Hanging Gardens of Babylon Hanging Gardens of Babylon - an architectural structure, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Despite its glorification, it is not known for certain whether they actually existed. Presumably, they were in the ancient Babylonian kingdom, near the modern city of Al Hill (modern Iraq) or near the city of Al-Mosul (also modern Iraq). According to legend, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II in the 7th century BC ordered to build gardens for his wife Amitis. She was born in the mountainous and green ancient state of Midia and yearned for her in the dusty and noisy Babylon, located in the sand. But historians mistakenly called the gardens after the Assyrian queen Semiramis, who lived two centuries earlier. The hanging gardens were a pyramid consisting of four tiers of platforms. They were supported by columns up to 25 meters high. To prevent leakage of irrigation water, the surface of each platform was first covered with a layer of reed mixed with asphalt, then with two layers of brick fastened with gypsum mortar, lead plates were laid on top of everything. On them with a thick carpet lay fertile land, where seeds of various herbs, flowers, shrubs and trees were planted. The pyramid resembled an ever-blooming green hill. Pipes were placed in the cavity of one of the columns, through which water from the Euphrates was constantly pumped to the upper tier of the gardens, from where it, flowing in streams and small waterfalls, irrigated the plants of the lower tiers. Like collections of sayings by famous sages, jokes and tales of wonders, compositions about the Seven Wonders of the World were popular in the ancient era and included descriptions of the most grandiose, most magnificent or technically most striking buildings and monuments of art. That's why they were called miracles of the world. The hanging gardens of Babylon are truly a miracle even for our days.
