40 Fun Facts About Hanging Gardens of Babylon

The Greek word behind the Hanging Gardens of Babylon's name describes trees planted on what kind of structure?

Raised terraces are what the Greek kremastos, 'overhanging', points to, so nothing dangled from ropes: the greenery spilled over the edges of stacked levels.

Which Iraqi leader had ancient Babylon rebuilt atop its ruins using bricks inscribed with his own name?

Saddam Hussein was copying Nebuchadnezzar II, who stamped his own bricks some 2,500 years earlier. The modern ones became collector's items after the dictator fell.

The vaulted rooms a German excavator hailed as the cellar of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were most likely what?

A storeroom is the likeliest reading, because clay tablets listing supplies and rations turned up in the ruins, and the spot lay too far from the river to water a garden.

Which water-lifting device did ancient writers say carried river water to the top of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

Archimedes' screw, a turning spiral inside a tube, is the method two ancient accounts agree on, with the water drawn up from the river that ran beside the gardens.

Which other ancient wonder, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, was not a Greek creation and alone still stands?

The Great Pyramid of Giza is by far the oldest of the seven, and the other five were all celebrations of Greek building skill.

Which Greek historian described Babylon in his Histories yet never once mentioned the Hanging Gardens?

Herodotus wrote about the city in the 5th century BC without a word on its most famous feature, one reason some scholars doubt the gardens ever grew there.

Which conqueror died in 323 BC inside the Babylon palace of Nebuchadnezzar II, the king linked to the Hanging Gardens?

Alexander the Great took the city in 331 BC, and lost accounts by historians in his train are thought to lie behind the later Greek descriptions of the gardens.

The ruins of Babylon, legendary home of the Hanging Gardens, lie about 85 km south of which modern capital city?

Baghdad sits north of the ruins, which sprawl over about 1,000 hectares and were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were said to be planted to resemble which natural feature for a homesick queen?

A mountain of greenery was the idea: the earliest account says the king wanted the view to be an exact likeness of the high country where his queen grew up.

Which Median princess, wife of Nebuchadnezzar II, is the legendary reason the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built?

Amytis's marriage is said to have sealed an alliance between the Median and Babylonian dynasties, though no Babylonian record ever names her.

Which river, flowing through the middle of Babylon, was said to supply the water for the Hanging Gardens?

The Euphrates has since shifted course, and some archaeologists think any remains of the gardens lie beneath its waters, where digging is unsafe.

Which blue-glazed entrance to Babylon, built by the king credited with the Hanging Gardens, stands rebuilt in Berlin?

The Ishtar Gate was the grandest of the city's eight entrances, and its bulls and dragons were pieced back together in one of archaeology's most complex reconstructions.

Etemenanki, the great ziggurat that rose over Babylon, is sometimes identified with which structure in the Bible?

The Tower of Babel is one identification for Etemenanki, whose foundations were uncovered by the same dig that searched for the Hanging Gardens.

Which biblical book shows Nebuchadnezzar II, legendary builder of the Hanging Gardens, living like an animal?

Daniel interprets the king's dream as a warning of seven years of madness, a tale scholars think was borrowed from a later Babylonian ruler, Nabonidus.

Which city did Nebuchadnezzar II, the king credited with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, besiege and destroy in 587 BC?

Jerusalem fell after a long siege, and much of its population was marched east into what became known as the Babylonian captivity.

Which conqueror took Babylon, city of the Hanging Gardens, in 539 BC, reportedly by diverting its river?

Cyrus the Great is said to have struck during a Babylonian feast, ending the empire of Nebuchadnezzar II just 23 years after that king's death.

Which Assyrian king, who razed Babylon in 689 BC, do some scholars credit with building the real Hanging Gardens?

Sennacherib boasted in his own inscriptions of a palace garden he called a wonder for all peoples, watered by canals he had cut from the mountains.

Scholar Stephanie Dalley argues the Hanging Gardens of Babylon really stood in which Assyrian capital on the Tigris?

Nineveh, opposite modern Mosul, had a famous royal garden, and Dalley thinks later writers muddled the two cities over the intervening centuries.

Which German archaeologist dug at Babylon from 1899 and believed he had unearthed the Hanging Gardens' vaulted cellar?

Robert Koldewey spent fifteen years at the site with more than 200 workers digging daily, and developed a technique for excavating fragile mud-brick architecture.

