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

by Stephanie Dalley

  If several complete and more-or-less undamaged panels showing the garden, both in the South-West Palace and in the North Palace, were still visible in the time when Philo of Byzantium was writing, and if at that time the Hanging Garden was no longer tended, one might have expected some mention of the fact that it only survived in sculpture, and that one could see only ruined remains. Such a theme would have been welcome as a romantic topic for Greek and Latin poets, and a remarkable example of ecphrasis. When the Roman poet Sextus Propertius mused upon the transitory nature and deterioration of World Wonders, he did not include the Hanging Garden. When some of the older World Wonders had been superseded by younger marvels, as in the list of Gregory of Nazianz, the garden was still included.

  Suppose, on the other hand, that the garden survived the sack of 612 BC, that Nabopolassar was able to prevent the robbing of the screws and damage to their emplacements, that the garden was maintained during the Achaemenid, Seleucid and early Parthian periods with intermittent renovation. The two bas-reliefs in the partially ruined palaces would also have been seen by visitors. However, by the time of Alexander, people in Assyria could no longer read cuneiform, so the name of the builder passed into legend. Visitors to Nineveh could have seen screws in operation, and the roof-top trees, still alive on the pillared walkway, would have remained a striking feature. In this case eye-witness accounts would have been available for Classical authors.

  It remains uncertain whether the machinery that lifted water to the top of the garden could have been kept in working order, or whether it was restored under Seleucid government. If the cast bronze screws were looted in 612 BC or shortly afterwards, the top terraces of the garden would have dried up, leaving the colonnade with its heavy roofing carrying dead trees. Even if they were not looted, the screws might have corroded, though it is significant to note that the great bronze barrier of the 12th century BC found at Susa is still in good condition in the Louvre. If Nabopolassar managed to restrain major looting—‘an abomination to Marduk’—before the vandals reached the garden, the screw might have persisted for centuries with minimal maintenance, until the civic pride of the first stratēgos put the garden once again under firm management.

  Was the sturdy engineering that brought mountain water to the gardens, orchards and fields around Nineveh still functioning, centuries after 700 BC? The Shallalat dam which probably belongs to that system was still in use as recently as the 20th century, and the Jerwan aqueduct is recognizably in place today. Even if the enemy in 612 BC had cut down trees and damaged installations, the essential provision of abundant water was still there for the environs of the city. Depletion of income to the city through trade, and the tax evasion that inevitably accompanies a breakdown of law and order, would not have stopped the water flowing even if some of the channels were damaged or obstructed. Some temporary flooding might have resulted, but such well-drained land is most unlikely to have been degraded over more than a small part, and local labour could have made repairs as necessary.

  Crucial was the state of the aqueduct. If it remained undamaged or was immediately repaired, it would have ensured that the citadel could still attract elite occupation. The lower part of the garden with its supply of water by aqueduct would have remained viable, even if knowledge of the screws was relegated to literary sources and to folk memory, available to Strabo and to Philo of Byzantium.

  The solution offered in this book essentially began with the unearthing of that Assyrian sculpture at Nineveh in 1854, long before I was born. From detailed articles already published, the attribution of the Hanging Garden to Sennacherib at Nineveh has now been accepted by many scholars.4 Three linked but individual parts to the ancient wonder have been identified. One is the garden itself, with its terraces and pavilions, conveniently set beside the palace, and its cunningly integrated, innovative water-raising system. Another is the complex network of watercourses—aqueducts, canals and sluices, tunnels and dams that brought water from the mountains to the garden on the citadel. The third is the sculptured grottoes, rock carvings and springs from which waters were drawn, so far distant from their destination.

