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Ancient Mesopotamian Gardens and the Identification of the Hanging Gardens of Resolved Author(s): Stephanie Dalley Reviewed work(s): Source: Garden History, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Summer, 1993), pp. 1-13 Published by: The Garden History Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1587050 . Accessed: 22/03/2012 13:19

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http://www.jstor.org STEPHANIE DALLEY

ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN GARDENS AND THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE HANGING GARDENS OF BABYLON RESOLVED

The Babylonians and Assyrians planted gardens in cities, courtyards,and temples, in which trees with fragrance and edible fruits were prominentfor re-creating their concept of . The famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of , have finally been identifiedas the palace garden of the Assyrian king , constructednot at Babylon but at , which was also known as 'old Babylon', around 700 B.C. Sennacherib invented the Archimedean screw, using cast copper or , for watering the gardens. A sculpturenow in the shows a part of the gardensin the reign of Sennacherib'sgrandson, when the trees had matured. The king plants a date-palmin his palace and fills up the space beside her with a tamarisk.Meals are enjoyed in the shadeof the tamarisk,skilled men gatherin the shadeof the date-palm,the drum is beaten, men give praise, and the king rejoicesin his palace. The two trees, brotherand sister, are quite different;the tamariskand the palm-tree competewith each other. They argueand quarreltogether. The tamarisksays: 'I am much bigger!' And the date-palmargues back, saying: 'I am much better than you! You, O tamarisk,are a useless tree. What good are your branches?There's no such thing as a tamariskfruit! Now, my fruits grace the king's table; the king himself eats them, and people say nice things about me. I make a surplusfor the gardener,and he gives it to the queen; she, being a mother, nourishesher child upon the gifts of my strength, and the adults eat them too. My fruits are alwaysin the presenceof royalty'. The tamariskmakes his voice heard;his speech is even more boastful. 'My body is superiorto yours!It's much morebeautiful than anything of yours. You arelike a slavegirl who fetches and carriesdaily needs for her mistress'. He goes on to point out the king's table, couch, and eating bowl are made from tamariskwood, that the king's clothes are made using tools of tamariskwood; likewise the temples of the gods are full of objects madefrom tamarisk. The date-palmcounters by pointingout that her fruitsare the central offeringin the cult; once they have been takenfrom the tamariskdish, the bowl is used to collect up the garbage. THISEXTRACT, from one of the most popular pieces of Babylonian literature, was written in on clay tablets as early as 2000 B.C. It tells us about one of the earliest kinds of garden, 4,000 years ago. If we look at the natural, uncultivated environment of central , we can see immediately that the most important features of a garden would be trees for shelter from

The OrientalInstitute, Pusey Lane, Oxford oxi 2LE 2 ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN GARDENS the heat and the glare of the sun. By contrast, in the naturalenvironment of southern Iraq's beautiful marshlands, about which Wilfred Thesiger has written, we see the characteristictrees of the south- the date-palm,the tamarisk,and the Euphratespoplar - flourishing alongside the water-courseswhich lead into the cane-breaks of the marshland.

