THE REVELATION

The Answer to the Mysteries - Now we get to the fun part, explaining the mysteries. The following are brief summaries. The full stories will of course explain things in much greater detail.

 1. Were the Gardens built for love or out of pity?

  I believe the Gardens were inspired by love, a great and respectable admiration for an exceptional person, not out of pity for a weak, pathetic, homesick person. But this requires two things to have occurred in this marriage that don’t seem likely to happen, based on the Usual Story.

First, love usually isn’t part of a royal marriage, or even any arranged marriage. When people were matched by family or community to be married, the choices were all based on practical reasons. Love wasn’t one of them. Love was more likely found by an unmarried person choosing his or her lover, or outside of a marriage. But in marriage, it was rare. If your family had to choose your partner in life, would they have chosen the one you love or one of the many you don’t love? Has your mother ever tried to set you up with a “really nice person”, hoping you’ll like this person, but you don’t?

Now you can see how unusual it would be, if your family chose your husband or wife for reasons that are important to them, and you ended up loving the person they chose. Back in Babylon, Prince Nebuchadnezzar was “set up” to marry the daughter of the Median King simply because Babylon and Mede needed to have strong ties. Their two armies had to fight side by side. So the people of Mede and the people of Babylon had to feel they were “family”. And Nebuchadnezzar had to marry a stranger as a result. That stranger was believed to be Princess Amytis of Mede.

A real princess, like Amytis, who is born into royalty, learns very early in her life that she is “important”. She doesn’t have to do anything to become important. But if she does do something and its wrong, she’s embarrassed more than a common person because everybody is watching her. So it’s easier to do nothing and keep being “important” by virtue of her birth heritage than do things and risk being embarrassed if the things aren’t done as well as expected.

Loving another person is one of those things. In this royal marriage to the King of Babylon, she’s expected to have his children so he has an heir to the throne. She’s also expected to behave respectfully in court and share in the duties of the throne, being a symbolic leader of the Empire. She isn’t expected to love the king in any personal, private way, not as we think of love today. And if she did love him and give her herself passionately to him, and he didn’t love her in return, she’d be embarrassed and belittled. Loving someone who doesn’t love you back is sad, and Amytis would be thought of as the weaker of the pair. So, rather than suffer the indignity of giving love and not getting love in return, it would be wiser, more pragmatic, for a real Princess to give no more love than is expected or required, no more than she’s given.

I don’t see the real Princess Amytis inspiring a great love from Nebuchadnezzar as a result. What I do see is a common girl, of lesser social rank, giving the king her unrestrained love more easily, less fearfully, because she isn’t afraid of not being loved in return. In societies where there are strong hierarchies, the important people tend to be very conservative in giving attention or recognition, while the lower serving class people are constantly giving enthusiastic attention and respect that isn’t given back.

Nebuchadnezzar also would be likely to not give any more love than he’s shown, probably a bit less. If he loved his queen more than she loved him, or even if it appeared to be so to his court, he would appear weaker and his queen would appear stronger. As a commander of the Babylonian armies building an empire, he could not let anything give the impression he was weak, or suggest he would obey his queen lovingly instead of making the decisions himself. So it was important for his position and power that he does not give his queen any more love than she gave him.

 So when the legend of the Hanging Gardens says Nebuchadnezzar loved his queen enough to build her the fabulous gardens, the Queen must have loved him even more. Her love had to be more passionate, more openly given, and given first so he could give a great love in return and still appear the stronger, the real power on the Throne of Babylon. And the real Princess Amytis would never have done this, in my opinion. But a young woman of lower social rank, given an extraordinary opportunity to pose as Amytis and marry a king, would be unafraid to give her love first, openly and passionately, if she liked and respected the man given as her husband.

But love isn’t enough. Homesickness is still pitiful, and Nebuchadnezzar could never reward a pitiful emotion. The queen had to be a dynamic woman, a woman who made the king proud, a woman who inspired everyone who knew her and, like her husband, was a very active and constructive person. She had to be someone who might inspire Nebuchadnezzar to say “My queen is worthy of the greatest gift because she is indeed a great gift to me and to Babylon”.