  That the Hanging Garden was built in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar the Great is a fact learned at school and can be ‘verified’ in encyclopaedias and histories of ancient times. To challenge such a universally accepted truth might seem the height of arrogance, revisionist scholarship at its worst. But Assyriology is a relatively recent discipline, and a new understanding is necessary in this instance. Of course, the old, displaced facts cannot physically be removed from the encyclopaedias, but even in Assyriology and ancient history, some of the facts that once seemed secure become redundant. Compendia of knowledge serve a wonderful purpose in collecting together the received wisdom of one generation, but like archaeological strata, they are superseded by later levels as time and progress move ahead, to become relics of the past, preserving the misguided certainties and unacknowledged assumptions of their time.

  Not every aspect of the matter has yielded to investigation. How the screw was rotated is still unknown. The location of the gardens, while plausible, rests upon an informed guess. Speculative is the part played by either of Sennacherib’s two successive queens, Tashmetu-sharrat and Naqia. How much Sennacherib himself was the genius behind the project, whether he (and his father) inspired a genius engineer and architect, is unlikely ever to be revealed by any kind of ancient Mesopotamian source.

  Research sometimes leads one along unexpected paths. Two serendipitous discoveries have been Milton’s use of a Greek description of the garden for the Garden of Eden in book IV of Paradise Lost, and Ezekiel’s description of Assyria, equating Assyria with the garden and its channels for watering, a garden so wonderful that it challenged God. Sennacherib’s hubris in showing himself in the company of the great gods at Khinnis matches Ezekiel’s accusation.

  Another satisfying result has been to show how advanced Assyrian engineering was by the time Sennacherib came to the throne. We have come a long way since 1877—twenty-three years after the discovery of the panel in Ashurbanipal’s palace—when Lewis Morgan attributed to Greek and Roman civilization the invention of ‘fire-baked brick … the aqueduct and sewer … the arch, the balance scale … and alphabetic writing’.5 All of those inventions are now generally accepted, mainly as a result of archaeological work, to have been common in the ancient Near East before the rise of Classical Greek civilization.

  Sennacherib can now take his rightful place alongside the great emperors of later time: Nero with his Domus Aurea, the Sun-king Louis XIV of France with Versailles, Frederick the Great of Prussia with Sans Souci, and Henry VIII with Nonsuch (‘unrivalled’), all great builders of palaces who created gardens as an integral part of their overall design.

  Like the other six, this Wonder really existed, and can no longer be written off as a figment of the imagination, a legend without historical substance, nor was the garden at Nineveh merely a precursor of the real thing. To Sennacherib, king of Assyria, belongs the credit for creating one of the seven Wonders of the ancient world.

  APPENDIX

  The Section of Prism Inscription Describing the Palace and Garden

  Two versions are extant, one in Baghdad, the other in Chicago: A. Heidel, ‘The octagonal Sennacherib Prism in the Iraq Museum’, Sumer 9 (1953), 152–70, which dates to 694 BC, and D. D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib (1924), dated 689 BC. The author’s translation and notes here follow the Akkadian text of Heidel, col. v.53–viii.13, pp. 152–70, with updating.

  The form of the record as a clay prism indicates that the text was hidden from view, intended for posterity. Heidel’s prism was found in the west wall of the city of Nineveh.

  The use of grammatical forms from the ‘Hymnic-Epic dialect’, and rare words, elsewhere best known from the Epic of Creation, indicate that this inscription was designed to endure as high literature.

  1. Col. v lines 53–63 describes Nineveh in epic terms, as the city whose foundation was p
lanned in heaven, as the residence of all gods and goddesses, echoing the creation of Babylon in the Epic of Creation. The description of Assyrians as ‘Enlil’s people’ implies a claim to Nippur as the equivalent of Nineveh.1 The word Lalgar is a rare literary one referring to the Apsu, fresh water beneath the earth; likewise rare are duruššu ‘foundation’ and pelludê ‘rites’.

  At that time Nineveh the exalted metropolis, the city beloved of Ishtar, in which all the ceremonies of gods and goddesses take place, the eternal base, the everlasting foundation whose plan was drawn in the writing of the firmament at the beginning of time, and whose structure was then made known; a clever place where hidden knowledge resides for every kind of skilful work. All sorts of rites, secrets from Lalgar are planned within it, whence the kings my predecessors and forefathers had exercised rule over Assyria from time immemorial before me, and had governed Enlil’s people.