THE COURTYARD GARDEN In ancient times the wild boar as well as domesticatedpigs rootled everywhere,and the first city walls were designed not simply against human enemies but also to keep out greedy snouts, and to divert flood waterwhenever the great rivers- the and the Euphrates- bursttheir banks. For these reasonsthe gardenwas an urbanphenomenon, set safely inside the wallsof a city which formeda mound raisedwell abovethe flood plain of the adjacentcountryside. More thanthat, the best place for a pleasantgarden safe from maraudingpigs and thieving urchins, grazing goats, and noisy people, was the large internal courtyardthat was characteristicof royal . This is where the tamarisk and the date-palm argued it out. One of the huge courtyardsin the palace at Mari (c. I800 B.C.)on the Middle Euphrateswas called the Courtof the Palmsin contemporarywritten records. The walkwaysacross it are made of baked brick, terracotta, and they are traditionallyraised above the surface of the courtyard, to keep them free of drifting dust in hot weather and ubiquitous mud in winter. The ration lists found in this palace us that there were several professional gardenerson the palacepayroll, and that the king and his entourageoften ate their meals in the garden.There were certainlyorchards and fishpondselsewhere, beyond the palace walls, but we know very little about them. However, it seems to have been a source of pride to have a largearea within the city walls devotedto palm-grovesor orchards,for the prologue to the Epic of Gilgameshboasts of the famous city , saying: 'One square mile is city, one squaremile is orchards,one squaremile is claypits'. The reasonfor such spaciousnesswas the need to drive herds inside the city walls at night for securityand in times of . Indeed, an epithet of Uruk in myth is 'the sheepfold'. By 'orchards', date-palmgroves are probablyimplied. A few centuries later at the site of on the coast of Syria, with its palace (c. 1400 B.C.)looking towardsthe Mediterranean,we find the palace courtyardcontain- ing a garden,with a not-quite-centralstone basinfor waterforming an importantfeature. The excavatorsthought they found evidence for loose earth at the edge of one of these courtyards,and speculatedthat flowersor shrubs might have been planted there. It may be surprising,if one is thinkingof later, Islamicgardens, that the stone water basinis not centrallyplaced in the courtyard.The reasonmay be that a tree normallytook that position - either a real tree or an ornamental, imitation tree. The tree was so importantin ancientMesopotamia that it was personifiedas a god, Nin-Gishzida, 'trusty tree', and had the power of human speech, just as the date-palmand the tamariskdid in their dispute over superiority.Nin-Gishzida guarded the gate of heaven and acted as a sheriff in the Underworld.In a Babylonianelegy at the death of Tammuz (dating to the seventhcentury B.C. or earlier),the felled tree makesits lamentin a firstperson narrative: STEPHANIE DALLEY 3 'Now they have felled me, they have carried me off forever. My father sees me and weeps'. Texts and architecturalremains from Ugarit suggest the possibility that gardensin palacecourtyards served for the remembranceof dead ancestors.The dynastictomb was sometimes located in a beneath the palace, sometimes actually beneath the courtyard;and sacrificeswere offeredat Ugarit to an Underworldgod, Resheph, in the palace garden. The tombs of Assyrianqueens of the ninth and eighth centuries B.C., found recentlywith all their finery beneaththe paving of a courtyardin the north-west palace at , are the most splendid examples of the practice. Is this our first evidence for the gardenof remembrance?And does the tree planted in the centre of the courtyardthus symbolize regenerationin a very direct way, the family tree in every sense? Few kinds of trees are naturalto centraland southernIraq, and perhapsthat is the reasonwhy the tree was so importantto the ancientBabylonians. As the dispute between the date-palmand the tamariskshows, they were valued for food and timber, but certain attributesthat are less easily quantifiableare clearfrom scatteredallusions to gardensas places for picnics, for courtship, for the display of militarytrophies, and for the quiet appreciationof nature's beauty. Resinous scents were particularlyvalued. Several of these attributesare evident in the most famous garden picture from ancient Mesopo- tamia, althoughit shows a gardenoutside a palace:Assurbanipal, the last great king of , is shown on a sculpturefeasting with his queen, recliningwestern-style upon a couch beneath an arbour of vines, attended by servants, courtiers, and musicians. Various trophies from his illustrious conquests are on display: an Egyptian-style necklace hangs from his couch; an Elamite bow rests on the table behind him with a swordof Iraniandesign. A little way off, suspendedfrom the branchof a fragrantpine, is the dismemberedhead of his arch-enemy,the King of .

HUNTING PARKS Although the palace courtyardgarden was sometimes large enough to accommodatea few attractive animals such as deer and gazelle, the royal urge to collect zoological specimens had generally to be satisfiedin a wider landscape. From at least 2000 B.C. Mesopotamiankings who campaignedabroad and received exotic gifts from foreign vassalrulers took a great interestin strangeplants and animalswhich were presumably kept at some distancefrom the palace,if not outside the city walls. The keenest collector of animals was Tiglath-Pileser I (around I000 B.C.), who says in his royal inscriptions: I formedherds of horses,oxen and asses fromthe booty I took when I gained dominionover lands with the support of thegod , my lord. In addition,I gotcontrol of andformed herds of nayalu-deer,ayalu-deer, gazelle and ibex which the gods and ,the godswho love me, hadgiven me in the courseof the huntin highmountain ranges. I numberedthem like flocks of sheep .... I took cedar,box-tree, and Kanishoak from the landsover which I had gained dominion- suchtrees as none among previous kings, my forefathers, had ever planted andI planted[them] in the orchardsof my land.I tookrare orchard fruit which is not foundin my landand filled the orchardsof Assyria. 4 ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN GARDENS

... I received tribute from the lands of , and Arvad; I received a crocodileand a large, female ape of the sea coast. ... I made replicasin alabasterand basaltof a nahiruwhich is called a sea-horseand which ... I had killed with a harpoonof my own makingin the GreatSea of the West; and of a live yak which was broughtfrom the mountainLumash on the far side of the country Habhu.

