Hanging Gardens of Babylon
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40 free Hanging Gardens of Babylon trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are the great puzzle of the ancient wonders. Greek and Roman writers described a green wonder rising above a flat river plain, yet no one has ever proved where it grew, or whether it was planted at all. This quiz gathers the best fun facts about the gardens: the king and the homesick royal of the legend, the machines said to keep the plants watered, the writers who passed the story on, and the modern digs and rival theories that keep the argument alive. It suits history fans, students working on the ancient wonders, and anyone who wants a few surprising facts for a quiz night. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01The Greek word behind the Hanging Gardens of Babylon's name describes trees planted on what kind of structure?
Raised terraces
Raised terraces are what the Greek kremastos, 'overhanging', points to, so nothing dangled from ropes: the greenery spilled over the edges of stacked levels.
Q 02Which Iraqi leader had ancient Babylon rebuilt atop its ruins using bricks inscribed with his own name?
Saddam Hussein
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.
Q 03The vaulted rooms a German excavator hailed as the cellar of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were most likely what?
A storeroom
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.
Q 04Which water-lifting device did ancient writers say carried river water to the top of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?
Archimedes' screw
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.
Q 05Which other ancient wonder, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, was not a Greek creation and alone still stands?
Great Pyramid of Giza
The Great Pyramid of Giza is by far the oldest of the seven, and the other five were all celebrations of Greek building skill.
Q 06Which Greek historian described Babylon in his Histories yet never once mentioned the Hanging Gardens?
Herodotus
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.
Q 07Which conqueror died in 323 BC inside the Babylon palace of Nebuchadnezzar II, the king linked to the Hanging Gardens?
Alexander the Great
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.
Q 08The ruins of Babylon, legendary home of the Hanging Gardens, lie about 85 km south of which modern capital city?
Baghdad
Baghdad sits north of the ruins, which sprawl over about 1,000 hectares and were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019.
Q 09The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were said to be planted to resemble which natural feature for a homesick queen?
A mountain
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.
Q 10Which Median princess, wife of Nebuchadnezzar II, is the legendary reason the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built?
Amytis
Amytis's marriage is said to have sealed an alliance between the Median and Babylonian dynasties, though no Babylonian record ever names her.
Q 11Which river, flowing through the middle of Babylon, was said to supply the water for the Hanging Gardens?
Euphrates
The Euphrates has since shifted course, and some archaeologists think any remains of the gardens lie beneath its waters, where digging is unsafe.
Q 12Which blue-glazed entrance to Babylon, built by the king credited with the Hanging Gardens, stands rebuilt in Berlin?
Ishtar Gate
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.
Q 13Etemenanki, the great ziggurat that rose over Babylon, is sometimes identified with which structure in the Bible?
Tower of Babel
Q 21Where is an Assyrian palace relief of a royal garden that some link to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon kept?
British Museum
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.
Q 22Diodorus Siculus compared the overall look of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to which kind of building?
A theatre
A theatre was his comparison because the approach sloped like a hillside and each section rose behind the last, like banks of seats.
Q 23Diodorus Siculus wrote that reeds laid in which sticky substance helped waterproof the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?
Bitumen
The Tower of Babel is one identification for Etemenanki, whose foundations were uncovered by the same dig that searched for the Hanging Gardens.
Q 14Which biblical book shows Nebuchadnezzar II, legendary builder of the Hanging Gardens, living like an animal?
Daniel
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.
Q 15Which city did Nebuchadnezzar II, the king credited with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, besiege and destroy in 587 BC?
Jerusalem
Jerusalem fell after a long siege, and much of its population was marched east into what became known as the Babylonian captivity.
Q 16Which conqueror took Babylon, city of the Hanging Gardens, in 539 BC, reportedly by diverting its river?
Cyrus the Great
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.
Q 17Which Assyrian king, who razed Babylon in 689 BC, do some scholars credit with building the real Hanging Gardens?
Sennacherib
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.
Q 18Scholar Stephanie Dalley argues the Hanging Gardens of Babylon really stood in which Assyrian capital on the Tigris?
Nineveh
Nineveh, opposite modern Mosul, had a famous royal garden, and Dalley thinks later writers muddled the two cities over the intervening centuries.
Q 19Which German archaeologist dug at Babylon from 1899 and believed he had unearthed the Hanging Gardens' vaulted cellar?
Robert Koldewey
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.
Q 20Which legendary Assyrian queen is also credited with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, sometimes named after her?
Semiramis
Semiramis grew out of a real Assyrian queen, Shammuramat, although the historian Diodorus insisted the gardens were not her work.
Bitumen, a natural tar, was so plentiful in Babylonia that Diodorus says ordinary people gathered it freely for their own use.
Q 24Which first-century Jewish historian preserved the earliest known account of the Hanging Gardens by quoting a lost work?
Josephus
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.
Q 25Which other feature of Babylon did the poet Antipater of Sidon list among his seven wonders, beside the Hanging Gardens?
Its walls
Its walls, said to be broad enough for chariots to race along the top, took the place the Lighthouse holds on the modern list.
Q 26An Assyrian king's two-million-stone structure at Jerwan is sometimes called the world's oldest example of what?
An aqueduct
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.
Q 27Diodorus Siculus wrote that a later king built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to please which member of his household?
A concubine
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.
Q 28Which Babylonian priest, writing around 290 BC, left the earliest known mention of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?
Berossus
Berossus wrote his history of Babylonia in Greek for a Macedonian king, and it survives only in quotations by later authors.
Q 29The priest who wrote the earliest account of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon served which chief god of the city?
Marduk
Marduk was commonly addressed by the title Bel, meaning Lord, and the dragons on the city's glazed ceremonial entrance were his symbol.
Q 30Diodorus Siculus and Curtius Rufus name no builder of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, only a king from which land?
Syria
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.