7 wonders of the world one of them is the hanging gardens. Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Seven wonders of the world- these words have become firmly established in everyday life. They are used when they want to emphasize the outstanding merits of either a work of art, or a grandiose structure, or a scientific discovery. More often than others, ancient authors included among the seven wonders of the world:
Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built at a time when the Odyssey already existed and Greek cities were being built. And at the same time, the gardens are much closer to the ancient Egyptian world than to the Greek world. The gardens mark the decline of the Assyro-Babylonian power, a contemporary of ancient Egypt and its rival. And if the pyramids survived everyone and are alive today, then the Hanging Gardens turned out to be short-lived and disappeared along with Babylon - a majestic, but not durable giant made of clay.
Babylon was already heading towards sunset. It ceased to be the capital of a great power and was turned by the Persian conquerors into the center of one of the satrapies, when the troops of Alexander the Great entered there - a man who, although he did not build any of the wonders of the world, influenced to one degree or another the fate of many great monuments of the past, for their creation or destruction.
In 331 BC, the inhabitants of Babylon sent envoys to the Macedonians with an invitation to enter Babylon in peace. Alexander was struck by the wealth and grandeur of the largest city in the world, although in decline, and stayed there. In Babylon, Alexander was greeted as a liberator. And ahead lay the whole world that had to be conquered.
Less than ten years have passed since the circle has closed. The Lord of the East Alexander, tired, exhausted by the inhuman stress of the last eight years, but full of plans and plans, returned to Babylon. He was already ready to conquer Egypt and march to the West in order to subjugate Carthage, Italy and Spain and reach the limit of the then world - the Pillars of Hercules. But in the midst of preparations for the campaign, he fell ill. For several days Alexander struggled with illness, conferred with the generals, and prepared the fleet for the campaign. The city was hot and dusty. The summer sun, through the haze, tilted the red walls of multi-story buildings. During the day, the noisy bazaars fell silent, deafened by an unprecedented flow of goods - cheap slaves and jewelry brought by soldiers from the Indian borders - easy-to-get, easy-to-go booty. The heat and dust penetrated even through the thick walls of the palace, and Alexander was suffocating - for all these years he had never been able to get used to the heat of his eastern possessions. He was afraid to die not because he was in awe of death - he looked closely at it, a stranger and his own, in battles. But death, understandable and even acceptable ten years ago, was now unthinkable for him, a living god. Alexander did not want to die here, in the dusty stuffiness of a foreign city, so far from the shady oak forests of Macedonia, without completing his fate. After all, if the world so obediently lay down at the feet of his horses, then it means that the second half of the world must join the first. He could not die without seeing and conquering the West.
And when the bishop felt very bad, he remembered the only place in Babylon where he should feel better, because it was there that he caught, remembered - and, having remembered, was surprised - the aroma of Macedonian, filled with the bright sun, the murmuring of a brook and the smell of forest herbs. Alexander, still great, still alive, at the last stop on the path to immortality, ordered himself to be transferred to the Hanging Gardens...
Nebuchadnezzar, who created these gardens, was guided by the noble whim of a despot, for despots also have noble whims - for some, but never for everyone. Nebuchadnezzar loved his young wife, a Median princess, who yearned in dusty and green Babylon for fresh air and the rustle of trees. The Babylonian king did not move the capital to the green hills of Media, but did something that is inaccessible to other mortals. He brought here, to the center of the hot valley, the illusion of those hills.
All the forces of the ancient kingdom, all the experience of its builders and mathematicians, were thrown into the construction of the gardens, a shelter for the queen. Babylon proved to the whole world that it could create the world's first monument in honor of love. And the name of the queen was fabulously mixed in the memory of descendants with the name of another, Assyrian ruler, and the gardens became known as the gardens of Semiramis - perhaps it was the jealousy of human memory, for which a great deed should be associated with a great name. Queen Tamara never lived in the castle named after her, and never, being a pious woman who loved her second husband and children, never thought about throwing unlucky lovers off the cliffs. But the tragedy must be sanctified by a great name: otherwise it lacks drama.