The real Amytis was not a great gift. She was simply the fabric of a political alliance between two empires. And since she was “important” by her birth heritage, she would not be likely to try to do anything in Babylon to be more important. Amytis defined her importance by her heritage, not by anything she did. So she had every reason to do nothing, and risk nothing, and just go on being “important” for no reason other than who she was.

But a person born into the common ranks defined her being by her work. She defined her importance by what she accomplished. She earned respect with hard work. And a common person, with a strong work ethic, who is suddenly thrust into a situation where she has tremendous opportunity to do things, and tremendous resources and assistance to do them, is more likely to be a very active, constructive person.

Nebuchadnezzar himself was like that. He wasn’t born a prince. When his father declared himself king, making Nebuchadnezzar the prince, the boy immediately began to prepare for his life joining the army and fighting for everything he dreamed of having. He was a dynamic, active, constructive king because of this. He did more building than any previous king of Babylon. And he would have admired most a queen who, like him, worked at making Babylon more glorious. He would have loved a queen who joined him in building, changing, and improving the empire he ruled.

Amytis, the real princess, would most likely not have done this. But a common girl, allowed to pose as Amytis and marry Nebuchadnezzar, would have. And I believe this is how we can best explain why he rewarded her with such an incredible garden.

The woman Nebuchadnezzar married was not afraid to work, not afraid to try and make changes for the good of the people, and most importantly, not afraid to love her husband passionately even before he gave any passionate love to her.

2.Why didn’t the Babylonians ever write about their famous Gardens?

The Queen wasn’t really Amytis of Mede but an impostor. But the King didn’t know this when they were married, or when his Queen fell passionately in love with him, or even when his Queen became a dynamic part of his growing empire and inspired him and everyone in Babylon with her accomplishments. He didn’t know she’s an impostor when he built the most beautiful garden the world has ever seen as a gift of love to his wonderful Queen. Only after the Gardens are built does King Nebuchadnezzar discover that his Queen is not really Princess Amytis of Mede, but rather an impostor.

 And when this is revealed to King Nebuchadnezzar, he is, of course, first outraged personally. But he is the ruler of the Babylonian Empire, and his personal anger must give way to the question of how this revelation might damage the honor and integrity of his Empire.

 As the story (and history) clearly describe, Nebuchadnezzar and his father, Nabopolassar, were unrelated to the Assyrian Kings who had ruled Babylon for generations. So Nebuchadnezzar and his father were looked on by the surrounding world as barbarians from the Sealands who had military power but no cultural quality. Nebuchadnezzar was painfully aware of this ongoing criticism of him, and he tried to do everything to show the world that Babylon under his rule would be an empire of great culture and accomplishment.

If it were revealed to the world that Nebuchadnezzar had married a woman who was not a princess of respectful royal heritage, but instead married a common woman of no social position, he would once again face ridicule and insults by his enemies and critics. They would say he wasn’t worthy of a royal bride, or couldn’t even tell the difference between a princess and a commoner. All the respect he so desperately tried to win would be lost. He would be thought of as a fool, and that was one thing he could not let happen.

So the impostor Queen was allowed to “die” a tragic accidental death and the palace scribes (who recorded the written histories) were told to not write the name of the Queen or mention her Garden in any written histories, because the mere mention of the queen’s name caused the king great sorrow (since his love for her was so famous). But the real reason was more diplomatic. The policy of not allowing the Queen’s name, or mention of her Garden, to be written was actually a threat to anyone who knew about the impostor Queen, a threat to remind all who knew that any mention of the impostor would be against the will of the King and punishable by death.

 So the order to forbid writing about the Queen or her Garden was Nebuchadnezzar’s way of making sure the scandal would never be revealed to embarrass him or his empire.

3. Where in the city was it?

In my story, I put the Gardens north of the Citadel, on the western outcrop along the Euphrates River. There’s nothing there now but the river, no trace of a legendary garden. I think the way it was destroyed, nothing was left, not even the foundation.

