› 40 TheStructuralEngineer Professional guidance July 2016 Hanging Garden of Babylon Engineering the Hanging Garden of Babylon Sean Brady examines the remarkable engineering works that may have underpinned one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Introduction What would you do, hypothetically speaking, if you wanted to prove the existence of the Hanging Garden of Babylon? You could Figure 1 study the writings on the subject, identify Reconstruction drawing of the garden’s likely location, then excavate Sennacherib’s palace garden at Nineveh1 to fi nd physical proof. But what if there was DALLEY STEPHANIE OF PERMISSION BY REPRODUCED BALL. TERRY BY DRAWING a problem? What if, after decades of digging, were above the water table and artifi cially in the ancient city of Khorsabad2. One day you found nothing, not a single shred moistened. It was lush all year round, a Jacobsen is approached by a workman, of evidence? symbol of abundance and fertility – a true Hussain Ali of Faddhiliyah, who says that Would this mean the garden was a myth Garden of Eden in an arid land. the previous summer he worked in a small and never existed? Or would it mean you But there are problems with these village at the foot of the mountains. The were just digging in the wrong place? descriptions. They are not fi rst-hand village had 18 or so mud huts, and a number accounts. They were provided by Greek of them had been repaired using cut stones Seven Wonders and Roman writers who never actually – stones that bore inscriptions. Jacobsen The Seven Wonders of The Ancient World saw the garden, written several centuries listens, but is sceptical. These claims were were compiled by Greek and Roman writers after its destruction. Then there are common, but not always genuine. However, – a bucket list of must-see structures for Nebuchadnezzar’s writings. He was a he changes his mind when Ali shows him intrepid travellers. While the Great Pyramid prodigious documenter of his achievements, sketches of the writing – it’s in cuneiform, of Giza still stands, the remaining six were especially his building projects, but he never the ancient language of both the Assyrians the Pharos Lighthouse in Alexandria, the mentions a garden. Wouldn’t you, if you'd and Babylonians. Colossus of Rhodes, the statue of Zeus at built a world wonder? Finally, we come to The next morning Jacobsen and Ali set off . Olympia, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, physical proof. Babylon was excavated by By noon they reach their destination – a long, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and Robert Koldewey between 1898 and 1917, shallow valley bisected by a stream. They see a hanging garden located in the city of and he looked for the location of the the village of Jerwan in the distance, but the Babylon, just south of modern-day Baghdad. garden1. Yet he found nothing consistent most spectacular sight is a large, 280m long Physical evidence has confi rmed the with classical descriptions of the garden. stone wall that cuts straight across the valley. existence of all these wonders – all except And since then no one else has found It’s covered in grass, only recognisable by for the Hanging Garden1. anything either. stones protruding in places through the turf. This garden was constructed by So, no fi rst-hand eyewitness accounts, no They are met by the village elder (mukhtar), Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar II, mention of a garden in Nebuchadnezzar’s who shows them the mud huts containing c.600BC as a gift for his Persian wife. It was writings, and no physical proof whatsoever. the inscribed stones. Jacobsen examines not just a landscaped garden in the same It’s hardly surprising that some scholars have the inscriptions and recognises the name way as, say, Versailles, because in addition concluded that the garden never actually Sennacherib, the ancient Assyrian king. to being visually stunning, it was also existed – that it was a myth. These stones date back to 700BC. The technically innovative – as was the case with mukhtar says the stones are taken from the all the Seven Wonders. The literature tells us Jerwan grass-covered structure, which was a dam it was approx. 