What Is Special About The Hanging Garden Of Babylon?

What was so special, given that the hanging gardens no longer exist (if, indeed, they ever did).

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were supposed to be one of the seven wonders of the Ancient world, according to Greek scholars writing around 100 BC.

The Gardens were, supposedly, built on a hillside (hence "hanging") and very lush.

To create such gardens today might not seem such an achievement, but it was a big deal in the ancient world.  Especially because the gardens featured water that had been moved uphill and then down again.  Nowadays we'd just use an electrical pump, but back in BC times the water had to be pumped up by hand.  Irrigation methods were not that sophisticated back then, and the idea of luxury recreational outdoor landscaped space (gardens) relatively novel.

There is no evidence of that the gardens at Babylon really existed. There is credible evidence of some spectacular contemporary private gardens, though, at the town of Nineveh.  Some scholars argue that these were the actual gardens that had so impressed ancient scholars.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are one of the seven wonders of the world. Originally, the gardens were built by a King for his wife. Since Babylon, or present day Iraq, is desert, it is hard to grow things there without irrigation.This King grew the gardens on terraces, thus earning the name the hanging gardens. What's so great about it is that he was the first to do it.

The garden existed and many saw them and wrote about them. They were built sometime between 800 - 600 BC. There are four main writers who have left descriptions to lend some evidence of the gardens, Berossus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Philo.

The original greek word is kremastos that can mean hanging or overhanging possibly meaning they used trellises and planted on the courtyard balconies but more likely referring to the gardens being built over the water storage caverns. Strabo, describing the gardens, 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 archaeologist Koldewey excavated the gardens even finding the location of three hoists used to raise water from the vaulted caverns built under the gardens. Accounts of the size vary so either there were errors in translations or the gardens changed size. The foundations that Koldewey discovered measured some 100 by 150 feet. That is still 1/3 of an acre so still impressive considering it was an entirely constructed space not just planted in the ground and this was before they used the pointed arch or fan vaulting found in later stone construction.