Mesopotamia

he ancient Mesopotamian civilizations of Sumer, Babylon and Assyria developed the first great horticulture societies. The Mesopotamian grew wheat, barley, dates, oats, figs, olives and grapes. The first “farmers almanac" dates back to 1700 B.C., Sumeria. It was the Sumerians who first occupied Mesopotamia, near 6 000 B.C. and who first constructed the first barrages, created a perfect irrigation system and made possible the cultivation of a wide range of plants. Women played an important role, overreached men in many activities, among which was the art of constructing gardens at that time of tribal social organization. It is undeniable that they were the pioneers of Mesopotamian gardening. Probably this is the reason why the vegetation goddess Isthar, also known as Astart was a passionate woman who followed her lover Tamuz to the infernal world. Missing her presence, the fields faded away, but when she returned, the plants raised from among the dead and revived with their natural greenness, beauty and fertility. Thousands of years later gardening in Sumer was involved not only with the cultivation of plants good for the organism, but also with “nourishing” the spirit and satisfying the first efforts to reach beauty. Once their basic needs were satisfied, people showed interest towards ornamental garden plants. In the Louvre Museum one can see a Sumerian piece of argyle featuring gardens from the city of Ur, dated around 5000 B.C. The king Gudea from Ur was known to have lived a life of luxury after he brought cedars from the distant Lebanon Mountains after an adventurous journey. Another Mesopotamian king named Tiglath Pileser I was known as a great botanic lover and exotic plants explorer.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon have been, undoubtedly, the most remarkable achievement of the Mesopotamian art of gardening. The gardens, built within the walls of the royal palace at Babylon, were roof gardens laid out on a series of ziggurat terraces, irrigated by a unique pump system [pictured on the left] supplying water from the Euphrates River. They were built either by the famous Queen Sammu-ramat (Greek Semiramis, mother of the Assyrian king Adad-nirari III about 800 B.C.) or by the King Nebuchadrezzar (Nabucodonosor) II –reigned 604-562 BC. 

The ancient city of Babylon, under the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II, must have been a wonder to the traveler's eyes. "In addition to its size," wrote Herodotus, a historian in 450 BC, "Babylon surpasses in splendor any city in the known world." 

Herodotus claimed that the outer walls were 56 miles in length, 80 feet thick and 320 feet high. The walls enclosed fortresses and temples containing immense statues made of solid gold. Rising above the city was the famous Tower of Babel, a temple to the god Marduk which seemed to soar high in the heavens. 

An interesting observation is that one of the city's most spectacular sites is not even mentioned by Herodotus: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. 

Accounts indicate that the garden was built by King Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled the city for 43 years, beginning in 605 BC (There is another less-reliable story that the gardens were built by the Assyrian Queen Semiramis during her five year reign starting in 810 BC). These were years of prime during which King Nebuchadnezzar constructed an astonishing array of temples, streets, palaces and walls. 

According to accounts, the gardens were built to cheer up Nebuchadnezzar's homesick wife, Amyitis. Amyitis, daughter of the king of the Medes, was married to Nebuchadnezzar to create an alliance between the nations. The land she came from, though, was green, rugged and mountainous, and she found the flat, sun-baked terrain of Mesopotamia depressing. The king decided to recreate her homeland by building an artificial mountain with rooftop gardens. 

The Hanging Gardens, or The Seventh Wonder of the world, probably did not really "hang" in the sense of being attached to cables or ropes. The name comes from an inexact translation of the Greek word kremastos or the Latin word pensilis, which mean not just "hanging", but "overhanging" as in the case of a terrace or balcony. 

The Greek geographer Strabo, who described the gardens in the first century BC, wrote, "It consists of vaulted terraces raised one above another, and resting upon cube-shaped pillars. These are hollow and filled with earth to allow trees of the largest size to be planted. The pillars, the vaults, and terraces are constructed of baked brick and asphalt." 

"The ascent to the highest story is by stairs, and at their side are water engines, by means of which persons, appointed expressly for the purpose, are continually employed in raising water from the Euphrates into the garden." 

Strabo touches upon what was probably the most amazing part of the garden to the ancients. Babylon rarely received rain and for the garden to survive, it had to be irrigated by using water from the nearby Euphrates River. This meant to lift up the water far into the air so that it could flow down through the terraces, watering the plants at each level. This was probably done by means of a "chain pump." 

