the mystery of the hanging gardens of Babylon

The whole thing would have been hidden in the wall of the palace or the foundations of the palace so that when the palace fell down eventually people could still see what a great king Sennacherib was. It tells you about this wonderful palace that he built and then it tells you about the garden that he built alongside the palace. The mystery of the hanging gardens of Babylon. The world's seven ancient wonders is a list of seven most remarkable and extraordinary constructions ever made by humans in ancient times. Today six of the seven wonders was destroyed by nature and human causes which leads to the listing of new seven wonders of the world in 2007 and it was voted by the people around the world of which construction. The seven wonders were attributed by a few wise men who traveled the world and were the expert in many fields. The annual literature science and mathematics and they are Antipatros, Philio of Byzantine, Strabo, Herodotus and Diodorus of Sicily. Antipatros listed the seven wonders through his poet. I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon which is a road for chariots and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus and the hanging gardens and the colossus of the sun and the huge labor of the high pyramids and the vast tomb of Mosolus. But when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds those other marvels lost their brilliancy and I said lo apart from Olympus the sun never looked an odd so grand. Antipatros Greek anthology. Today we'll be talking about the mystery of the hanging gardens of Babylon. So what is the mystery of the hanging gardens of Babylon and what happened to it? Can we visit the hanging gardens of Babylon? Before we begin make sure to smash the like button subscribe to our channel and click the notification bell for more amazing videos. According to ancient Greek poets the hanging gardens of Babylon were built near the Ephrites river in modern-day Iraq by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II around 600 BC. The gardens were said to have been planted as high as 75 feet in the air on a huge square brick terrace that was laid out in steps like a theater. The king allegedly built the towering gardens to ease his lover Ammit's homesickness for the natural beauty of her home in Medea, the northwestern part of modern-day Iran. Later writers described how people could walk underneath the beautiful gardens which rested on tall stone columns. Modern scientists have deduced that for the gardens to survive they would have had to be irrigated using a system consisting of a pump water wheel and cisterns to carry water from the Ephrites many feet into the air. It is called the hanging gardens because the gardens were built high above the ground on multi-level stone terraces. The plants weren't rooted in the earth like a traditional garden and the word hanging comes from the Latin word peninsus or the translation of the Greek word chromastos. It actually means overhanging instead of just hanging. The hanging gardens are the only one of the seven wonders for which the location has not been definitively established. There are no extant Babylonian texts that mention the gardens and no definitive archaeological evidence has been found in Babylon. Three theories have been suggested to account for this. One that they were purely mythical and that the descriptions found in ancient Greek and Roman writings including those of Strabo, Diodorus Siculus and Quintus Curtius Rufus represented a romantic ideal of an eastern garden. Two that they existed in Babylon but were completely destroyed sometime around the first century AD. Three that the legend refers to a well-documented garden that the Assyrian king Sennacherib 704 to 681 BC built in the capital city of Nineveh on the river Tigris near the modern city of Mosul. Mosul is a major city in northern Iraq yet for centuries no one has been able to find any physical evidence they existed. Between 1899 and 1917 a German archaeologist Robert Koldewey may have unearthed the hanging gardens. What he unearthed resembled what Diodorus Siculus had described. In the bottom of the hanging gardens there was three strange holes in the floor that would have worked well for a chain pump irrigation system. This will make it possible to irrigate the plants. Recent excavations have found traces of aqueducts near Nineveh which would have supported such a garden. Nineveh is 300 miles away from Babylon. During a channel 4 documentary called Finding Babylon's Hanging Garden Dr. Daly was able to combine ancient maps with modern day versions to locate what she believes to be the ruins of the palace. Nearby she found a large amount of dirt sloping to a stretch of greenery which she claims is the best place for the ancient site. She believes her claims are substantiated by a base relief taken from Nineveh that detailed the location of the palace alongside a garden with trees hanging from terraces. Furthermore Dr. Daly claimed in the documentary that Nineveh was also known as the New Babylon and added this may be where the confusion came from. A Greek historian named Diodorus Siculus described the gardens as being 400 feet wide by 400 feet long with walls as high as 80 feet. Due to its height water was said to have been transported from a lake at the bottom using a similar principle as Archimedes screw, a pump that scoops up water in a spiral tube and carries it to the top. The pump was said to have been invented by Archimedes in the 3rd century BC yet if a similar system was used in the gardens this would predate it by around 350 years. Given the size historians have estimated the gardens would have used 8200 gallons of water a day to water the plants. Some historians and archaeologists believe the gardens were destroyed by war and erosion while others believe an earthquake destroyed them. Dr. Daly believes more research will need to be carried out before archaeologists can confirm the location of the gardens. Altogether there are only five written mentions of the hanging gardens of Babylon which are available today. Here's an overview. Josephus, a Roman Judea historian who was the first to make mention of the gardens in 290 BC. He is the only one who claims Nebuchadnezzar II built the gardens but then again he got his information directly from a Babylonian priest named Berossus. Diodorus Siculus, an ancient Greek historian who described the gardens to a Syrian king and that the gardens were irrigated by the Euphrates river. Quintus Curtius Rufus, a Roman historian who got his information from Diodorus but added that the gardens were located on top of a citadel. Strabo, a Greek geographer and historian who mentioned the irrigation system used an Archimedes screw which would have made it possible for water to be pumped up to water the top tiers of the gardens. Filio Byzantium confirms the writings of Strabo about the ancient water pump system and praises its ingenuity. An interesting fact about the hanging gardens of Babylon is that the five writers who described the gardens lived in a time that the gardens still existed. So this gives more credibility to the theory that they did in fact exist as they were able to derive their stories from people that actually visited Babylon at the time. While there aren't numerous sources, there are still enough sources to believe that the gardens did in fact exist.