120m × 120m in plan, built on Let’s leave the city of Babylon and travel more used in the past to capture fl ood waters. man-made, multilevel stone terraces, like a than 300km north, to the Assyrian kingdom. There are more inscriptions on the dam, Greek amphitheatre, at the foot of which was The year is 1932, and archaeologists Thorkild and he can have villagers uncover them if a lake. The trees planted on the upper levels Jacobsen and Seton Lloyd are excavating Jacobsen is willing to wait. TSE55_40-42 Pro_Guide-hanging garden.indd 40 16/06/2016 14:16 www.thestructuralengineer.org 41 Over a meal of curds, honey and It would take decades before the full extent subscribe to the view that the garden never crispbreads the men wait. Then they’re of this engineering marvel would become existed – for her there is too much coherency shown the newly uncovered inscriptions, known. (Interestingly, declassifi ed imagery between the various classical sources for it to which are only partially legible, and Jacobsen from the US CORONA intelligence satellite be a myth. Instead, she believes we’ve been realises he’s made an astonishing discovery. system was used by Jason Ur from Harvard looking in the wrong place, and she provides The inscription details Sennacherib’s building University to help map the canal network’s a wide range of evidence to support this view works, saying, “I spanned a bridge… [illegible routes3. These images show changes in in her fascinating book. We will limit ourselves words] I caused to pass over upon it”. This topography that are all but invisible at ground to discussing only a few of her key points. wasn’t a dam, it was a bridge. He guesses the level.) From where water was diverted from Dr Dalley’s revelation came when she illegible words are probably something like the river at Khinnis, it would travel through a translated an Assyrian prism from the “armies or war chariots”. Crucially, because canal constructed more than 2700 years ago, British Museum. This prism, 38cm long, with it bears Sennacherib’s name, it is the oldest crossing the Jerwan aqueduct and fl owing hexagonal sides – each full of cuneiform bridge ever discovered – considerably older more than 90km until it reached the ancient text – describes Sennacherib’s palace and its than the bridge discovered by Koldewey Assyrian capital city of Nineveh. surrounds in Nineveh (Figure 1). This method in Babylon. This infrastructure provided enormous of “documenting” construction projects was benefi ts to Nineveh, among them clean common for the time. And these prisms were Excavation drinking water and irrigation for surrounding often buried in walls or foundations so that, In time it would transpire that Jacobsen farmland. But what if it had an altogether when the building eventually collapsed, the was not the fi rst archaeologist to notice more glamourous role? Because if you prism – in what you could describe as a last the bridge, but no one at that stage had were Sennacherib, and you wanted to gasp of egotism – served as a reminder of the investigated it in detail. So the following year, build the most impressive garden in the king’s past glories. he, along with his team, return to Iraq, where world, you now had the single most When Dr Dalley was deciphering the prism, they base themselves in the village of Ain important ingredient. Water. she found a fascinating line of text: “I raised Sifni, 5km from Jerwan. His bridge theory, the height of the surroundings of the palace, however, is about to be turned on its head. The prism to be a Wonder for All Peoples. I gave it the Three or four days into excavation they’re Is it possible that the Hanging Garden was in name ‘Incomparable Palace’. A high garden visited by a physician, Petros de Baz, who Nineveh, not Babylon? Could the Greek and imitating the Amanus mountains I laid out next tells them an intriguing story he’s heard from Roman authors have got it wrong? This is the to it, with all kinds of aromatic plants, orchard one of his patients. Long ago, two suitors theory advanced by Dr Stephanie Dalley in trees...” – a remarkably similar description to vied for the hand in marriage of the king’s her recent book The mystery of the Hanging that of the Hanging Garden. daughter. The king promised her to the Garden of Babylon1. Another key piece of evidence came in suitor who could supply the nearby village of Dr Dalley is an academic at Oxford the form of a bas relief (Figure 2) recovered Tell Kaif with water. The story then focuses University and an Assyriologist. She is also from Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh – again on who won the daughter’s hand, but it one of a small group of people in the world stored in the British Museum. This relief also describes how one suitor embarked that can read cuneiform text. She doesn’t depicts a garden that was not considered to on a major engineering project centred on Jerwan. Jacobsen is stunned. What if he’s not excavating a bridge, but an aqueduct? Two days later he gets his answer. They uncover a complete inscription at the north end of the structure, and rather than referring to “armies or war chariots” as Jacobsen assumed, it reads, “Those waters I caused to pass over upon it.” Jacobsen is looking at an aqueduct – an aqueduct that predated the Romans by more than half a millennium.