![]() This is the thesis of Stéphanie Dalley,Īssyriologist, who assumes that the gardens were actually in Nineveh, a town further south, the former capital of Assyria. Rather than believing in their nonexistence one may wonder if the gardens were not in another city. It is not so surprising that gardensĪre not mentioned so often in the documents of the time. (since become canonical) but at the time the visitors of the city were especially surprised by the ramparts. It is only Philo de Bysance has put forward the gardens in his list Obviously much more impressive, still according to documents of the time. It is curious that the gardens had supplanted the ramparts because they were Then the city of Babylon was not famous only for its hanging gardens butĮspecially for its ramparts. Restricted) areas in which the remains of the hanging gardens may be hidden. While much of the terrain has been identified, there are still (and increasingly There are no archaeological traces, the chief historian of the time, who does not speak of it, of ancient Greek authors doubtful: Did the gardensįirst of all, archaeological research is not finished in Babylon. This is the case of the ramparts ofīabylon for example, of which Herodotus estimates the height to 100m which is architecturally impossible. Moreover,Įach civilization wants to put forward its power, it is normal that the descriptions are always exaggerated. These authorsĪre doubtful because they lived in ancient times when rare writings were made on the basis of oral description that could easily be diverted. ![]() It is on the basis of their texts that Quinte Curce and Strabo wrote their descriptions. Visit of the city does not describe at any time those gardens which should have been among the main monuments to be quoted.Īnother argument, the ancient Greek authors. If a person could describe the gardens, it would have been him, but strangely his account of the He has written a number of books on history but also on geography, without limiting himself to the world around him.Ī great traveler, he knew Babylon well for a time. Lived in the 5th century BC, he is considered the first historian of humanity, in the sense that it was the first to take an interest in the history Another argument, the testimony of Herodotus: This high personage Moreover these excavations covered a largeĪrea of the ancient city and there are few places where these gardens could be. Ramparts or the great palace have been perfectly identified. They never existed is that the archaeological investigations undertaken have nothing reported while other buildings of Babylon, such as the If we still ask ourselves this question today, it is because there are big doubts about their lives. The GreekĪuthors prior to Quinte Curce are not credible.ĭid the gardens really exist? Arguments proving that this is not the case Of Alexander the Great, which served as the basis of Diodorus of Sicily, could have invented them on the basis of actually existing royal gardens. It is plausible for several reasons: Clitarchus, the author of the biography On the gardens of Babylon while the authors on which they based did not mention it. With such ancient texts it seems impossible to doubt the existence of these gardens, but to take a closer look one can think that these authors added passages World in his book "De septem orbis spectaculis ". Of Babylon in his book "Histoire d'Alexandre" (Description derived from earlier Greek texts), and finally Philon de Bysance, who listed the 7 wonders of the In which he describes the gardens from Greek authors, that of Quinte Curce, a Roman historian of the 1st century, who also wrote a description of the gardens There are a few other texts on which to base oneself: that of the geographer Strabo (In the 1st century BC) in his work "Geography" That the source which enabled him to write it was the same as that of Quinte Curce, the two descriptions being rather similar. But recent studies seem to indicate that this description is a later addition to the text of Ctesias, and ![]() Which Ctesias of Cnidus wrote in his book Persica. This ancient book is lost, it has come down to us only by quotations from more recent authors.ĭiodorus of Sicily is a historian of the first century BC, who in a biography of Alexander the Great reproduces the description of the gardens of Babylon, In a work he wrote a short description of the gardens of Babylon from a book writtenīy Bérose, a Chaldean Babylonian priest who lived in the 4th century BC and wrote "Babyloniaca" a book telling the story of the city as far as Nebuchadnezzar. On the quantity of documents available only two are worthy of interest:įlavius Josephus was a Roman historiographer of the first century. The main difficulty encountered when referring to documentary sources concerning the gardens of Babylon is that these sources are indirect, ie they are
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