Characteristics

• We only know that they existed because people saw them and wrote about them
• Built around 600 B.C. on the orders of Nebuchadnezzar II, King of Babylon
• Lay on banks of Euphrates River, south of present-day Baghdad
• Planted with every kind of tree and plant imaginable

Technology

• Ox cart and river barge carried plants and trees to garden
• Built almost completely of sun-dried brick
• Relied on a good watering system, using water drawn from the Euphrates
• Water may have been lifted to the top terrace by a chain of buckets driven by slaves on a treadmill
• It could then run down into the streams and waterfalls in the gardens and keep the soil wet

Wonder Qualities

• Story has it that the king had the gardens built for his homesick young wife, Amytis, to remind her of her home in the mountains of Persia