Ebony Ann R.

Delos Santos STS0002

BSBA FM 1-1 Assignment 1.1

Hanging Gardens of Babylon Existed, but not in Babylon

According to Christopher Klein of history.com, an honorary research fellow and

part of the Oriental Institute at Oxford University named Dr. Stephanie Dalley claims that
she has found evidences of the existence of Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Dalley said that the reason why no traces of the Hanging Gardens have ever been
found in Babylon is because they were never built there in the first place.
It can be remembered that Greek and roman texts paint vivid pictures of Hanging
Gardens of Babylon as a luxurious place with a lush vegetation cascaded like waterfalls
down the terraces of the 75ft-high garden amidst the hot and arid landscape of Babylon. It
was described as a place with exotic plants, herbs and flowers, and fragrances wafted
through the towering botanical oasis dotted with statues and tall stone columns.
However, Dr. Dalley who spent 2 decades of researching and studying about
ancient civilization especially the cuneiform texts strongly believe that the fictuous
garden was built 300 miles away to the north of Babylon in Nineveh, the capital of the
rival Assyrian Empire.
She asserts that the Assyrian King Sennacherib is the one who built it in the early
7th century BC and not King Nebuchadnezzar II.
Dr. Dalley explains in her soon-to-be-released book that the reason for the
confusion of the location of the gardens could be due to the Assyrian defeating Babylon
in 689 BC. Following the takeover, Nineveh was referred to as "New Babylon". Her book
is claiming to debunk the thoughts that the elusive ancient wonder was a "historical
mirage" but a mislabeled garden. The garden should be called Hanging Gardens of
Nineveh and not Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Evidences and Pictures (from nationalgeographic.com)

 The British Museum in London houses this
intriguing relief from Nineveh depicting a
lush, abundantly irrigated garden. It was
produced during the reign of Ashurbanipal
(668-627 B.C.), the grandson of Sennacherib,
who probably constructed the garden in the
course of his major program of monument-
building. Scholars consider the relief
(colorized here) to be the most complete
representation of an Assyrian royal garden;
some also argue that it represents the famous
Hanging Gardens. The king stands in the
central pavilion and contemplates the splendid
garden. On the right, an arched aqueduct carries water to flow to different channels that
irrigate the gardens. Trees are arranged across slopes, suggesting a succession of terraces,
an arrangement that corresponds with descriptions of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

The Taylor Prism is inscribed with Sennacherib’s feats. Other prisms found at Nineveh
detail his advances in engineering and garden-building. British
Museum, London

Evidence pictures
(from
worldhistory.org)