But first a brief note on the other two suggested locations. The vaulted rooms in the northeastern corner of the Southern Palace complex are too far away from the river, and the Gardens needed a lot of water to endlessly flow through the Gardens and keep the trees and plants healthy. So I don’t think this is the right place. There do appear to be other studies of the ruins of Babylon that suggest these vaulted rooms were either administrative storage areas or dungeons for persons locked up by the palace for investigation of wrongdoing. But I’m basically rejecting this place because as much as I know about water engineering, I think the Gardens had to be exactly on the riverbank.

The massive foundation of the Citadel on the Western Outcrop is the second suggested place for the Gardens. But having a massively reinforced citadel or inner stronghold near the palaces seems to be a necessary safeguard when Babylon was at war with Assyria and fearful of an invasion of the city. Classically, fortified cities at war with rival empires had several levels of defense for the royal palace leaders, with a heavily fortified stronghold deep within the city as the last defense. Placing this fortress against the river would insure a vital water supply to those inside, and make any breech of the fortress harder to attempt.

When Nebuchadnezzar built the Gardens, he was still fighting and putting down revolts in the outreaches of his new empire. So he wouldn’t have destroyed an important structure of military defense to make a garden. Life wasn’t that peaceful yet. I think the Citadel had important military and defense value and King Nebuchadnezzar, being a skillful commander of armies, would not make the Citadel into a garden.

But just north of the Citadel, to the west of the area where he eventually added the Northern Palace complex, and along the riverbank, that would be a perfect place for the garden. Laying a massive foundation to support it would not be difficult, considering the incredibly massive things his engineers did build. And building a foundation from scratch there would allow his engineers to design the water channels to each of the four corner chambers where water was lifted, a necessary part of the Garden’s design.

 So I’ve chosen the north end of the Western Outcrop as where I believe the Gardens were, and why there is no remaining evidence of this structure is answered below, item #5.

 4. Who looked after the Gardens secretly for several hundred years?

Nobody has ever tried to explain this before. Here’s what I think happened. The Queen known as Amytis (but actually someone posing as her) was a truly incredible woman and a greatly beloved queen. She passionately cared about the people of Babylon and worked devotedly to make their life better. She cared as well about the culture of Babylon, it’s rich history of thousands of years, and gave people a new sense of pride to be Babylonians.

And she loved her husband with unlimited sincerity and passion. She loved her marriage and the children of that marriage. She loved life. And being everything a King could want in his Queen, being everything a people could want in their Queen, she was loved and admired by every one in Babylon.

Her sudden and tragic death, arranged to silence the possible scandal of her not being born of royal heritage, caused everyone in Babylon to mourn her death and worship her memory. We’ve seen a similar outpouring of love when Evita Peron of Argentina died a young and tragic death. So we know occasionally a woman can completely captivate a nation. I believe the Queen known as Amytis was such a woman.

When Nebuchadnezzar’s palace staff gave orders that the name of the Queen and mention of her Garden were not to be written, it seemed to the unknowing public a further evidence of how deeply the King loved his Queen. The love was so great, and the painful reminders were too agonizing. It made his love seem ever greater (even though it was really a political action to prevent a scandal) and as his love appeared even greater, her greatness as a Queen seemed more profound.

The people of Babylon shared their King’s great sorrow at the loss of their Queen, and so, as long as Nebuchadnezzar was King (another 38 years after the death of the Queen), her memory was kept silently in people’s hearts, and the Garden was silently kept in perfect condition as her memorial. It was never shown publicly and foreign visitors were not entertained there.

When Nebuchadnezzar died, his son, Amel-Marduk, became King. But in just two years, he was overthrown by his brother-in-law, the husband of his sister, Kashshaia. Her husband, Neriglissar, ruled only a few short years before dying. An administrator unrelated to Nebuchadnezzar, Nabonidus, seized control of Babylon. His policies and goals were different, and there are differing opinions of how strongly the Babylonian people supported his rule.

