The Hanging Gardens of — the Wrong Place

Posted by -

So, how about those Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, huh? Really impressive things worth writing home about... Except for one, all we have are stories and historical records. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon have been misnamed for more than one reason.

According to traditional accounts, the gardens did not exactly hang, but were grown on roofs and things in the palace of Babylon. But the moniker did not get corrected. History is sketchy about them, and not written by eyewitnesses. Checking more closely, they were probably in a different location altogether.

All but one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World exist only in historical records. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were probably somewhere else.
Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Wikimedia Commons / 19th century illustration (PD)
People who bother to read their Bibles should recognize the name of Assyria. It was a kingdom. Vicious, nasty people at times. That was a reason Jonah did not want to obey God and call Nineveh, the capital, to repentance. He wanted God to punish them, and was disappointed that they did repent for a while. Later on, they went back to being bad dudes.

Assyria ruled Babylon and gave it some degree of independence. Indeed, Babylon and Assyria traded off taking each other over until Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II ruined it as a power. Yes, this does apply to the Hanging Gardens. Kingdoms conquered each other, and historical records became mixed up (further illustrating the Divine Providence in preserving the historicity of the Bible). Don't lose trivia games over this, but the Hanging Gardens were probably in Ninevah!

A recent article in Biblical Archaeology Review postulates that the famous hanging gardens were in Assyria, not Babylon. They offer some compelling historical and archaeological evidences. The first is that there are no official mentions or evidences of the hanging gardens ever having been in Babylon until the Babylonian priest Berossus, stated such in about 290 BC in his book Babyloniaca (History of Babylonia). Josephus writing in c. AD 80 also mentioned the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and a few other historians did as well, but all well after Babylon had been conquered and fallen into ruin.

Read the rest, for old times' sake, by visiting "Have We Been Looking for This Historical Wonder in the Wrong Place?"