CITY GARDENS Just over a century later another Assyrian king, Assurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C.), undertook enormous waterworks in order to bring water from the foothills and mountain streams to irrigate newly planted orchards in his capital city Nimrud, which lies by the Tigris river in northern Iraq. He has left us his own account of the garden that he planted: I dug out a canalfrom the Upper Zab, cutting througha mountainpeak, and called it Abundance Canal. I watered the meadows of the Tigris and planted orchardswith all kinds of fruit trees in the vicinity. I planted seeds and plants that I had found in the countriesthrough which I had marchedand in the highlandswhich I had crossed:pines of different kinds, cypresses and junipers of different kinds, almonds, dates, ebony, rosewood,olive, oak, tamarisk,walnut, terebinthand ash, fir, pomegranate,pear, quince, fig, grapevine ... The canal-water gushes from above into the gardens; fragrance pervades the walkways,streams of wateras numerousas the starsof heavenflow in the pleasuregarden .... Like a squirrel I pick fruit in the garden of delights. Not all of these saplings came from far-distant countries; we are lucky enough to have a letter of the late eighth century B.C. that indicates a flourishing nursery trade in fruit trees on the Middle Euphrates. When Sargon n (722-704 B.C.) built an entirely new capital city, named Dur-Sharrukin, north-east of Nineveh, he bought up land from local owners who were properly compensated, and had parks and orchards laid out for his royal pleasure, where he and his family could practise hunting , and . A letter from one of his governors sent him a report as follows: I have levied upon the people of Nemad-Istarthe supply of 2,350 loads of apple trees, and 450 loads of medlar trees. [The people of Suhu province] are collecting saplings of almond, quince and plum trees, and they are transportingthem to Dur-Sharrukin.The people of Suhu arealso bringingsaplings from the land of Laqe: I,000 loads of apple trees. Their vanguardhas arrivedand I have seen it, but their rearguardhas not yet arrived. Although in some areas, the municipal planting was perhaps not very imaginative, for example alongside the banks of rivers or the sides of roads, in other places, particularly in the gardens of royal cities, the planting was varied in every way. It is almost certain that the slopes, an artificial lake, and a pavilion shown on the monumental of Sargon were contrived to give a more interesting landscape (Figure I). A finely built altar here graces the top of a hill surrounded by a grove of fragrant pines; at the foot of the hill, set out over the water like a boathouse is a splendid little pillared pavilion, backed by fruit trees. The various trees, a hilly terrain, flowing water, and the particular architectural features become characteristic of royal gardens within cities. Whether Sargon's garden and boating lake were set within the walls of his city or outside it, is not clear. But the style of garden is obviously naturalistic: this is emphatically not the forerunner of the Persian garden with its geometric layout and STEPHANIE DALLEY 5

Figure I. Gardenof SargonII at his new capital Dur-Sharrukin.Drawing from P. E. Botta and E. Flandin, Monumentde Ninive II (, I849), pl. I4 symbolicwater conduits leadingto a centralpool. It is a hilly mountainsidein which the king can go hunting with falcons, or boating. Like the pillared pavilion which was explicitlya North Syrianor Anatolianborrowing, 'just as they are in the Hatti-land', the style of garden may have been adopted from the same area. Sargon'ssuccessor Sennacherib (704-68 B.C.)brought clear water from a mountain river down to his gardens and parks at Nineveh along channels and aqueducts from a beautifulplace called Bavian, north-eastof Nineveh. The remainsof this can still be seen, built in monumentalstone, with archesthat havepointed tops. Sennacherib describedhis works in his own words: I cut through the hills with iron pickaxes and ran a canal over one and a half double-hours(about o miles?) of ground ... and I made the water flow through in channels.To arrestthe flow of the waterthrough those orchards,I made a swamp and set out a cane-brakein it: herons, wild boar, beasts of the forests I released into it. By the command of the gods, vines, all kinds of fruit trees and herbs thrived and burgeoned within the gardens. Cypressand mulberrytrees grew large and multiplied; cane-brakes grew fast to mighty proportions;sky-birds and water-birdsbuilt their nests; and the wild sows and beasts of the forests broughtforth their young in abundance.I cut down some mulberriesand cypresses that grew in the parks, and reeds from the swamp, and used them as needed in building my royal palaces. This swamp was a completely artificialcreation, inspired by the campaign that Sennacheribhad conducted successfully in southern . What we can never expect to find out is whether the imported plants and animals thrived in their new situation: and olives which Sennacheribtried to raisemay have failed to flourish; his artificialswamp may have nourished more mosquitoes than wild boar; and local -pondmanagers surely protested vehemently at herons who reared their young on fish intended for the royal table. 6 ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN GARDENS

