A Piece of Home
The historian Berosus, quoted by Josephus in Contra Apionem:
“He [Nebuchadnezzar] also rebuilt the old city, and added another to it on the outside, and so far restored Babylon, that none who should besiege it afterwards might have it in their power to divert the river, so as to facilitate an entrance into it; and this he did by building three walls about the inner city, and three about the outer. Some of these walls he built of burnt brick and bitumen, and some of brick only. So when he had thus fortified the city with walls, after an excellent manner, and had adorned the gates magnificently, he added a new palace to that which his father had dwelt in, and this close by it also, and that more eminent in its height, and in its great splendor. It would perhaps require too long a narration, if any one were to describe it. However, as prodigiously large and as magnificent as it was, it was finished in fifteen days. Now in this palace he erected very high walks, supported by stone pillars, and by planting what was called a pensile paradise, and replenishing it with all sorts of trees, he rendered the prospect an exact resemblance of a mountainous country. This he did to please his queen, because she had been brought up in Media, and was fond of a mountainous situation.”
- Contra Apionem, Book I, 19.
Josephus also quotes Berosus in The Antiquities of the Jews:
“And after he [Nebuchadnezzar] had, after a becoming manner, walled the city, and adorned its gates gloriously, he built another palace before his father's palace, but so that they joined to it; to describe whose vast height and immense riches it would perhaps be too much for me to attempt; yet as large and lofty as they were, they were completed in fifteen days. He also erected elevated places for walking, of stone, and made it resemble mountains, and built it so that it might be planted with all sorts of trees. He also erected what was called a pensile paradise, because his wife was desirous to have things like her own country, she having been bred up in the palaces of Media."
- The Antiquities of the Jews, Book X, Ch. 11., 1.
Thanks to Pippin Michelli for his site aggregating sources on the Hanging Gardens.
To clarify, the idea that Sennacherib’s gardens in Nineveh were the gardens that the Greeks meant when they created the list of the Seven Wonders of the World is a more recent theory. We find it a very convincing theory, but Amytis’ real Hanging Gardens of Babylon may yet lie hidden beneath the sands of Mesopotamia.
Relief of Sennacherib in his gardens in Nineveh