  2. Col. v lines 64–76. Sennacherib emphasizes the inadequacy of predecessors in planning and building the city. The word kummu translated as ‘dwelling’ is normally used for the cella of deities.

  Yet nobody among them had even thought to widen the residential area of the city, to rebuild city walls or straighten streets and dig canals, to plant new orchards, let alone taken the initiative. Nor had anyone considered or assessed the palace within it, a dwelling for a seat of government, in which the accommodation was too meagre, whose workmanship was not skilful enough.

  3. Col. v lines 77–86. The king conceives his wise plan and musters conquered peoples for the labour of building. The passage contains two apocopated suffixes typical of the Hymnic-Epic dialect.

  I myself planned it, and I took the initiative, I Sennacherib king of the world, king of Assyria, to carry out that work in accordance with the plan of the god. I uprooted peoples from Chaldaea, Aram, Mannay, Que, Cilicia, Philistia and Tyre, who had not submitted to my yoke, and made them carry the head-pad, and they made bricks.

  4. Col. v line 87–col. vi line 14. He reiterates that he needed to replace an inadequate palace built by his forebears, who had mismanaged their operations, sinking boats and damaging the health of the workmen.

  The previous palace was 360 cubits long and 95 cubits wide, and so its accommodation was too meagre—the one which the kings my predecessors and forefathers had built as a seat of government, but had not done the work on it cleverly enough. They had quarried (?) for guardian colossi (aladlammû) of white limestone in Tastiate on the far side of the Tigris to hold their gateways. To have ships constructed they caused a shortage of large trees in forests throughout their land, and then in the month of Ayyar, the time of the spring spate, they had difficulty bring them across to this bank; they sank some large ships at the quay crossing, and exhausted their labour force, they made them ill with exertion and effort, but eventually fetched them with difficulty and installed them in their gateways.

  5. Col. vi lines 15–27. The chaotic and destructive power of river water is described, and the measures taken by the king to bring it under control.

  The flood-prone river, a strong current which in former times had flowed close to the palace at its full flood, had let a marsh form around its base, loosening its foundation.2 I pulled down that small palace in its entirety. I diverted the course of the flood-prone river from the city centre and directed its outflow into the land which surrounds the city at the back. For half an acre along the water course I bonded four (courses of?) great limestone slabs with bitumen and laid reeds from reed thickets and canes over them.

  6. Col. vi lines 28–38. The king creates extra space from dredged soil to extend the area available for his palace.

  A stretch of ground 340 cubits long and 289 cubits wide from the Khosr river and the outskirts of the city I took as extra land. I added it to the extent of the earlier city terrace, and I raised the top to a level of 190 courses of brick throughout. To prevent the foundation of the fill weakening as time went by, due to the strength of the current, I surrounded its substructure with large blocks of limestone and I strengthened its earthwork.

  7. Col. vi lines 39–65. The king specifies the large size of the new palace, and adjacent pavilions, and the rare and costly materials used in its construction and decoration. The king designates his feminine doorway figures of alabaster and ivory as a wonder, literally ‘for gazing at’, which may indicate that the public sometimes had access. Twice the narrative present tense is used, as also in epic; there are four examples of apocopated suffixes and two examples of the ŠD verb stem, another characteristic of the Hymnic-Epic dialect.