TEMPLE GARDENS Sennacheribalso built a temple of the New Year Festival within a garden, outside the walls of Assur, the traditionalcapital of Assyriaon the middle Tigris. Thanks to careful excavation of the root-pits, the layout of trees or bushes was discovered by a German expedition, although the type of plant could not be established. Within the central courtyardof the simple, rectangularbuilding, as well as outside it on all four sides, trees or shrubs had been planted very neatly in regularrows. The excavatorsreconstructed them as bushes, but they may have been trees with slim trunks, to give the impressionof a sanctuarywithin a grove. This single example shows us that temple courtyards,like palace courtyards, were used for gardens. There seems, however, to be a marked difference between Assyriantemples in the north and Babyloniantemples in the south; the latterpossessed far largerland-holdings, apparently in close proximityto the temple buildings themselves, and those lands were cultivatedas small-holdingsthat took turns to provide offerings to the cult, especiallydates, pomegranatesand figs. The temple of the New Year Festival may have been the place where the king, representingthe god, performedthe ritualmarriage ceremony with a priestess. That love-makingtook place in gardens, is clear from the love lyric of , god of wisdom and his divine spouse, Tashmetu: 'Theshade of the cedar,shade of the cedar,shade of the cedar,is the king'sshelter. The shadeof thecypress is forhis nobles.The shadeof thejuniper is shelterfor my Nabu andfor my games!' 'Forwhat, O what,are you dressedup, my Tashmetu?' 'Sothat I maygo intothe garden with you, myNabu, let me go intothe garden, into thegarden to mylord. Let me go aloneinto the beautiful garden .... Maymy eyessee the pluckingof yourfruit, May my ears hear the song of yourbirds .. Bindyour days to the gardenand to the Lord!Bind your nights to the beautifulgarden.' 'Let my Tashmetucome with me into the garden.'

Major temples in ancient have been found decorated with semi- engagedcolumns imitatingthe trunks of date palms and the spiral-patternedtrunks of a palm with inedible fruit, perhapsChamaerops humilis. The facade of the temple to the Sun god at , for instance, was adornedin this baroquefashion. The temple of the New Year Festival at Assur, describedabove, stood in a grove of trees. We can deduce that some urbanand suburbantemples were given an architecturalform and decoration symbolic of a setting in a sacredgrove, in the garden of paradise. Usually the main temple in a big city had a ziggurrator temple tower with several stagesand a shrineon top. When Sir LeonardWoolley excavatedat , he found that the ziggurratwas a mud-brick structure with an outer casing of baked brick. The whole structure was perforatedat regularintervals by holes which penetrated right into the brickwork. Woolley interpretedthem as drainageholes to carry off water from plants which adornedthe variousstages of the tower. This was incorrect:the holes are there to enable the brickworkto dry out evenly and so to preventcracking and collapse. Several more recentlydiscovered representations of ziggurrats,both on monumentalsculptures and in miniature on cylinder seals, have confirmed that the towers were indeed not plantedwith treesor bushes. Sometimesthey aretopped with animalhorns as arealso the battlementsof cities. STEPHANIE DALLEY 7 Quite apart from the structuralproblems of planting large plants to grow on a mud-bricktower, and the mechanicalproblems of raisingwater so high, it would have been almost impossible to supply them with enough water without washing away the mud-brickof the tower.

