| | Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BC), son of Naboplashar (625-605 BC) - under whom the Mesopotamian civilization reached its ultimate glory - is credited for building the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. It is said that the Gardens were built to please Nebuchadnezzar's his wife (or concubine), who, it is said, had been brought up in Media, and so naturally liked mountain surroundings.
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Though Babylonian records stay silent on the matter, detailed descriptions can be got from ancient Greek sources and the writings of Strabo and Philo of Byzantium. Tablets from the era contain descriptions of Nebuchadnezzar's palace, the city of Babylon, and the walls, but there are no references of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to be found in them. The most elaborate accounts of the Gardens, however, come from the Greek historians Berossus and Diodorus Siculus; strangely none of these historians, who have provided detailed descriptions of the Hanging Gardens, ever saw them. It is argued that when Alexander's soldiers reached Mesopotamia and saw Babylon, they were awed by what they saw. So when they returned to their not so impressive homeland, they gushed about the amazing gardens and palm trees they had seen. The poets and historians took up the cue and in their fertile imaginations they coalesced these elements to construct one of the Wonders - The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
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| | Strabo and Philo of Byzantium furnish us with some information about its structure. The sides of the quadrangular Garden were each of them "four plethra long" and consisted of arched vaults mounted upon cubic foundations. The plants were grown above ground level, and streams of water flowed down sloping channels to water it. The whole mass was supported on top of stone columns.
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Recent archaeological excavations, however have been pretty conflicting. While 25m thick walls have been found on the bank of the Euphrates, the discovered palace is no where within several hundred meters of the river.
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