  I increased the outline of the palace to 700 large cubits at the side, and 440 large cubits at the front, and enlarged its dwelling space. I built other palatial pavilions of gold, silver, bronze, carnelian breccia, alabaster, elephant tusk, ebony, boxwood, rosewood, cedar, cypress, pine, elammaku-wood, and Indian wood (sandalwood?) for my royal abodes, and I constructed a hilāni-building like a North Syrian palace, opposite the gates. I laid over it beams of cedar and cypress whose fragrance is sweet, grown on the mountains of Amanus and Sirara. I bound door-leaves of cedar, cypress, pine and Indian wood with bands of silver and copper, and fix(ed) them in the door-frames. In the upper rooms within the private apartments I open(ed) up latticed(?) windows. I placed feminine protective statues in their doors, fashioned from alabaster and ivory, carrying flowers and holding hands(?), they radiate poise and charm, they are so beautiful that I have made of them a wonder. As for the ceilings inside the main rooms (?), I lightened their darkness and made them as bright as day. I made silver and copper pegs with knobs encircle their interiors. I decorated with baked brick glazed with blue the arches(?), friezes, and all of their cornices(?), in order to make the work in my palace splendid, and to perfect the touch of my hands.

  8. Col. vi line 66–col. vii line 6. The gods Ashur and Ishtar reveal to the king a new source of huge trees in the Sirara mountains, and a new source for big blocks of alabaster in the mountains of the West.

  At that time Ashur and Ishtar, who approve my tenure of the priesthood and call me by my name, revealed to me the place where flourish gigantic cedars which have been growing since ancient times and have become quite massive, standing in secret within the mountains of Sirara; access also to alabaster, which was especially prized for dagger pommels in the days of the kings my forefathers, they opened up to me. And breccia for huge storage jars such as have never before been discovered, revealed itself in the village of Dargila in the region of Til Barsip. Next to Nineveh in the territory of Balaṭa, white limestone was revealed in large quantities in accordance with the will of the gods, and I created great bull-colossi and other limbed figures of alabaster which were made out of a single block of stone, perfectly proportioned, standing tall on their own bases; cow-colossi of alabaster with most attractive features, their bodies radiant like a bright day, and high threshold stones of breccia. I cut the blocks out from their matrix on two sides and had them hauled into Nineveh for the work on my palace. I gave birth to bull-colossi and cow-colossi of white limestone with the touch of Nin-kura,3 and made their forms perfectly.

  9. Col. vii lines 7–52. The king describes his new method of casting copper for pillars (with bases in the form of?) striding lions,4 which together with bull- and cow-colossi of alabaster, are designated a second wonder.

  Whereas in former times the kings my forefathers had created copper statues imitating real forms, to put on display inside temples, and in their method of work they had exhausted all the craftsmen for lack of skill and failure to understand principles(?); they needed so much oil, wax and tallow for the work that they caused a shortage in their own lands—I, Sennacherib, leader of all princes, knowledgeable in all kinds of work, took much advice and deep thought over doing that work. Great pillars of copper, colossal striding lions, such as no previous king had ever constructed before me, with the technical skill that Ninshiku brought to perfection in me, and at the prompting of my intelligence and desire of my heart I invented a technique
for copper and made it skilfully. I created clay moulds as if by divine intelligence for cylinders (gišmahhu—tall tree-trunks) and screws (alamittu—date palms), tree of riches; twelve fierce lion-colossi together with twelve mighty bull-colossi which were perfect castings; 22 cow-colossi invested with joyous allure, plentifully endowed with sexual attraction; and I poured copper into them over and over again; I made the castings of them as perfectly as if they had only weighed half a shekel each. Two of the copper bull-colossi were then coated with electrum. I installed alabaster bull-colossi alongside white limestone bull- and cow-colossi at the door-bolts of my royal pavilions. I bound tall pillars of copper alongside pillars of mighty cedar, the gift of the Amanus mountains, with bands of copper and tin, and stood them on lion bases, and then positioned door-leaves to crown their gateways. I positioned alabaster cow-colossi alongside cow-colossi cast in copper coated with electrum, and cow-colossi cast with tin, to make very shiny surfaces, also pillars of ebony, cypress, cedar, juniper, pine and Indian wood, inlaid with pasallu-gold and silver, on top of them, and positioned them in the dwelling-place, my seat of government, as door-posts for them. Threshold stones of brecchia and alabaster, and threshold stones that were large blocks of limestone, I put around their footings, and I have made a wonder of them.