THE MYSTERY

First, the Usual Story - When you look up the Hanging Gardens in other reference books or websites, you generally get an explanation that goes something like this:

 King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon married a Median Princess named Amytis, as part of an alliance with the Medes. Once married and living in Babylon, Amytis became homesick for the picturesque mountain scenery of her homeland (The beautiful Zagros Mountains of Northern Persia), since Babylon was set in a flat bland valley with not a mountain in sight. So the King built the Hanging Gardens as a gift of love to his bride, a garden designed with tall sides and terraced levels that made it look mountainous. The plants in the garden would hang over the terraced steps, leading to the name “The Hanging Gardens”.

From here, the usual descriptions then go on to talk about the unique engineering to lift water to the highest towers so it could flow down through the terraces.

There is a lot about the Usual Story that makes sense. Nebuchadnezzar was indeed a Babylonian King, in fact one of its greatest kings. He ruled from 605 BC to 562 BC and there are thousands of historical writings that describe him and his many accomplishments re-building and improving Babylon. So he is well documented.

The Medes of Northern Persia aren’t as well documented, but they are still historically correct. And the Babylonians and the Medes did join forces to battle the Assyrians, destroying their capitol city of Nineveh in 612 BC. So the alliance between Babylon and Mede was correct, and a royal marriage between Nebuchadnezzar and a Median Princess (probably Amytis, daughter of King Cyaxares of Mede) would have been very likely to strengthen the alliance between Babylon and Mede once Nineveh was conquered and it was obvious Babylon and Mede would jointly rule the crumbling Assyrian Empire. So the marriage of Nebuchadnezzar to a Median Princess seems not only logical but inevitable.

And it is true that the mountainous scenery of Mede is wonderfully more picturesque than the bland agricultural valley Babylon rested in (think of comparing the grandeur of the Rocky Mountains to Kansas farmland, and you get the idea). So I can easily imagine someone from Mede being disappointed in the landscape of Babylon, and missing the mountain of Mede.

On to the Alternate Story

Back to "The Mystery"