A chain pump is a device with two large wheels, one above the other, connected by a chain, on which buckets are hung. Below the bottom wheel is a pool with water. As the wheel is turned, the buckets dip into the pool and pick up water. The chain then lifts them to the upper wheel, where the buckets are tipped and dumped into an upper pool. The chain then carries the empty ones back down to be refilled. 

The pool at the top of the gardens could then be released by gates into channels which acted as artificial streams to water the gardens. The pump wheel below was attached to a shaft and a handle. By turning the handle slaves provided the power to run the contraption. 

The construction of the garden wasn't only made difficult by getting the water up to the top, but also by trying to avoid having the liquid ruin the foundation once it was released. Since stone was difficult to get on the Mesopotamian plain, most of the architecture in Babel utilized brick. The bricks were composed of clay mixed with chopped straw and baked in the sun. The bricks were then joined with bitumen, a slimy substance, which acted as a mortar. These bricks quickly dissolved when soaked with water. Most buildings in Babel didn’t find this a problem because rain was rare. However, the gardens were continually exposed to irrigation and the foundation had to be protected. 

Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian, stated that the platforms on which the garden stood consisted of huge slabs of stone (otherwise unheard of in Babel), covered with layers of reed, asphalt and tiles. Over these layers was "a covering with sheets of lead, that the wet which drenched through the earth might not rot the foundation. Upon all these was laid earth of a convenient depth, sufficient for the growth of the greatest trees. When the soil was laid even and smooth, it was planted with all sorts of trees, which both for greatness and beauty might delight the spectators." 

Ancient World Noted publications, persons and events in the history of  agriculture and gardening  including related information  from botany, ecology, biology, and natural history. Compiled and provided by Michael Garofalo Timeline opens in a new window Click here if unable to open timeline

3000 BC - 331 BC Ancient Civilizations    3500 - 331 BC: Mesopotamian Art       3500 - 1750 BC: Sumerian/Akkadian        1000 - 539 BC: Assyrian/Neo-Babylonian        539 - 331 BC: Persian    3200 - 1070 BC: Egyptian Art        3200 - 2185 BC: Old Kingdom        2040 - 1650 BC: Middle Kingdom        1550 - 1070 BC: New Kingdom        1370 - 1340 BC: Amarna Art     3000 - 1100 BC: Aegean Art       3000 - 1475 BC: Minoan (Crete)        1650 - 1100 BC: Mycenean (Greece)  800 BC - 337 AD Classical Civilizations    800 - 323 BC: Greek Art    323 - 150 BC: Hellenistic Art    6th - 5th century BC: Etruscan Art    509 BC - 337 AD: Roman Art .

Image copyright © 1998, Lee Krystek

Some stories indicate the Hanging Gardens towered hundreds of feet into the air, but archaeological explorations indicate a more modest, but still impressive, height.

In any case the gardens were an amazing sight: A green, leafy, artificial mountain rising off the plain. But did it actually exist? After all, Herodotus never mentions it. 

This was one of the questions that occurred to the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey in 1899. For centuries before that the ancient city of Babel was nothing but a mound of muddy debris. Though unlike many ancient locations, the city's position was well-known, nothing visible remained of its architecture. Koldewey dug on the Babel site for some fourteen years and unearthed many of its features including the outer walls, inner walls, foundation of the Tower of Babel, Nebuchadnezzar's palaces and the wide processional roadway which passed through the heart of the city.

While excavating the Southern Citadel, Koldewey discovered a basement with fourteen large rooms with stone arch ceilings. Ancient records indicated that only two locations in the city had made use of stone, the north wall of the Northern Citadel, and the Hanging Gardens. The north wall of the Northern Citadel had already been discovered and had, indeed, contained stone. It seemed like Koldewey had found the cellar of the gardens. 

He continued exploring the area and discovered many of the features reported by Diodorus. Finally a room was unearthed with three large odd holes in the floor. Koldewey concluded that this had been the location of the chain pumps that raised the water to the garden's roof. 

The foundations that Koldewey discovered measured some 100 by 150 feet (although smaller than the measurements described by ancient historians, but still impressive). 

One can only wonder if Queen Amyitis was happy with her fantastic present, or if she continued to pine for the green mountains of her homeland.