Who built the hanging gardens of Babylon for their homesick wife?

Answer 1

Herodotus was the first author to give a full description of the Hanging Gardens. According to him, the gardens were built by Nebuchadnezzar II to make his wife Amytis happy because she didn't like the Babylonian desert. She had lived in Persia, which had many plants and fountains. It was about 350 feet tall and was covered with trees, flowers, lawns, plants, fountains, pools, and miniature water falls. It had every kind of plant available in the kingdom. It was made of mud brick and stone, a series of terraces, one on top of the other. The plants couldn't survive without water, so they had to pump water from the Euphrates River to flow down through channels to the plants.

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Reading Herodotus' description, you'll see that what he described was Babylon itself. If you try to sketch out the city plan as he describes it, it can be done. What's more, it's pretty accurate in relation to archaeological maps. In the plan below, Herodotus' Temple of Zeus Belos is the central and above it is his King's Palace where we'd look for the Hanging Gardens. In the early 1900's German archaeologist, Robert Koldewey traced the area where the Hanging Gardens of Babylon had been layed. Only crumbling mud brick can be seen today.

Answer 2

Accounts indicate that the garden was built by King Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled the city for 43 years starting in 605 BC (There is an alternative story that the gardens were built by the Assyrian Queen Semiramis during her five year reign starting in 810 BC). This was the height of the city's power and influence and King Nebuchadnezzar is known to have constructed an astonishing array of temples, streets, palaces and walls. According to accounts, 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.