THE HANGING GARDENS Woolley's writings were so popularthat it has proved difficult to dislodge this miscon- ception about ziggurratgardens from the public mind. Many people still think that the Hanging Gardensof Babylon were planted on the stages of the ziggurrat, so that the foliage hung over the sides, even though there is nothing in the descriptionsof Classical writers to support the idea. A part of the problem lies in the English word 'hanging', which implies trailingplants, growingdownwards below the placewhere they are rooted. The Greek word, kremastos,is explained in some detail by Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius Rufus, and Philo of Byzantium. It was used for artificialslopes raised up on terracesconstructed of stone, bitumen, and timberlike a Greektheatre, upon which soil was heaped and trees planted. For years there has been an embarrassingproblem about the location and appear- ance of the famous Hanging Gardensof Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. They were described by several Classical authors, among whom are Berossos (known from quotations in the writings of ), Strabo, and others mentionedabove. Berossosstated that Nebuchadnezzarhad built them; Quintus Curtius Rufus stated that an Assyrianking who conqueredBabylon built them. All agreed that they lay in Babylonnear the royalpalace. They were said to be built upon vaulted stone terracesand to imitate a mountainsidewith trees. Diodorus Siculus and Straboempha- sized that they were particularlymarvellous for a system of wateringwhich carriedwater invisiblyup to the top of the gardens.Strabo specifically said that it was an Archimedean screw. A Germanteam excavated the centre of Babylon and the palaces of Nebuchad- nezzar, so that the layout of the palacearea is now particularlywell known, and there are cuneiformtexts which describethe topographyof the city. The excavatorsdid discovera brick vaulted substructurewithin one of the palaces, but nothing on a scale that might have warranteda descriptionas one of the wondersof the world. Since the Classicaltexts stated that the gardens lay beside the river, and since an enormous amount of water would have been needed to irrigate such a garden, investigators searched for a site alongside the Euphratesbeside the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar,but failed to find any evidence for the famous gardens. I cameto the conclusionthat since therewas a of confusionbetween Nineveh and Babylon and between Assyria and Babylonia in Classical sources, a solution to the problem might be found by analyzingthat confusion. Diodorus Siculus, in describing 'Babylon',seemed to give details that belongedto Nineveh, in particularhis description of a palacewith walls that were adornedwith sculpturedstone reliefs depicting scenes of hunting and battles. This is appropriateto the well known palaces of Sennacheriband Assurbanipalat Nineveh, but definitelyinappropriate to the palacesof Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, which were decorated in an entirely different way. When describing 8 ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN GARDENS

