Photo credit:kidzworld.com
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon was located in the east bank of Euphrates, South of Baghdad in Iraq. King Hammurabi was the most famous of the Babylonian kingdom. Under his rule, the entire kingdom flourished. His son Nebuchadnezzar was the one who built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seventh Wonders of the world. Some stories have it that the Hanging Gardens went hundreds of feet into the air, but archaelogical explorations have proved it wrong. The gardens did not really hang on the roof using cvables or ropes. But derived this name from the fact that it was built on the roof top. According to the popular notion, Nebuchadnezzar built it to alliavate his wife's homesickness. He was married to Amyitis, daughter of the king Medes who seems to have had a passion for the mountainous surroundings. Babylon's flat desert-like landscape made her pine for the mountains of Media where she was brought up. So the king decided to build an artificial, terraced hill lushly cultivated with trees and flowering plants. However some attribute this wonder to the Assyrian Queen Semiramis.
Photo credit:kidzworld.com
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon contained exotic plants and animals which were imported from all over the world.
Babylon during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar had conquered and controlled virtually all of the then known world and he made use of these conquests in furnishing his garden with décor which made it become one of the seven wonders.
“The Garden is quadrangular, and each side is four plethra long. It consists of arched vaults which are located on the checkered cube-like foundations. The ascent of the uppermost terrace-roofs is made by a stairway”.
“The hanging Gardens has plants cultivated above ground level, and the roofs of the trees were embeded in an upper terrace rather than in the earth. The whole mass is supported on stone columns... streams of water emerging from elevated sources flow down sloping channels... These waters irrigate the whole garden saturating the roofs of plants and keepin the whole area moist. Hence the grass is permanently green and the leaves of trees grow firmly attached to supple branches. This is the work of art of royal luxury and its most striking feature is that the labor of cultivation is suspended above the heads of the spectators.
The king's real purpose is to alleviate his wife but then it became the World's Wonder in our present world. Man's being artistic didn't even notice that his work of arts may someday become great.
Resources:http://www.kidsgen.com
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