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Those
frequent TV documentaries about ancient cities and civilisations that promise
to provide the key to hitherto unresolved mysteries can often turn out to be
disappointing and even, in some cases, rather boring – these last best serving
as a cure for insomnia.
Such was by
no means the case, however, with Dr. Stephanie Dalley’s TV doco, “Finding
Babylon’s Hanging Gardens”, which wonderfully solved an age-old problem.
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A Synopsis of this highly absorbing program
prepares us for what to expect from Dr. Dalley (http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/204433475546/finding-babylons-hanging-gardens):
A
world wonder so elusive, most people have decided it must be mythical.
Centuries of digging have turned up nothing. The problem is, everyone has been
looking in the wrong place. This documentary will prove the Hanging Gardens of
Babylon did exist. Based on the latest findings of leading Assyriologist Dr
Stephanie Dalley, for the first time ever it pinpoints exactly where the
Gardens were, what they looked like and how they were constructed. This
investigation unfolds through over-looked clues in the British Museum,
interrogation of established sources, new archaeological evidence in Northern
Iraq and CGI reconstruction of the Gardens in their full glory. (From the UK).
….
A more complete account is given by C.
Klein, referring to Dr. Dalley’s book on the subject:
Hanging Gardens Existed, but not in Babylon
Mythology shrouds each of the Seven
Wonders of the Ancient World, but none has been more mysterious than the
Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Archaeologists have never unearthed evidence of the
soaring gardens, and scholars have questioned its very existence. Now, however,
an Oxford University researcher says she knows why the Hanging Gardens of
Babylon have proven so elusive. It’s because they weren’t in Babylon at all.
Greek and Roman texts paint vivid
pictures of the luxurious Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Amid the hot, arid
landscape of ancient Babylon, lush vegetation cascaded like waterfalls down the
terraces of the 75-foot-high garden. Exotic plants, herbs and flowers dazzled
the eyes, and fragrances wafted through the towering botanical oasis dotted
with statues and tall stone columns.
Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II was
said to have constructed the luxurious Hanging Gardens in the sixth century
B.C. as a gift to his wife, Amytis, who was homesick for the beautiful
vegetation and mountains of her native Media (the northwestern part of
modern-day Iran). To make the desert bloom, a marvel of irrigation engineering
would have been required. Scientists have surmised that a system of pumps,
waterwheels and cisterns would have been employed to raise and deliver the
water from the nearby Euphrates River to the top of the gardens.
The multiple Greek and Roman accounts
of the Hanging Gardens, however, were second-hand–written centuries after the
wonder’s alleged destruction. First-hand accounts did not exist, and for
centuries, archaeologists have hunted in vain for the remains of the gardens. A
group of German archaeologists even spent two decades at the turn of the 20th
century trying to unearth signs of the ancient wonder without any luck. The
lack of any relics has caused skeptics to question whether the supposed desert
wonder was just an “historical mirage.”
However, Dr. Stephanie Dalley, an
honorary research fellow and part of the Oriental Institute at England’s Oxford
University, believes she has found evidence of the existence of the legendary
Wonder of the Ancient World. In her soon-to-be-released book “The Mystery of
the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced,” published by
Oxford University Press, Dalley asserts 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.
Dalley, who has spent the better part
of two decades researching the Hanging Gardens and studying ancient cuneiform
texts, believes they were constructed 300 miles to the north of Babylon in
Nineveh, the capital of the rival Assyrian empire. She asserts the Assyrian
king Sennacherib, not Nebuchadnezzar II, built the marvel in the early seventh
century B.C., a century earlier than scholars had previously thought.
According to Oxford University,
Dalley, who is a scholar in ancient Mesopotamian languages, found evidence in
new translations of the ancient texts of King Sennacherib that describe his own
“unrivaled palace” and a “wonder for all peoples.” He also mentioned a bronze
water-raising screw—similar to Archimedes’ screw developed four centuries
later—that could have been used to irrigate the gardens.
Recent excavations around Nineveh,
near the modern-day Iraqi city of Mosul, have uncovered evidence of an
extensive aqueduct system that delivered water from the mountains with the
inscription: “Sennacherib king of the world…Over a great distance I had a
watercourse directed to the environs of Nineveh.” Bas reliefs from the royal
palace in Nineveh depicted a lush garden watered by an aqueduct, and unlike the
flat surroundings of Babylon, the more rugged topography around the Assyrian
capital would have made the logistical challenges in elevating water to the
gardens far easier for an ancient civilization to overcome.
Dalley explains that the reason for
the confusion of the location of the gardens could be due to the Assyrian
conquering of Babylon in 689 B.C. Following the takeover, Nineveh was referred
to as the “New Babylon,” and Sennacherib even renamed the city gates after
those of Babylon’s entrances. Dalley’s assertions could debunk thoughts that
the elusive ancient wonder was an “historical mirage,” but they could also
prove that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are mislabeled and should truly be
the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh.
But Why Did the Ancients Attribute the
Famous Gardens to King Nebuchednezzar?
Were the
Greeks and the Romans wrong about both the location of the Gardens and the name
of the king who created them?
Whilst it
appears from Dr. Stephanie
Dalley’s
research that they did indeed get the location wrong, I do not believe that
they were wrong in attributing this ‘Wonder of the World’ to a King
Nebuchednezzar. For I, in my university thesis:
A
Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and
its Background
(Volume
One, Chapter 7) argued that Sennacherib, as ruler of the Babylon which he had
conquered, was actually called “Nebuchednezzar”. That he was the Nebuchednezzar
I of the so-called Middle Babylonian period, as opposed to the Nebuchednezzar
II ‘the Great’ of a later era, to whose genius the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
have traditionally been attributed. And I took this further in Volume Two of my
thesis, centring upon the question of the historicity of the Book of Judith,
where I identified the “Nebuchadnezzar who
reigned over the Assyrians in the great city of Nineveh” (Judith 1:1) with Sennacherib (Nebuchednezzar
I).
This radical
revision involved a folding of C12th BC (conventional dating) Middle
Assyro-Babylonian history with C8th BC neo-Assyro-Babylonian history, which
also has some art-historical justification. For a briefer account of all of
this, see my:
Bringing New Order to Mesopotamian History and Chronology
As I have
shown in various articles, there are other phases of Assyro-Babylonian history,
too, that require folding.
Concluding remark
Whilst the retrospective Greco-Romans were admittedly somewhat
confused about the proper geography and chronology of the famous “Hanging
Gardens”, they had apparently discerned quite correctly that these were the
grand achievement of a king named “Nebuchednezzar”, who had ruled the city of
Babylon.
