The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced by Stephanie Dalley

Author:Stephanie Dalley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Publisher: OXFORD University Press
Published: 2013-06-25T23:00:00+00:00

Fig. 49 (a) Palace attendants bringing cakes, grapes, pomegranates, and locusts in the South-West Palace.

Fig. 49 (b) Palace attendants bringing drink, drawn from a panel found in Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad.

As in Josephus’ account, so in Sennacherib’s own description, it is clear that the garden was set out beside the palace on the high citadel, contradicting any suggestion that it was located in another part of the city or outside it.

I raised the height of the surroundings of the palace, to be a Wonder for all peoples. I gave it the name: ‘Unrivalled Palace’. A high garden imitating the Amanus mountains I laid out next to it, with all kinds of aromatic plants …

Like his father Sargon, who had created an artificial landscape for his entire new citadel at Khorsabad, Sennacherib raised the ground level, in order to create an artificial landscape that looked as if it was natural, and with that level established, he could engineer the aqueduct, screws, lake and drainage, to ensure the success of the exotic plants transferred there, many of them uprooted from very different environments far abroad. The collection of foreign plants showed the king’s mastery over the landscape, not just adapting and making the best of what was available, but changing it to make it even more desirable than it had been in its natural state, and yet the end-product was to appear natural, like the superb Amanus mountains with their cloak of fragrant trees. In collecting exotic plants abroad, he was following a tradition that went back in time to the reign of Tiglath-pileser I (1114–1076) who ended a long account of his conquest of ‘42 lands and their rulers, from the far side of the lower Zab river in distant mountainous regions, to the far side of the Euphrates, people of Hatti (northern Syria), and the Upper Sea in the West (Mediterranean)’ with a brief passage that betrays his personal interest in botany:

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