7 Wonders of the World Hanging Gardens

Some tales suggest the holding Gardens towered hundreds of feet to the air, but archaeological explorations indicate an even more moderate, yet still impressive, height. (Copyright Lee Krystek, 1998)

The city of Babylon, under King Nebuchadnezzar II, must-have been a wonder into old traveler's eyes. "Besides its dimensions, " published Herodotus, a Greek historian in 450 BC, "Babylon surpasses in splendor any town in the understood world."

Herodotus advertised the exterior walls were 56 miles in total, 80 foot thick and 320 feet high. Wide adequate, he said, to permit two four-horse chariots to pass through each other. The city also had inner walls that have been "not so dense once the very first, but scarcely less strong." Inside these dual wall space had been fortresses and temples containing immense statues of solid-gold. Rising above the town ended up being the famous Tower of Babel, a temple into the god Marduk, that appeared to achieve on heavens.

Seven Fast Realities

Location: city-state of Babylon (modern-day Iraq)

Built: Around 600 BC

Function: Royal Gardens

Destroyed: Quake, second Century BC

Size: level probably 80 ft. (24m)

Made from: Mud stone waterproofed with lead.

Various other: Some archeologists declare that the specific place wasn't in Babylon, but 350 miles on north inside town of Nineveh.

While archaeological excavations have disputed some of Herodotus's statements (the exterior wall space seem to be just 10 miles very long and never nearly because high) his narrative does give us a feeling of exactly how awesome the attributes of the city appeared to those ancients that went to it. Strangely, but among town's most dazzling web sites just isn't also discussed by Herodotus: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven miracles for the Ancient World.

Gift for A Homesick Wife

Accounts indicate your yard had been built by King Nebuchadnezzar, which ruled the town for 43 years starting in 605 BC (there is certainly an alternative story that gardens had been built because of the Assyrian Queen Semiramis during the woman five year reign starting in 810 BC). This is the level for the city's energy and impact and King Nebuchadnezzar could have constructed an astonishing variety of temples, roads, palaces and walls.