Hanging gardens of babylon, mesopotamia LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

1. MADE BY:
SAYANTAN PAUL
27802317002 , 6TH SEM
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

2. INTRODUCTION
 The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are perhaps the most mysterious of
the seven wonders. They are remarkable in that they compose the only
wonder whose very existence has been very seriously called into
question.
 Babylon was the capital of the Neo-Babylonian empire, which thrived in
the region of Mesopotamia (a region covering today’s Iraq, part of
Syria, southeastern Turkey and Southwestern Iran) from 612 B.C.
 Location: City State of Babylon (Modern Iraq)
 Built: Around 600 BC
 Function: Royal Gardens
 Destroyed: Earthquake, 2nd Century BC
 Size: Height probably 80 ft. (24m)
 Made of: Mud brick waterproofed with lead.
 Other: Only wonder whose archaeological
remains cannot be verified.

3. GIFT FOR A HOMESICK WIFE
 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.
 The Hanging Gardens probably did not really
"hang" in the sense of being suspended from
cables or ropes. The name comes from an
inexact translation of the Greek word
kremastos, or the Latin word pensilis, which
means not just "hanging", but "overhanging"
as in the case of a terrace or balcony

4. CONSTRUCTION OF THE GARDEN
 The Greek geographer Strabo, who
described the gardens in first century
BC, wrote, "It consists of vaulted
terraces raised one above another, and
resting upon cube-shaped pillars.
These are hollow and filled with earth
to allow trees of the largest size to be
planted. The pillars, the vaults, and
terraces are constructed of baked brick
and asphalt.
 The ascent to the highest story is by
stairs, and at their side are water
engines, by means of which persons,
appointed expressly for the purpose,
are continually employed in raising
water from the Euphrates into the
garden.

5. IRRIGATION SYSTEM
 A chain pump is two large wheels, one above the
other, connected by a chain. On the chain are hung
buckets. Below the bottom wheel is a pool with the
water source. As the wheel is turned, the buckets
dip into the pool and pick up water. The chain then
lifts them to the upper wheel, where the buckets
are tipped and dumped into an upper pool. The
chain then carries the empty ones back down to be
refilled.
A PROBLEM
 Construction of the gardens was not only complicated by the need to
get water to the top of the gardens, but also by the fact that the water
would destroy the foundation if it were allowed to reach the bricks.
Since stone was hard to find on the Mesopotamian Plain, most of the
architecture in Babylon was made out of brick. The bricks were
composed of clay mixed with chopped straw, which were then baked
in the sun. The bricks were joined with bitumen, a slimy substance
that acts like glue between the bricks. These bricks quickly dissolved
when soaked with water

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
 http://hanginggardensofbabylon.org/
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_Gardens_of_B abylon
 http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/seven-wonderancient-
world2.htm