The gardens created by the builders of Babylon were four-tiered. The vaults of the tiers rested on columns twenty-five meters high. The platforms of the tiers, made of flat stone slabs, were covered with a layer of reeds, filled with asphalt and covered with lead leaves to prevent water from leaking into the lower tier. On top of this was a layer of earth sufficient for large trees to grow here. The tiers, rising in ledges, were connected by wide, gentle stairs lined with colored tiles.
Construction was still going on, brick factories were still smoking, where wide flat bricks were fired, endless caravans of carts with fertile river silt were still wandering from the lower reaches of the Euphrates, and seeds of rare herbs and bushes and tree seedlings had already arrived from the north. In winter, when it became cooler, large trees, carefully wrapped in damp matting, began to arrive in the city on heavy carts drawn by oxen.
Nebuchadnezzar proved his love. Above the hundred-meter walls of Babylon, so wide that two chariots could pass on them, rose the green cap of the garden trees. From the upper tier, basking in the cool shade, listening to the murmur of water jets - day and night slaves pumped water from the Euphrates for many kilometers around the queen saw only the green land of her power.
With the death of Alexander the Great, his empire instantly crumbled, torn to pieces by arrogant commanders. And Babylon did not have to become the capital of the world again. He withered away, life gradually left him. The flood destroyed Nebuchadnezzar's palace, the bricks of the hastily built gardens were not fired enough, high columns collapsed, platforms and stairs collapsed. True, the trees and exotic flowers died much earlier: there was no one to pump water from the Euphrates day and night.
Today, guides in Babylon point to one of the clay brown hills, stuffed, like all the hills of Babylon, with fragments of bricks and fragments of tiles, like the remains of the gardens of Babylon.
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In the list of seven wonders of the world, the second wonder is considered Hanging Gardens of Babylon. This truly legendary structure was created in 605 BC. However, already in 562 BC. this architectural masterpiece was destroyed by floods.
Despite the well-established connection between the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the name of the Assyrian queen, Semiramis, who lived around 800 BC, scientists consider this a misconception. In fact, the official version of the origin of this wonder of the world is as follows.
Nebuchadnezzar II fought against Assyria. In order to strengthen the army, an alliance was concluded with the Median king. After destroying the enemy, Nebuchadnezzar II decided to marry the daughter of the Median sovereign. But the dusty city of Babylon, standing essentially in the desert, could not be compared with the green and blooming Media.
It was for this reason that the ambitious ruler decided to build the Babylonian Hanging Gardens. By the way, the queen’s name was Amytis, so it would be more correct to call the second of the seven wonders of the world by this name. But the unforgettable Semiramis, who was also an extraordinary person, was entrenched in history, although she lived two centuries earlier.
Interesting facts about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Surprisingly, the unique building included in the building was not new at that time. It’s just that Nebuchadnezzar II, under whom many architectural masterpieces were built, managed to supply water to his hanging gardens in an unusual way.
An interesting fact is that the described structure consisted of four levels. Each of them had many cool rooms where the royal family walked during the heat of the day. The building's vaults were supported by 25-meter columns at each level. The fortified terraces were covered with earth, the thickness of which was sufficient for trees to grow there.
To prevent liquid from leaking to the lower floors, the platforms of each tier, consisting of huge slabs, were covered with leaves and covered with asphalt. Water was supplied upward using a specially designed mechanism pumping it from the Euphrates River.
To do this, the slaves turned a huge wheel, irrigating the Hanging Gardens of Babylon with a sufficient amount of moisture. The hundred-meter walls of Babylon and the crowns of trees towering above them instilled in everyone who saw this wonder of the world the thought of the power and strength of the kingdom. And proud Amytis, to whom this grandiose building was actually dedicated, enjoyed the greenery of flowering plants stretching for many kilometers around.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were built around the 5th century BC by the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II. Nowadays, there is probably not a single person who has not heard of them, although the gardens themselves have not existed for a long time. This structure is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, a list of which was compiled back in the days of Ancient Greece. What made the Greeks classify them as miracles? And where did these gardens go? These are questions to which it is interesting to look for answers.
