Hanging Gardens of Babylon

In The History of Gardens, Christopher Thacker explores the idea of the ‘paradise garden’ as being a main element in garden history. The word ‘paradise’ comes from a Persian word pairidaeza, which describes an enclosure, and is applied to a hunting park owned by a king. Similarly, the Hebrew Bible uses pardes to indicate a garden or park enclosure (and to describe the Garden of Eden and a heavenly kingdom), and Greek uses paradeisos to mean a sumptuous, extravagant park meant for a king. The idea of a heavenly kingdom or celestial paradise is picked up later in medieval gardens.

One paradise garden is the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which was reportedly built by King Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC) for one of his young wives who missed the lush mountains of her childhood home. The Hanging Gardens are listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The garden is described as being a terraced structure crowned with a park, with substantial underground support system, planted with trees and vegetation, and with a mechanism to bring in water. In the arid climate of what is now Iraq, this would have been a paradise on earth, and an extravagance available only to a king. However, the description we have of this garden is written by Greek and Roman historians, including Diodorus Siculus writing around 50 BC, centuries after the gardens were supposed to have been built (http://www.plinia.net/wonders/gardens/hg4diodorus.html). Archeologists have not found physical evidence of the gardens or the source texts that the later historians may have used, and are skeptical about the technological claims.

Myth or not, this is a great example of a garden being paradise on earth. This is also an interesting garden mystery – why would one of the Seven Wonders be a myth, when the other six exist? Humans have built earth mounds and ziggurats throughout ancient history; ancient seeds have been found on the terraces of excavated ziggurats; water wheels and cork screws were in use as early as 600 BC. Until the mystery is solved, here is some speculative fun.

Part 1: http://youtu.be/mUobrO0EeRI:

Part 2: http://youtu.be/-x5n6nXFGPA