Nineveh, on the other hand, Diodorus Siculus located it on the wrong river, the Euphrates, ratherthan the Tigris. Another confusionexisted: between Nebuchadnezzarand Sennacherib.This arose mainly from Jewish sourceswhich seem to have conflatedthe two attacks on describedin the .A particularlyclear example of this confusion is evident in the aprocryphalBook of Judith, which opens with the statementthat Nebuchadnezzar was king of the Assyrians(Babylonians would be correct)and ruled in Nineveh (Babylon would be correct). A breakthroughcame from a new attempt to understandthe technical description given in one of Sennacherib'sinscriptions. He describedthe building of his new 'Palace without a Rival' in Nineveh, the layout of adjacent gardens, and the new invention which, instead of the usual shaduf, watered the gardens. The curious vocabulary, of which previous translatorshad been able to make no good sense, creatednew technical meanings. The word 'tree trunks' described cylinders (in fact the word was already attested in this sense in mathematicaltexts). The name for a palm tree that has a spiral patternon the trunkwhere the old frondshave brokenaway was used to describea screw. The Babylonianname for this palm, known from other texts to have inedible fruit, is alamittu,and it had alreadybeen tentativelyidentified as Chamaeropshumilis, which does indeed exhibit a spiral effect on the trunk. (There are two particularlyfine, mature examples of this tree at present in the palm house at the Botanic Gardensin Oxford.) Proof that this pattern was thought of as a spiral comes from architecturalevidence: semi-engagedcolumns on temples have been excavatedat severalancient Mesopotamian sites, giving alternate pairs of imitation date-palm trunks with a scallop pattern and non-edible-fruit palm with a spiral pattern; the two kinds of pattern are made with shaped bricks. Sennacheribdescribed how he cast the two componentsout of copper or bronze from clay moulds, and put them together to make a water-liftingdevice. It is perhaps not surprisingto find that the Archimedeanscrew existed some four centuries before the lifetime of Archimedes himself. Great inventions are commonly attributedto a laterperson who succeededin publicizingthe discoveryor in putting it to a new use. In the case of Archimedes(as also with the theoryof Pythagoras),it is likely that he claimed the honour for having been the first to describe mathematicallyand with precision the physical principlesbehind the practicalapplication. Sennacherib'stext does not make it clear how the screws were rotated. They were set over cisterns. The inscription does not specify how many there were. It does seem clear that the tremendousproblem of wateringmountain trees planted upon artificially terracedslopes was solved in this way. It is significant that Sennacheribgave such prestige to the construction of the gardensand theirwatering system. This set a precedentfor futurekings. One of the main arguments for denying that Nebuchadnezzarhad ever built the gardens was that his building inscriptions,complete and detailedas they are, never describednew gardensor a new system of watering.In the latterrespect he restrictedhis interestto the completion of a municipal shaduf platformbeside the Euphrateswhich his father had begun. By locatingthe HangingGardens in Nineveh anotherpuzzle has been solved. When Herodotusdescribed the city of Babylonin the fifth centuryB.C., he failed to mention the Hanging Gardens,and has been vilified for his unreliabilityin this matter. But with the STEPHANIE DALLEY 9 gardensat Nineveh, his accountis vindicated.By rejectingNebuchadnezzar in favourof Sennacheribas the builder, we can show that Q. CurtiusRufus was correctin saying that an Assyrianking who conqueredBabylon was responsible. The one remainingproblem is to explain how Nineveh came to be called Babylon, and recent evidence has come to light showing that this could be the case. The informationcomes from ancientastronomical data preserved in Arabicsources and used by Kepler. The standardcalculation for the longest day was said to come from 'old Babylon'and was widely used even in , regardlessof latitude. The calculationwas made not from the latitude of Babylon, but from the latitude of one of the northern Assyriancities: Nineveh or Nimrud. Sennacheribhimself describedthe gardenand its wateringsystem as a 'Wonderfor all Peoples'. A similar phrase had been used by some of his predecessorsas kings of Assyria, from which we may deduce that the idea of having Wonders of the World to demonstrateman's most marvellousconstructions dates back to the ancient Assyrians. The Greek word theamata,'sight, wonder', used to describe the Seven Wonders of the World, is a very close translationof the Babylonianword tabrati. Sennacherib's palace garden was the end product of quite a long period of development. His lengthy inscriptionadmits that therewas a previouspalace on the site, but that it was too small, and was not sufficientlybeautiful. This earlier building was almost certainlya palacelaid out by one Assur-resh-ishiand completed by his son, the outstanding Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I (I I I4-I076 B.C.); beside the palace a garden was laid out, wateredby a canalled fromthe River Khosr; and the gardenboasted a small palace or pavilion. In some ways, therefore, it was a smaller, earlier version. These constructions would then have been 400 years old; Sennacherib describes how the foundationshad been underminedby the flow of riverwater too close to the building, and by a swampyarea developing around it. He pulled palaceand gardendown completely, and carriedout extensive canal-buildingwork to bring water in to the new palace and gardensfrom a mountainriver. As for creatingan artificiallandscape, such a concept had recentlybeen put into practiceby his own fatherSargon II, whose capitalcity Khorsabad was built on a virgin site. There he had re-createdthe changesof level that one expects in an old city, whereover time depositsof old buildingrubble would have been levelled off at various different heights and new buildings set upon them. Sennacherib'shanging gardens, watered with Archimedeanscrews from cisterns fed by a canalwhich broughtwater from a mountainriver, representedmountain slopes planted with variouskinds of aromatictrees, expresslyattempting to imitate the natural landscapeof the Amanus mountainsin north-westSyria. There were several pavilions, describedin the inscriptionas smallpalaces, within the gardens.A small relief in the British Museum almost certainly represents the garden under his grandson Assurbanipal(668-627 B.C.)in its maturity(Figure 2). Although it is not in very good condition, and may be only about a quarterof the originalwhole, the sculpture gives a good idea of how the gardenlooked. The palaceis on the left of the picture;a path with an altar runs from the pavilion down to the bottom of the picture, and streams of water trickleacross it. A masonryaqueduct with pointedarches brings water into the gardenat the middle level; but wateralso flows out fromunder one of the arches,so it is not entirely clear whether the arched structureextended back into the hill to support a terrace, or IO0 ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN GARDENS

Figure2. Gardenat Nineveh,drawn from a fragmentof reliefsculpture of Assurbanipalnow in the BritishMuseum, showing the gardendescribed by Sennacherib. The cornerof Sennacherib'spalace is justvisible top left Author'sdrawing: ? StephanieDalley whether it was a simple aqueduct built against the side of the hill and looking as if it supportedit. The screws are not shown; as Strabosays, they raisedwater invisibly; but the mechanismsmay have been shown on part of the picture that is now missing. The garden seems to be bowl-shaped,like a Greektheatre, correspondingto the description of Diodorus Siculus.

