Q 01/05

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

A) Floating rafts

B) Hanging baskets

C) Raised terraces

D) Rope bridges

Answer · why

C) 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 ...

Q 02/05

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

A) Saddam Hussein

B) King Faisal II

C) Nuri al-Said

D) Abd al-Karim Qasim

Answer · why

A) 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 ...

Q 03/05

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

A) A royal tomb

B) A bathhouse

C) A prison

D) A storeroom

Answer · why

D) 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 rive...

Q 04/05

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

A) Counterweighted shaduf

B) Archimedes' screw

C) Ox-driven water wheel

D) Bucket chain pump

Answer · why

B) 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...

Q 05/05

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

A) Great Pyramid of Giza

B) Colossus of Rhodes

C) Temple of Artemis

D) Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

Answer · why

A) 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.