Which legendary Assyrian queen is also credited with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, sometimes named after her?

Semiramis grew out of a real Assyrian queen, Shammuramat, although the historian Diodorus insisted the gardens were not her work.

Where is an Assyrian palace relief of a royal garden that some link to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon kept?

The British Museum holds one original panel and a drawing of another, and several features the Greek writers described can be picked out in the carving.

Diodorus Siculus compared the overall look of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to which kind of building?

A theatre was his comparison because the approach sloped like a hillside and each section rose behind the last, like banks of seats.

Diodorus Siculus wrote that reeds laid in which sticky substance helped waterproof the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

Bitumen, a natural tar, was so plentiful in Babylonia that Diodorus says ordinary people gathered it freely for their own use.

Which first-century Jewish historian preserved the earliest known account of the Hanging Gardens by quoting a lost work?

Josephus copied the passage from a Babylonian priest's history written about 290 BC, the only ancient source to name Nebuchadnezzar II as the builder.

Which other feature of Babylon did the poet Antipater of Sidon list among his seven wonders, beside the Hanging Gardens?

Its walls, said to be broad enough for chariots to race along the top, took the place the Lighthouse holds on the modern list.

An Assyrian king's two-million-stone structure at Jerwan is sometimes called the world's oldest example of what?

An aqueduct of white limestone, it fed the royal gardens that some scholars believe were the real Hanging Gardens, centuries before Rome built its own.

Diodorus Siculus wrote that a later king built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to please which member of his household?

A concubine, not a wife, is the woman in his telling: she longed for the meadows of her homeland and asked the king to copy its landscape.

Which Babylonian priest, writing around 290 BC, left the earliest known mention of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

Berossus wrote his history of Babylonia in Greek for a Macedonian king, and it survives only in quotations by later authors.

The priest who wrote the earliest account of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon served which chief god of the city?

Marduk was commonly addressed by the title Bel, meaning Lord, and the dragons on the city's glazed ceremonial entrance were his symbol.

Diodorus Siculus and Curtius Rufus name no builder of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, only a king from which land?

Syria is all the two writers offer, and one scholar takes the vague label as a clue that the builder was not Nebuchadnezzar II at all.

Which Assyrian king, famed for his library, had a palace panel carved with a garden some link to the Hanging Gardens?

Ashurbanipal was the grandson of the king who planted that garden, and his panel shows it fully grown.

An Assyrian king linked to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon boasted of a new way to cast 30-tonne objects in which metal?

Bronze castings of that size normally relied on the lost-wax method, and the king claimed to be the first to replace it.

Legend says the Hanging Gardens of Babylon stood beside a grand palace of Nebuchadnezzar II known by what name?

The Marvel of Mankind is the name legend gives the palace, though the king's own long building inscriptions never mention a garden beside it.

Babylon, legendary home of the Hanging Gardens, lay in the south of which ancient region watered by two great rivers?

Mesopotamia was dotted with older, stronger states such as Isin and Larsa, which overshadowed the city until it became an imperial capital.

The ancient Greeks called the Seven Wonders, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon among them, theamata, a word meaning what?

Sights, or things to be seen, fits the list's purpose: it worked as a travel guidebook for Greek tourists after the conquests of the 4th century BC.

Nebuchadnezzar II's inscriptions, which never mention the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, were written in which script?

Cuneiform records of the king's building works are long and detailed, which makes their silence about any garden hard to explain.

Which Indian city has its own Hanging Gardens, a hilltop park laid out in 1881 above its main reservoir?

Mumbai's Hanging Gardens top Malabar Hill, and locals say they were laid over the reservoir to shield its water from the nearby Towers of Silence.

The ruins of Babylon, legendary site of the Hanging Gardens, sit beside which modern Iraqi city in Babil province?

Hillah gives its name to the Shatt Al-Hillah, the branch of the great river that roughly bisects the ancient site.

In Diodorus Siculus's version, the woman behind the Hanging Gardens of Babylon longed for the meadows of which homeland?

Persia is the homeland he names, unlike the better-known version in which the homesick woman is a princess from Media.

Diodorus Siculus wrote that a layer of which metal stopped moisture seeping down through the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

Lead sheeting was the top of three protective layers, laid over two courses of baked brick bonded with cement.