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traditionally c. 600 BCEReputable source · 2 sourcesDebated

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon: A Wonder Nobody Can Confirm

One of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world may never have existed in Babylon at all

On the timeline · around traditionally c. 600 BCE · Neo-Babylonian Babylon and the Persian ConquestThe Assyrian EmpireNeo-Babylonian Babylon and the Persian ConquestThe Hanging Gardens of Babylon: A Wonder Nobody Can Confirm700 BCE650 BCE600 BCE575 BCE

Quick facts

Traditional attribution
Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylon
Listed among
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Key problem
Herodotus describes Babylon in detail but never mentions gardens
Alternative theory
Actually built by Sennacherib at Nineveh

What happened

Ancient writers counted the Hanging Gardens among the Seven Wonders of the World, and later Greek and Roman sources attributed them either to Nebuchadnezzar II or to a legendary queen called Semiramis, linked in some accounts to a semi-divine Assyrian ruler the Greeks believed had rebuilt Babylon in the 9th century BCE. But Herodotus, the fifth-century BCE Greek historian who describes Babylon's walls and irrigation system in detail, never mentions any gardens there at all, an omission World History Encyclopedia calls curious given how thoroughly he covers the city otherwise. The earliest surviving mention of the gardens comes from Berossus, a Babylonian priest writing centuries after the fact, and no archaeological excavation at Babylon has yet turned up physical or contemporary textual confirmation that the gardens stood there. Some modern historians argue instead that the terraced gardens ancient writers described were actually built by the Assyrian king Sennacherib at Nineveh, and that later Greek writers or their sources simply confused the two cities.

Why it matters

The Hanging Gardens are a textbook case for the honesty doctrine: a famous ancient wonder that most people assume was real and located at Babylon may not have existed there at all, or may have existed at a different city under a different king entirely. Historians hold the uncertainty openly rather than picking a side the evidence does not support.

How we know

No archaeological trace of monumental gardens has been confirmed at Babylon itself, and the case rests on comparing Herodotus's silence with later, secondhand Greek accounts against contemporary Assyrian evidence for elaborate garden construction specifically at Nineveh under Sennacherib.

Sources

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