HERBS AND FLOWERS Much has been describedabout trees, but very little about herbs and flowers. There is a curious cuneiform text which lists herbs and vegetables in the garden of Merodach- BaladanII, a contemporaryof SargonII and Sennacheribduring the height of Assyrian garden design, who ruled from Babylon. The reason for the order of plants in fifteen different sections is not certain, but it could correspondto an arrangementof plants in different beds. The vocabulary, as far as we understandit, is highly specialized and differentiated:there are at least five differentkinds of mint, for instance. Quite a few of the plants have distinctly non-Babyloniannames. Although it is possible that all the STEPHANIE DALLEY II

Figure3. Fragmentof reliefsculpture of Assurbanipalshowing rare details of flowers in a huntingpark Author'sdrawing: ? StephanieDalley plantsbelong to a physic garden,each one havinga medicinaluse, we cannotbe certainof this, nor is the location specifiedas being in a palace. It expresslybelongs to the king. Herbal medicine was certainlydeveloped to a high art in Babyloniaby that period, as many esoteric medical texts demonstrate.The garden of Merodach-Baladanwas dis- cussed in the pages of this journalby Dr Helen Leach ten years ago. Least known for ancientMesopotamia is the vocabularyfor flowers. Certainly,they were appreciated:Sargon ii's courtiersoften hold a flowerin one hand; and a sculpture showing lions at rest in a royalgarden (Figure 3) definitelyshows floweringplants, one a lily. Where art critics have praised certain relief sculptures of Assurbanipalfor their modernuse of unfilledspace, I suspectthat detailssuch as flowerswere paintedon to the smooth stone and have since disappeared.But as trees and shrubs supply the shade, fragrance, and fruit that ancient Mesopotamiansrequired from their gardens, it is possible that the art of growing garden flowers for their own value was less highly esteemed.

PARADISE AND THE GARDEN OF EDEN The Greeksused a Persianword, paradeisos,for an enclosure, a garden, an orchardand for paradiseand the Gardenof Eden. As we have seen, the idea of an enclosed areawas fundamentalto the ancientMesopotamian garden. In the Epic of ,on the other hand, the forest of pines or cedars,which stood on the mountainslopes of the Lebanon, was a sacredplace guardedby the giant Humbaba, appointedby the highest gods. The I2 ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIAN GARDENS hero Gilgameshand companion Enkidu committed sacrilege by entering it, killing its guardian,and cutting down its trees. In the ArabianNights' story of Gilgamesh(the Tale of Buluqiya), the giant guardsthe trees of the Gardenof Eden, where 'sTomb lies. This serves to emphasize that the Garden consisted of trees, and shows the connectionof trees with the Gardenof Eden, and with 'paradise'as the last resting place of great sages. Does this mean that the 'original'garden of Eden is to be locatedin Lebanon?Even within the ancientMesopotamian tradition there are two differentplaces for Humbaba's forest; the Sumerianstory puts it in the Zagrosmountains between Iraq and Iran. The origin of the word Eden is uncertain; the Sumerian Edin, with which it has been compared, is an unlikely proposition,since it is a word for the arid semi-desertbeyond the areasof cultivation.A North Syrianstate called Bit Adini in Assyriantimes has also been suggested; certainlythe country there is beautiful, with a profusion of trees, but there is no reason to connect the words except a vague similarityof sound. It has been suggested that Bahrein,an islandin the Arabian/PersianGulf, famousfor its fresh water springs(but otherwiserather desolate) is the site of Eden becausesome Sumerianmyths areset there, accordingto its identificationas ancientDilmun. This seems quite unlikely; in Sennacherib'stime was well known as a backwaterinhabited by roughnecks who still used copper tools in the Iron Age. For the ArabsCeylon, now Sri Lanka, then known as Serendib,was equated with earthlyparadise, perhaps because of the fabulous gardensof Sigiriya,dating from the fifth centuryA.D. No doubt even in early antiquity many different locationswere favouredby different groups of people, accordingto the most famous gardensand groves in the vicinity. The place of ancientMesopotamia in gardenhistory is fundamental.The identifica- tion of the elusive Hanging Gardensat Nineveh, alias 'old Babylon', helps to show the characterof its tradition. This is quite different from the formal, symbolical, layout of later Persianand other Middle Easterngardens. It has its own symbolism and a special appeal as the re-creationof paradise, the Garden of Eden. It belongs to a romantic tradition,in creatingby artificialmeans a seeminglynatural landscape into which an altar or an elegant pavilion might be inserted, as in a sacredgrove, a royal paradise.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am gratefulto the Scottishbranch of the GardenHistory Society for invitingme to repeata lecture(first given at the Departmentfor ContinuingEducation in Oxford)during the courseof which the solution to the problem of the Hanging Gardens began to occur to me. In this bibliographyearlier discussions of the problemare includedfor sourceinformation and for historicalinterest.