The people who knew the Queen in life still had powerful positions in the city leadership. They could have begun to openly celebrate her memory, now that Nebuchadnezzar had passed away, but the political turmoil and the changing politics made that unwise. As political control changes (especially when Nabonidus took control), the new ruler wants loyalty to him and not to a loving memory of rulers of the past. If the Queen had been celebrated, if her garden was opened as a public memorial, it might be caught up in the new political struggles. Better to keep the queen’s memory out of the political fighting, and keep her garden secret so the new ruler didn’t feel he had to either take control of it or demolish it to surpress devotion to anyone other than himself.

So the Garden continued to be a loosely kept secret, and the memory of the Queen was kept reverently but privately.

In 539 BC, a mere 20 years after Nebuchadnezzar died, Babylon was conquered by the Persian King, Cyrus II, and for the fourth time, changed rulers. Once again, those keeping the loving memory of their beloved Queen chose to keep her memory and her Garden private, so the new Persian conquerors wouldn’t take control of or destroy the Garden and the Queen’s memorial.

And so it became the custom, for the citizens of Babylon who respected their heritage and adored the Queen who had inspired them so, to keep her memory and her garden in private care. People who did not know of the garden were not told of it. People who had heard of it, but were not known to be respectful of the memory of the queen, were told the garden was closed many years ago and does not exist any longer. Only those people who honored the queen’s memory and proved they could keep the secret were allowed to enter the garden, and the most dedicated of those were trained to become keepers of the garden and the memory of the Queen.

And so it was kept in secret, but kept beautifully, for hundreds of years.

The location I’ve chosen, north of the Citadel on the river, is the perfect location if the Garden was kept secret for so many years. From any entrance to the city’s nine gates, you can’t see the Garden. You can tour the entire palace complex and miss it. You can even travel the entire city wall (a truly massive wall estimated at 80 feet high and with a top road on it wide enough for a four-horse chariot to turn around, so history says) and see almost anything in the city, but the Gardens are outside that wall and a view to them is blocked by the massive Citadel. Finally, if you look from the river itself, as important people never did, you’ll just see the massive Citadel walls and an equally massive northern extension of these walls, and you can easily presume it’s all just the Citadel alone inside.

5. What happened to the Gardens in the end?

The Persians conquered Babylon in 539 BC., and ruled it for over 200 years. They respected the historical culture of the cities they conquered, and so they didn’t try to destroy the relics of a city’s past heritage. But they were still foreigners, and the citizens of Babylon still wanted to keep control of their great Queen’s memory and her Garden. So they still kept it secret.

When Alexander of Macedonia (also known as Alexander the Great) set out to conquer the world in 337 BC., he had a different philosophy. He destroyed anything that might rival his empire or remind people of past rulers. The most tragic example of this was in 331 BC., when his armies looted and demolished the glorious Persian city of Persepolis. This kind of cultural violence, destroying the treasures of a conquered land, was exactly what the people of Babylon feared, and why they kept the Garden of Amytis a secret.

But somehow, Alexander found out about it and is said to have visited the Gardens in 325 BC when he was heading home from his ten year conquest of the Persian Empire. But while in Babylon, he became ill and is said to have died of malaria or yellow fever. So his generals took over the empire he had just finished building.

And one of them, I believe, tried to demolish the Hanging Gardens just as they had destroyed Persepolis. One of the curious things we see throughout history is both how conquering people love to seize the treasures of the land they’ve just conquered, and how people who have been conquered will sometimes go to unbelievable extremes of effort and ingenuity to prevent their cultural treasures (or the bodily remains of their rulers) from being possessed by the conquerors.

And I believe the people of Babylon, who had so lovingly cared for the Garden and the memory of their great Queen, refused to let the Macedonian ruler have anything that had belonged to the Garden. After his intention of tearing down the Gardens and bringing home the treasures became known to the citizens of Babylon, they took the only action that would keep their Queen’s memory safe from his greed and ambition.

When his treasures did not arrive at his estate in Macedonia, this man mounted a caravan back to Babylon by forced march, to recover his treasures and punish the Babylonians. But when he got back to Babylon and went to the Garden, he found it was literally gone. Not just the tiles and statues, but the buildings, the machinery, even the foundation rock had been dumped into the river and vanished.

So the Garden vanished and the legend began. The living memory was kept by all the citizens of Babylon who still worshipped the memory of their great Queen.

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