Mysteries of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Firstly, it is immediately noticeable that the name “Hanging Gardens of Babylon” is not always accepted by researchers as the only correct one. Some believe that Semiramis was not the wife of the king who brought her from distant Media, but a local Assyrian queen. Others say that Nebuchadnezzar built them in honor of a completely different woman, while his wife was named Nina. In the West, the name “Hanging Gardens of Babylon” took root after the name of the city where they were located for such a long time.
Secondly, it is unclear how long these gardens lasted. If Nebuchadnezzar died in 561 BC, and Alexander the Great visited them shortly before his death in 309 BC, then it turns out that the “miracle” lasted more than 250 years. This is all the more surprising since the gardens are actually complex technical structures that required daily maintenance. Historians write that hundreds of slaves lifted tens of thousands of water containers here every day with the help of special devices.
Why the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is one of the Seven Wonders of the World
In general, this building could easily be considered a miracle even today if it had survived until this time. Imagine that only the height of the lower columns was 25 meters, and this is the height of a nine-story building! The rest of the building rested on these columns - a huge four-tier pyramid, with a real evergreen garden planted on its slopes. Indeed, the impression of such a scale could take the breath away of anyone who saw this miracle. To top it all off, imagine a dull sandy and rocky area where there is not a single spot of greenery, and in the middle of it is a towering man-made oasis, shining with the beauty and splendor of nature.
In fact, the Gardens of Babylon are, in fact, a palace. With columns, terraces, rooms, stairs. There were more than 170 rooms in it alone! And although the building itself was not so large in area, the entire territory with a wall and a moat with water occupied a significant space. A real garden was planted on each tier. Almost all deciduous trees, most shrubs and flowers grew here.
What happened to Nebuchadnezzar's building?
After the death of Nebuchadnezzar, the gardens gradually fell into disrepair. The Babylonian kingdom itself was being destroyed, which means there was no longer the material and financial support that was needed to keep this structure in order. First, the gardens dried up, and gradually the entire palace fell into disrepair. Major flood in the 1st century BC The walls were washed away and they collapsed along with the rest of the building. Time and water completed the destruction, and now all that remains of the miracle is a small pile of stones and the remains of a foundation near the modern city of Hilla in Iraq.
The Hanging Gardens in Babylon are an example of how aesthetically any area can be organized using the natural beauty of plants. There are only a small number of hanging gardens of any significance in the world today, although on a small scale such a work of art can be organized even in your own estate. Instead, landscape design that is guided by the same principles of the unity of nature and human craftsmanship is increasingly important. Experienced specialists are able to create a “miracle of the world”, but as if in a horizontal plane, transforming a personal plot into an oasis with beautiful small architectural forms.
Continuing the section of stories about the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, we move on to a story filled with pure love, nostalgia and desperate heroism - the legend of the birth of the second wonder of the world. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon left a huge imprint on the souls of ancient historians and eyewitnesses of this creation. The once majestic work of art, buried under a layer of sand and dust, hides many mysteries and secrets.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (or Babylon), unfortunately, could not stand the test of time, and to this day, alas, only a pitiful mention of their former luxury and splendor has survived. The gardens are younger than the Great Pyramids of Egypt, and their creation is attributed to the period of decline of the Babylonian Empire, the bitter rival of Ancient Egypt.
According to the generally accepted version, the gardens are in no way connected with Queen Semiramis, the founder of Babylon, who turned into a dove at the end of her reign. A more accurate name would be the Hanging Gardens of Amitis. Amytis was a Median princess, the daughter of the ruler of Ancient Media, Cyaxares, who, in order to strengthen his territorial positions, entered into an alliance with the Babylonian ruler, Nebuchadnezzar II (VII-VI centuries BC). And the latter, for the benefit of consolidating this union, received a young princess as his wife.
