palace sculptures show the details of exotic feasting: trays of crunchy locusts, attractively shaped cakes, files of finely clothed attendants supplying every taste and every need.

  Fig. 49 (a) Palace attendants bringing cakes, grapes, pomegranates, and locusts in the South-West Palace.

  Fig. 49 (b) Palace attendants bringing drink, drawn from a panel found in Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad.

  As in Josephus’ account, so in Sennacherib’s own description, it is clear that the garden was set out beside the palace on the high citadel, contradicting any suggestion that it was located in another part of the city or outside it.

  I raised the height of the surroundings of the palace, to be a Wonder for all peoples. I gave it the name: ‘Unrivalled Palace’. A high garden imitating the Amanus mountains I laid out next to it, with all kinds of aromatic plants …

  Like his father Sargon, who had created an artificial landscape for his entire new citadel at Khorsabad, Sennacherib raised the ground level, in order to create an artificial landscape that looked as if it was natural, and with that level established, he could engineer the aqueduct, screws, lake and drainage, to ensure the success of the exotic plants transferred there, many of them uprooted from very different environments far abroad. The collection of foreign plants showed the king’s mastery over the landscape, not just adapting and making the best of what was available, but changing it to make it even more desirable than it had been in its natural state, and yet the end-product was to appear natural, like the superb Amanus mountains with their cloak of fragrant trees. In collecting exotic plants abroad, he was following a tradition that went back in time to the reign of Tiglath-pileser I (1114–1076) who ended a long account of his conquest of ‘42 lands and their rulers, from the far side of the lower Zab river in distant mountainous regions, to the far side of the Euphrates, people of Hatti (northern Syria), and the Upper Sea in the West (Mediterranean)’ with a brief passage that betrays his personal interest in botany:

  I took cedar, box-tree, Kanish oak, from the lands over which I had gained dominion—such trees which none among previous kings my forefathers had ever planted—and I planted them in the orchards of my land. I took rare orchard fruit which is not found in my land and filled the orchards of Assyria.43

  The drawing shown as the Frontispiece, made by the late Terry Ball who had worked as reconstruction artist for English Heritage, made careful use of as much information as possible (see Figure 50 (a)). It combined what was known from Classical texts and the prism inscription with an understanding of the sculptured panel of Ashurbanipal and Original Drawing IV 77 (see Figure 13), according to an interpretation of their perspective. Key features consisted of its shape ‘like a Greek theatre’ interpreted as a three-dimensional shape with appropriate size, and its location beside the palace, which meant that it had to be on top of the main citadel. Exactly where on the citadel was dictated by two considerations. The direction from which water flowed along the aqueduct was shown on Ashurbanipal’s panel, having come from Jerwan. This excluded the west side of the citadel. More speculatively it was envisaged precisely where a set of contours on the side of the mound in recent times, adjacent to the South-West Palace, indicated a theatre-like depression of the right size, steep-sided, overlooking the Khosr river. That position meant putting an entrance to the palace facing the garden, which is not known from that part of the building since it is unexcavated. The placing also allowed us to show the ziggurat of the temple of Ishtar of Nineveh rising up behind the garden, bearing in mind also that the South-West Palace was connected with the temple by a passageway. The topmost level of the garden had to be level with the top of the city walls. The terraces above the level of the water on the aqueduct could be reconstructed from the remaining but damaged top of Ashurbanipal’s panel and the pillared walkway from Original Drawing IV 77 combined with the descriptions of Strabo and Philo. No specific evidence supports the way in which the pillared walkway appears to join an upper storey of the palace just out of sight behind the palace; other junctions are possible. The shape of the arches supporting the aqueduct is known both from Ashurbanipal’s panel and from existing remains of the Jerwan aqueduct. The lake at the bottom of the garden is taken from Original Drawing IV 77; it meets the need for drainage of water to the bottom of the garden, and thereafter presumably out into the Khosr river, to avoid stagnation. A road runs between the city wall and the bottom of the garden with a bridge to allow the water to drain through; the road is shown at the bottom of Ashurbanipal’s garden panel. The boat-houses with a landing stage on the left hand one are adapted from the Khorsabad garden panel of Sargon II, on the understanding that the boats shown in Original Drawing IV 77 implied them. The water-raising screws alongside steps are shown as cutaways, and would have been invisible inside their cylindrical casing.44 The pavilion is shown with its path crossed by the stream without resolving the problem of how to interpret the perspective in this instance. The trees are roughly sketched according to the three pictures. A terrace outside the palace door corresponds to the triangular empty space on the left of Ashurbanipal’s panel. In view of my later understanding of the bīt hilāni as a portico entrance into a wing of the main palace, I would now suggest that the façade facing the garden had an open aspect with columns rather than the single arched doorway shown in the reconstruction. The columns would have stood on bases in the form of striding lions, as shown on the panel adjacent to Ashurbanipal’s garden sculpture, which may represent the portico entrance giving immediate access to the garden.

