http://www.unmuseum.org/hangg.htm
According to accounts, the gardens were built to cheer up Nebuchadnezzar's homesick wife,
Amyitis. Amyitis, daughter of the king of the Medes, was married to Nebuchadnezzar to create
an alliance between the two nations. The land she came from, though, was green, rugged and
mountainous, and she found the flat, sun-baked terrain of Mesopotamia depressing. The king
decided to relieve her depression by recreating her homeland through the building of an artificial
mountain with rooftop gardens.
The Hanging Gardens probably did not really "hang" in the sense of being suspended from
cables or ropes. The name comes from an inexact translation of the Greek word kremastos, or the
Latin word pensilis, which means not just "hanging", but "overhanging" as in the case of a
terrace or balcony.
http://www.kidsgen.com/wonders_of_the_world/hanging_gardens.htm
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Located in the east bank of Euphrates, South of Baghdad in Iraq
“Some stories have it that the Hanging Gardens went hundreds of feet into the air, but
archaeological explorations have proved it wrong. The gardens did not really hang on the roof
using cables or ropes.”
the outer walls of the garden were 80 feet thick, 320 feet high, and 56 miles in length (this may
vary according to cites)
had statue of “sold gold”
“The Greek geographer Strabo, describes it as, "the garden consists of vaulted terraces raised one
above another, and resting upon cube-shaped pillars. These are hollow and filled with earth to
allow trees of the largest size to be planted. The pillars, the vaults, and terraces are constructed of
baked brick and asphalt."”
King Nebuchadnezzar И
Son of King Hammurabi
The Wife
Homesick
Daughter of the king Medes
Lived in mountainous surroundings
Didn’t like the flat desert terrain of Babylon
How it came to be
King Nebuchadnezzar И had a homesick wife who was the daughter of King Medes. The Queen
was from a land of mountains and beautiful landscaping. Therefore she could not adjust to the
desert like terrain of Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar loved his wife so much that he decided to
build her a garden so massive that the size is uncertain but believed to be 400 hundred square
feet and 75 feet above the ground!(“Hanging Gardens of Babylon#”)
A Green Thumb
To keep this enormous garden luscious the king had to make sure that the plants got enough
water. Slaves worked in shifts turning screws to lift water from the Euphrates River. That’s right!
The Babylonians took water straight from the river; they created their own irrigation system just
for this garden. King Nebuchadnezzar must have really loved his wife (or she was just really
pretty)! Anyway, one method that may have been used to water all garden was the “chain pump”.
The Funky Chain Pump
“A chain pump is two large wheels, one above the other, connected by a chain. On the chain are
hung buckets. Below the bottom wheel is a pool with the water source. As the wheel is turned,
the buckets dip into the pool and pick up water. The chain then lifts them to the upper wheel,
where the buckets are tipped and dumped into an upper pool. The chain then carries the empty
buckets back down to be refilled.”(“The Hanging Gardens of Babylon”) This is the method
historians believe the Babylonians used to water to Hanging Gardens instead of the Screw Pump.
Is it Hangin?
A lot of people want to know if the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are actually hanging. And if
they are, then how were the Babylonians able to hang such a massive structure? Well actually it
didn’t hang at all! It’s just called the Hanging Gardens because of the “inexact translation of the
Greek word kremastos, or the Latin word pensilis, which means not just “hanging”, but
“overhanging” as in the case of a terrace or a balcony.”(“The Hanging Gardens of Babylon”)