Babylon in those days was a real commercial vein, life in it was noisy, fast and hectic. And the sultry heat of the arid climate and dust made the ancient city-state by no means a heavenly place to live. It is not surprising that the young queen of Babylon began to quickly wither away under the scorching sun, surrounded only by sands. She complained of illnesses and longed for the green, cool, lush valleys of her homeland. King Nebuchadnezzar was madly in love with his wife and could not allow the young queen to wither like an unwatered flower. Being a despot by nature, mercilessly capturing and burning entire cities, he nevertheless succumbed to the dictates of his heart and ordered the construction of an “island” of fragrant Media on the deserted land of Babylon. It is also widely believed that he did this not out of great love for his companion, but out of his own vanity, in order to perpetuate his name in history.
To create such an unusual structure, the most famous architects, engineers and mathematicians of that time were convened in Babylon. The task seemed unrealistic - to build a real tropical garden on an arid plain. But, despite the difficulties that arose, the builders managed to cope with everything, and the mysterious wonder of the world was born. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were made in the form of a stepped pyramid with a square base and four tiers. The tiers rested on columns reaching 25 meters in height and had a complex ceiling, which was laid out with baked bricks, knitted reeds, resin and lead sheets. This “layered” floor prevented water from seeping into the lower tier. Then all this was covered with a thick layer of fertile black soil. Already during construction, carts with seeds and seedlings of the most exquisite plants, exotic flowers, shrubs and even trees began to arrive from all corners of the world.
What attracts our attention is not only the structure itself, but also the technology of plant irrigation. Presumably, this system involves the so-called “Archimedean screws”: slaves, numbering more than a hundred, had to turn a huge wheel day and night in order to raise the water of their Euphrates through pipes located in the columns to the upper tier, from where it could flow through the channels drain, feeding the plants.
The pyramid with gardens from afar looked like a real blooming oasis in the middle of the desert, which became a refuge for Queen Amytis, in whose cool she could hide from the heat and noise of the Babylonian streets. However, the magnificent creation of the mind and imagination was not destined to exist forever: after the death of Amytis, the garden was no longer properly cared for. And when the Persians in 539 BC. conquered Babylon, the entire palace (along with the gardens) fell into disrepair, and only rare delegations traveling around the domain began to visit it. Then Alexander the Great, who took Babylon without a fight, made the palace his residence; he really enjoyed spending time in the shady rooms of the hanging gardens. The place reminded him of home, of the fragrant forests of Macedonia. It is believed that it was in the gardens of Babylon that Alexander ended his journey on earth in order to set off on the road leading straight to immortality. After the death of the Great Conqueror, the pyramid began to collapse, the foundation was eroded by winds and floods, the columns fell, and the entire structure crumbled.
Presumably, the ruins of the gardens are located on the territory of modern Iraq, 80 kilometers from Baghdad.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are shrouded in a veil of mystery. Archaeologists are still arguing about when, where and why they were built. Why do the ancient historians who visited Babylon not mention anything about them, when, as if they had never seen them, they describe them in every detail? Why is there not a word about gardens in the annals of Babylon? Why are the gardens named after another queen? Some do not believe in the existence of gardens at all, calling them a wild imagination, copied from book to book.
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However, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and everyone is free to decide for themselves what to believe and what not to believe.
The existence of one of the wonders of the world - the Hanging Gardens of Babylon - is questioned by many scientists and they claim that it is nothing more than a figment of the imagination of an ancient chronicler, whose idea was picked up by his colleagues and began to be carefully copied from chronicle to chronicle. They justify their assertion by the fact that the Gardens of Babylon are most carefully described by those who have never seen them, while historians who have visited ancient Babylon are silent about the miracle erected there.
Archaeological excavations have shown that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon still existed. Naturally, they did not hang on ropes, but were a four-story building, built in the shape of a pyramid with a huge amount of vegetation, and were part of the palace building. This unique structure received its name due to an incorrect translation of the Greek word “kremastos”, which actually means “hanging” (for example, from a terrace).
The unique gardens were erected by order of the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II, who lived in the 7th century. BC. He built them especially for his wife Amytis, daughter of Cyaxares, king of Media (it was with him that the Babylonian ruler entered into an alliance against the common enemy, Assyria - and won the final victory over this state).