  Fig. 50 (a) Reconstruction drawing by Terry Ball of the palace garden at Nineveh.

  Fig. 50 (b) Draft reconstruction drawing by Andrew Lacey. Note the waterfall on the right-hand side.

  Was the colossal outlay of labour and materials, luxury and extravagance, ruinous to the economy of Assyria? There is no definite evidence to suggest that this was so. Virtually all the labour was newly imported from conquered lands; many of the basic materials such as stone, mud brick, straw and reeds were local; timbers came through tribute as well as trade, although much was local, for tree-planting and timber management were traditional skills. By increasing the flow of water for irrigation in the fields and orchards around Nineveh, Sennacherib would have made the farmers less dependent on irregular rainfall, and improved the quantity and quality of yields. The building work was of a high enough quality to give employment to gr
eat numbers of craftsmen, and to endure, leaving a sturdy infrastructure and a proud heritage for successors. Stimulation rather than exhaustion seems to have been the effect that so much construction had on the economy.

  Whether the garden contained fountains is uncertain, for none is mentioned in any of the textual or pictorial sources. The principle of the fountain was certainly known: a thousand years earlier a near-life-size statue of a goddess, holding a vase overflowing with water represented by incised decoration on her garment, has a channel drilled through from the back of her neck to the vase which she holds in front of her, and was able to exude water, but it stood inside the palace.45 For an outdoor fountain as we have seen at Khinnis, a cistern with lion-heads protruding from the sides is designed so that water pours out from the mouths of the lions.

  In conclusion, Sennacherib’s own inscriptions show that his Wonder included the magnificent South-West Palace and the garden adjacent to it, along with his use of cast bronze screws for raising water, and the canals and aqueduct that brought water to Nineveh. In each respect—the palace, the garden, the constructions for watering and the expression ‘Wonder’—he was building upon existing Assyrian traditions to create a masterpiece.

  8

  Symbolism and Imitators

  God Almightie first Planted a Garden. And indeed it is the Purest of Humane pleasures. It is the Greatest Refreshment to the Spirits of Man; Without which, Buildings and Pallaces are but Grosse Handy-works: And a Man shall ever see that, when Ages grow to Civility and Elegancie, men come to Build Stately sooner then to Garden Finely: As if Gardening were the Greater Perfection

  Francis Bacon, Essay, Of Gardens, 15971

  To build a new palace with a garden was to replicate creation in miniature, to bring control and order to the earth just as the gods had put order into the world according to the Babylonian Epic of Creation. By this deed the ruler acted like the highest god. Thus did the unrivalled palace with its marvellous garden mirror the act of genesis, showing to all the world that Sennacherib was as a god.2 The wisdom of the builder is revealed through the design and its execution, by using the best materials and the best craftsmanship, drawn from the furthest reaches of the empire, for a high value was placed on brilliant workmanship and rare materials. Just as Sennacherib’s prism inscription locates the garden alongside the palace, so we can see that the two represent cultural space, the ultimate in civilized use of land, a carefully arranged symbiosis of nature and architecture that encapsulates the ideal of elite existence and the epitome of technical achievements. In microcosm they symbolize civilization itself, contrasting with the disorder of uncontrolled, primitive territory beyond, a spatial metaphor for the power of the king and of Assyria at the heart of a great empire. Landscape and architecture were integrated into a harmonious whole, rus in urbe, a rural sanctuary in the heart of a great city.

  The monarch played a vital role in assuring the fruitfulness of his own land and indeed all his empire, so fertility in its many aspects was symbolized in the garden. Obviously plants and flowing water represent life-giving abundance, where birds find shelter and nesting-places, havens of peace where predators are largely excluded. A fresh-water lake, such as is shown on Sargon’s panel from Khorsabad (see Figure 11), and on Original Drawing IV 77 (see Figure 13), replicated the Apsu, which was the name for the water beneath the earth that supplies rivers and wells, and its personification as a force in nature. In Mesopotamian tradition it was also the place from which the Seven Sages emerged on to the earth, taking the form of pure carp, survivors of the archetypal Deluge, bringing the arts and crafts of urban, civilized life to mankind (see Figure 51). Those arts included kingship, skills in building, and the art of warfare.

  An abundant supply of life-giving water was one of the garden’s chief attractions. Water had a special association with wisdom. This is illustrated by the opening lines of the great Epic of Gilgamesh: ‘He who found out (literally “saw”) nagbu—the depths/all things gained complete wisdom’, in which nagbu can mean either the depths from which springs of water gush; or the totality of knowledge. The god in charge of fresh water, Ea, was also the god of wisdom and craftsmanship.