NOTE The author is writing a detailed account of the Hanging Gardensfor a book. BIBLIOGRAPHY ALBENDA, P. 'Grapevinesin Assurbanipal'sgarden', Bulletin of theAmerican Schools of Oriental Research 215 (1974), pp. 5-I7. ALBENDA, P. 'Landscape bas-reliefs in the Bit hilani of Assurbanipal',BASOR 224 (I976), pp. 49-72; and 225 (I977), pp. 29-48. STEPHANIE DALLEY I3

AL-KHALESI, Y. 'The Court of the Palms', BibliothecaMesopotamica 8 (Malibu, I978), with review of P. Talon, BibliothecaOrientalis 36 (I979), pp. 331-33. ALWAN, K. 'The vaultedstructures of the so-calledhanging gardens', 35 (I979), pp. 134- 36. ANDRAE, W. 'Der kultische Garten', Welt des Orients I (1952), pp. 485-94. BARNETT, R. D. Sculpturesfrom the North Palace of Assurbanipalat Nineveh (, I976), p. 4I. BECKER, A. and u. 'Altes' und 'neues' Babylon, BaghdaderMitteilungen 2 (I99I), pp. 501-II. BLEIBTREU, E. Die Flora derneuassyrischen Reliefs (Vienna, I980). BULLETIN OF SUMERIAN AGRICULTURE (Cambridge,1984 onwards), ed. J. N. Postgate and M. A. Powell. COCQUERILLAT, D. 'Recherchessur le vergerdu templecampagnard de l'', Weltdes Orients 7 (1973-74), Pp. 96-I34. CONTENAU, G. 'Droguesde ,d'Amurru et jardinsbotaniques'. In: Melangessyriens offerts a Monsieur Rene Dussaud, I (Paris, 1939), pp. 1 I-I4. FINKEL, I. 'The Hanging Gardensof Babylon'. In: Seven Wondersof the World,ed. P. Clayton (London, I988), pp. 38-58. GRAYSON, A. K. Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, 2 (Wiesbaden, I976). HEIDEL, A. 'The OctagonalSennacherib Prism in the IraqMuseum', Sumer 9 (1953), pp. 117 ff. HROUDA, B. 'Some remarkson the topographyof Babylon',Sumer 4I (I985), pp. 14-I5. LEACH, H. 'On the origins of kitchen gardeningin the Ancient ', GardenHistory Io:I (I982), pp. I-I6. LIVINGSTONE, A. CourtPoetry and LiteraryMiscellanea, State Archivesof Assyria II (Helsinki University Press, I989), no. 16 (SU 52/233). NAGEL, W. 'Where were the Hanging Gardens?', Sumer 35 (1979), pp. 241-42. OPPENHEIM, A. L. 'On royalgardens in Mesopotamia',JournalofNearEastern Studies24 (1965), pp. 328-33. PARPOLA, S. The Correspondenceof Sargon II, part I, State Archives of Assyria v (Helsinki University Press, I987), no. 226 (K.688). SCHAEFFER, C. F. A. et al. Ugaritica IV (Paris, 1962), pp. I6-I7 and p. 27, fig. 21. WILCKE, C. 'Die Emar-Versionvon "Dattelpalmeund Tamariske"- ein Rekonstruktions- versuch', ZeitschriftfiirAssyriologie 79.2 (I989), pp. 161-90. WISEMAN, D. J. 'Mesopotamian gardens', Anatolian Studies 33 (1983), pp. I37-44.