Amitis, who grew up among the mountains of green and fertile Media, did not like dusty and noisy Babylon, located on a sandy plain. The Babylonian ruler was faced with a choice: move the capital closer to his wife’s homeland or make her stay in Babylon more comfortable. They decided to build hanging gardens that would remind the queen of her homeland. Where exactly they are located, history is silent, and therefore there are several hypotheses:
- The main version says that this wonder of the world is located near the modern city of Hilla, which is located on the Ephrat River in the center of Iraq.
- An alternative version, based on re-decipherment of cuneiform tablets, states that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are located in Nineveh, the capital of Assyria (located in the north of modern Iraq), which after its fall was transferred to the Babylonian state.
What the gardens looked like
The very idea of creating hanging gardens in the middle of a dry plain seemed simply fantastic at that time. The local architects and engineers of the ancient world were able to accomplish this task - and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which were later included in the list of the Seven Wonders of the World, were built, became part of the palace and were located on its north-eastern side.
The structure created by ancient masters resembled an ever-blooming green hill, since it consisted of four floors (platforms), which rose above each other in the shape of a stepped pyramid, connected by wide staircases made of white and pink slabs. We learned the description of this wonder of the world thanks to the “History” of Herodotus, who quite possibly saw them with his own eyes.
The platforms were installed on columns about 25 meters high - this height was needed so that the plants growing on each floor had good access to sunlight. The lower platform had an irregular quadrangular shape, the largest side was 42 m, the smallest was 34 m.
To prevent the water used to water the plants from seeping onto the lower platform, the surface of each tier was laid as follows:
- First, a layer of reed was laid out, which was previously mixed with resin;
- Next came two layers of bricks, fastened together with gypsum mortar;
- Lead slabs were laid on them;
- And already on these slabs such a huge layer of fertile soil was poured that trees could easily take root in it. Herbs, flowers, and shrubs were also planted here.
The gardens had a rather complex irrigation system: in the middle of one column there was a pipe through which water flowed into the garden. Every day, slaves non-stop spun a special wheel to which leather buckets were attached, thus pumping water, according to one version - from the river, according to another - from underground wells.
Water flowed through a pipe to the very top of the structure, from there it was redirected into numerous channels and flowed down to the lower terraces.
Regardless of what floor a visitor to the garden was on, he could always hear the murmur of water, and near the trees he found shade and coolness - a rare phenomenon for stuffy and hot Babylon. Despite the fact that such gardens could not compare with the nature of Queen Amytis’s native land, they were quite good at replacing her native area, representing a real miracle.
Death
After the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon was captured some time later by Alexander the Great (IV century BC), who set up his residence in the palace and met his death there. After his death, Babylon began to gradually collapse, and with it one of the wonders of the world: gardens with an artificial irrigation system and without proper care could not exist for long. After some time, they fell into disrepair, and then powerful floods of the nearby river took their toll, the foundation was washed away, the platforms fell, and the history of the amazing gardens ended.
How a unique creation of nature was found
A unique structure was discovered relatively recently, in the 19th century, by the German scientist Robert Koldewey, when during regular excavations under a multi-meter layer of clay and rubble he discovered the remains of a fortress, a palace complex and pillars made of stone (the inhabitants of Mesopotamia almost did not use this material in their architecture ).
After some time, he dug a network of intersecting canals near the city of Hilla, in the sections of which one could see traces of destroyed masonry. Then a stone well with a strange shaft, having a three-stage spiral shape, was discovered. It became obvious that the structure he discovered was erected for a specific purpose.
Since Koldewey was quite familiar with ancient literature, he knew that it only mentioned the use of stone twice in ancient Babylon - during the construction of the northern wall of the Qasr region and during the construction of a unique garden. He decided that the remains of architecture that he discovered were the vault of the basement tier of the gardens, which were later called the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (despite the fact that this Assyrian queen was an enemy of the Babylonians and lived two centuries before the unique miracle of the ancient world appeared in Babylon).
