Hanging Gardens Of Babylon at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

Both the city walls and the hanging gardens of babylon gardens which Greek travelers found so impressive were of the "new" city erected subsequent to Sennacherib's destruction of Babylon in 689 B.C. The Chaldean kings, Nabopolassar (r. 626—605) and his son Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605-562) were builders of the mighty walls described by Herodotus and Ctesias in the 5th century B.C. Herodotus ignores the hanging gardens of babylon gardens ; other writers describe them as a series of terraces rising along the Euphrates bank and connected by marble stairways. Planted with a profusion of trees, shrubs, and flowers, the gardens were watered by fountains fed through pipes from cisterns in the topmost terrace. Nebuchadnezzar had the world's most celebrated gardens developed as an adjunct of his palace; but the Greeks as-scribed them to Semiramis, a legendary queen of Babylon, daughter of the goddess Derceto. Statue of Zeus by Phidias.—Like the Atl statue for the Parthenon, Phidias' colossal st of Zeus was a chryselephantine work, the I parts of ivory on a wood or stone core, the dra] and other Ornaments of gold. The sculptor re sented the god crowned with an olive wreath seated on a cedarwood throne which was adoi with gold, ivory, ebony, and precious stones. Ir right hand Zeus held an ivory and gold statui Victory, in his left a scepter surmounted by eagle. The statue was placed in the great ten of Zeus in the sacred grove at Olympia (comph in 457 B.C.) and nearly attained the room's 60-1 roof. The Emperor Theodorus I removed it Constantinople where it was destroyed in a fin 475 A.D.

The "hanging gardens of babylon gardens" of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, were built by Nebuchadnezzar, 500 B.C., to gratify his wife, the Median Princess Amytis, who yearned for the hills and trees of her native country. Early planned gardening was practiced in Persia, and by 1370 A.D. the Chinese had many sacred groves of planted and tended trees. The Romans had Roof gardens and domestic gardens for vegetables. Gardening was developed in western Europe under the monastic system when monks cultivated the gardens of abbeys and monasteries. The Renaissance was a period when horticulture and arboriculture received attention in Europe in unison with a general cultural development including music, arts, crafts, and classical literature.

An opuscule entitled De sept em or bis miraculis, attributed to Philo of Byzantium, gives one listing of the seven ; a variant is offered by Antipater of Sidon. According to the most popular tradition they were: (1) the pyramids of Egypt; (2) the hanging gardens of babylon gardens of Semiramis and the walls of Babylon; (3) the statue of the Olympian Zeus by Phidias, at Olympia; (4) the Colossus of Rhodes; (5) the temple of Artemis at Ephesus; (6) the Mausoleum erected by Queen Artemesia at Halicarnassus ; and (7) the Pharos (lighthouse) of Alexandria. Of these only the Pyramids have survived.