  Just as chaos was represented by water in the Babylonian Epic of Creation—Tiamat and Apsu, brought under control by Marduk—so Sennacherib’s redirection of mountain streams demonstrated his ability to bring chaotic turbulence under control. But more than that, in raising water with screws, the natural, chaotic tendency of water to flow uncontrollably downhill is reversed, and seasonal aridity is banished. Normally a garden on the latitude of Nineveh would lose its greenery during the fierce heat of high summer, and would not become verdant again until the winter rains, followed by the warmth of spring, allowed trees and plants to sprout new growth. The palace garden overrode those natural changes, due to the abundance of water supplied throughout the months of summer heat, and kept its greenness as if in perpetual springtime while all around became desiccated, brown and dusty. Philo of Byzantium commented on the year-round greenery: ‘it is just like an ever-green meadow.’ The theatre-like shape would have afforded protection against the worst of wind and cold, and the evergreen pines would have sheltered adjacent plants from blasts of hot or cold air. Sennacherib’s power over nature was apparent in all those ways.

  Fig. 51 Fish-man as sage, sculpture found at the entrance to a temple at Nimrud.

  In another way the garden symbolized control, with domesticated plants deliberately set out in an orderly manner, particularly where a rectangular enclosed space gave them special protection. This feature can be seen in the Original Drawing IV 77, where a small part of the garden consists of an enclosure with very regular rows of trees within. A similar arrangement is known from the planting pattern of shrubs or small trees within the courtyard of the temple of the New Year’s festival outside the city of Ashur, where careful excavation revealed the root pits laid out in rows.3 There the king, once a year, replicated the original act of human creation by making love to the great goddess, impersonated by a priestess.4 In Babylonian mythology the king had been created as a special being, an ideal of masculine strength and beauty according to the command of the great god Ea:

  Ea made his voice heard, he addressed Belet-ili, the Mistress of the Gods: ‘You are the Mistress of the Gods, you have created the common people: now, make the king as a superior person, clothe his entire being with favour, form his features harmoniously, make his body beautiful’.

  The Mistress of the Gods did indeed create the king as a superior person.5

  The power of water to transform plants from near-death to life reflects its power to bring a dead god to life, and to satisfy ancestors buried in tombs. In the Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld the great goddess of fertility is stripped of her powers, symbolized by her jewellery and her garments, and left for dead in the Underworld. But she is brought back to life by being sprinkled with water, to the fury of her sister the Queen of the Underworld. As a part of traditional custom, deceased members of a family were buried in vaulted chambers, usually beneath the floor of the family house; and it was the duty of the eldest son to ensure that pure water was poured down for them twice a month, often through a pipe which archaeologists occasionally recover in excavations. Therefore the entire scheme of water management, brought to fruition by Sennacherib, encapsulated life-giving and warding off death. As John Evelyn expressed it, writing of the effect of landscape gardens in the 17th century, ‘these expedients do influence the soule and spirits of man, and prepare them for convers with good Angells’.6

  One might suppose that Sennacherib’s palace garden attempted to recreate the gardens of the blessed in heaven, or the garden of Eden, but this cannot be claimed from firm evidence. No ancient Mesopotamian myths describe a paradise-garden in which mortals lived happily before their condition changed for the worse. Mesopotamian accounts of man’s creation by the gods make it clear that their genesis was intended from the beginning to provide a labour force, expressly to relie
ve the gods of hard work. Toil therefore was man’s way of life from the start, and no primeval garden, no original state of bliss, was involved. However, there was a magical region beyond the known boundaries of the earth which Gilgamesh reached after travelling for ten leagues through darkness, emerging in front of the sun, where bushes blossomed, where ‘carnelian bore fruit hanging in clusters, lovely to behold, lapis lazuli bore foliage, bore fruit, and was delightful to the view’. But it was not heaven, nor was it a place of primeval innocence. It is true that the Cedar Mountain, a forbidding place inhabited by ‘Something Evil’, guarded by the monster Humbaba, is called ‘the dwelling of gods’ in the Epic of Gilgamesh, but variant wording makes it clear that it belongs to the Anunnaki gods of the Underworld.7 Ideally cedar trees clothed mountains—‘On the face of the mountain the cedar proffers its abundance’—and were considered to have been planted by the gods: ‘the Lebanon, exuberant forest of Marduk, the fragrance of which is sweet, where mighty cedars, planted by Anu (the sky-god) grow.’ Every mountain in lands west of Mesopotamia was the seat of a deity, whether Mt. Cassios in Syria or Mt. Gerizim in Israel, Mt. Zion in Judah, Mt. Olympus in Greece, or Mt. Ida in Crete.