Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt is the only one still standing today. While archaeologists and scholars have found the sites of six of these magnificent structures, the location of one has eluded them for centuries: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
The most commonly told story says the Hanging Gardens were built in the 6th century BCE under the orders of King Nebuchadnezzar II, the second king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Along with showing off his empire’s grandeur, he wanted to build the rich garden as a gift for his wife, who missed the lush greenery of her homeland.
It’s often pictured as an elaborate, terraced temple-like structure, lined with exotic plants and trees from around the empire and beyond. In ancient times, it must have been a truly awe-inspiring spectacle unlike anything else on the planet.
Since no archaeological remains have ever been unearthed, all knowledge of the site comes from ancient sources, which are often unreliable.
Even more puzzling, it’s not mentioned at all in some key sources. Take Herodotus, the famed Greek historian known as the “Father of History,” who wrote extensively about Babylon in the mid-5th century BCE, but did not make one mention of the empire’s supposedly breathtaking gardens. Many other scholars of the time also made this omission.
Map showing the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Image credit: Dimitrios Karamitros/Shutterstock.com
Geographically, the Hanging Gardens slightly stand apart from the other six Wonders. Babylon was located in the heart of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, but the others were all situated closer to the Mediterranean coastline, making them far more accessible to the ancient writers who documented them.
That said, we should be fairly confident the Gardens were located somewhere around Babylon, the ancient city found in modern-day Iraq, south of Baghdad.
Between 1899 and 1917, German archaeologist Robert Koldewey extensively excavated this Iraqi site and unearthed the ruins of an arched structure in the northeast corner of the Southern Palace. He was convinced that this structure was the foundation of the legendary Gardens. Its thick, solid walls seemed to be expertly designed to bear the weight of the immense superstructure above, plus evidence of wells suggested it had an advanced irrigation system to keep the rich vegetation hydrated.
Today, most researchers don’t buy Koldewey’s theory. A prevailing belief is that his impressive structure was, in fact, just a warehouse. Large parts of Babylon were excavated throughout the 20th century, but there’s no trace of any significant garden.
Perhaps, the Hanging Gardens were not in Babylon at all. Stephanie Dalley, a scholar and former teacher of Assyriology at the University of Oxford, put forward compelling evidence that they were actually built in Nineveh, in northern Mesopotamia, by the Assyirians – not by their southern rivals, the Babylonians. This would put the gardens in northern Iraq, closer to the modern-day city of Mosul.
Through her analysis of Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform scripts, she claims that beautifully grand gardens were built by an Assyrian king, Sennacherib, complete with complex irrigation systems, aqueducts, and a water-lifting device. The confusion, Dalley argues, emerged because of the Assyrian conquering of Babylon in 689 BCE, which led to Nineveh being referred to as the “New Babylon.”
It’s an intriguing idea, yet the physical ruins of the garden are yet to be uncovered, leaving the fate of the world’s most mysterious lost wonder remaining unsolved.
