The Lost City - Babylon

Babylon, Ancient Iraq

King Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, once one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, to dazzle the gods and as a testament to his own greatness. Herodotus chronicled its magnificence, despite probably never having seen it, but now, not so much as a hanging basket can be found. The mud-brick walls of the city were discovered in the 19th century, however, along with ruins of the northern palace. The site was controversially re-built under Saddam Hussein. Large chunks of the city's Ishtar Gate can be seen at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. 

Babylon Ruins

Herodotus claimed the outer walls were 56 miles in length, 80 feet thick and 320 feet high. Wide enough, he said, to allow two four-horse chariots to pass each other. The city also had inner walls which were "not so thick as the first, but hardly less strong." Inside these double walls were fortresses and temples containing immense statues of solid gold. Rising above the city was the famous Tower of Babel, a temple to the god Marduk, that seemed to reach to the heavens.

The Hanging Garden of Babylon

The gardens were built to cheer up Nebuchadnezzar's homesick wife, Amyitis. Amyitis, daughter of the king of the Medes, was married to Nebuchadnezzar to create an alliance between the two nations. The land she came from, though, was green, rugged and mountainous, and she found the flat, sun-baked terrain of Mesopotamia depressing. The king decided to relieve her depression by recreating her homeland through the building of an artificial mountain with rooftop gardens.