Babylon's hanging garden: ancient scripts give clue to missing wonder

[JAMMY]

Do we have any changed info regarding this subject?

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/may/05/babylon-hanging-garden-wonder-nineveh

Quote

A British academic has gathered evidence suggesting garden was created at Nineveh, 300 miles from Babylon

Recent excavations have found traces of aqueducts. One near Nineveh was so vast that Dalley said its remains looked like a stretch of motorway from the air, and it bore a crucial inscription: "Sennacherib king of the world … Over a great distance I had a watercourse directed to the environs of Nineveh …"

Having first broached her theory in 1992, Dalley is now presenting a mass of evidence in a book, The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon, which Oxford University Press publishes on 23 May. She expects to divide academic opinion, but the evidence convinces her that Sennacherib's garden fulfils the criteria for a wonder of the world – "magnificent in conception, spectacular in engineering, and brilliant in artistry".

Dalley said: "That the Hanging Garden was built in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar the Great is a fact learned at school and … 'verified' in encyclopaedias … To challenge such a universally accepted truth might seem the height of arrogance, revisionist scholarship ... But Assyriology is a relatively recent discipline … Facts that once seemed secure become redundant."

Sennacherib's palace, with steps of semi-precious stone and an entrance guarded by colossal copper lions, was magnificent. Dalley pieced together ancient texts to reveal a garden that recreated a mountain landscape. It boasted terraces, pillared walkways, exotic plants and trees, and rippling streams.

The seven wonders appear in classical texts written centuries after the garden was created, but the 1st-century historian Josephus was the only author to name Nebuchadnezzar as creator of the Hanging Garden, Dalley said. She found extensive confusion over names and places in ancient texts, including the Book of Judith, muddling the two kings.

Little of Nineveh – near present-day Mosul – has so far been explored, because it has been judged too dangerous until now to conduct excavations.

 

From w00 5/15 pp. 10-14 - The Watchtower—2000

• Pay Attention to God’s Prophetic Word for Our Day (‎10 occurrences)

• • 15, 16. What did Nebuchadnezzar do for Babylon, and what happened when he boasted about its greatness?

    ¹⁵ By completing Babylon’s massive double walls that his father had started to build, Nebuchadnezzar made the capital city seemingly impregnable.

    ...

    To satisfy his Median queen, who longed for the hills and forests of her homeland, Nebuchadnezzar reportedly built the hanging gardens—one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

  • w00 5/15 pp. 10-14 - The Watchtower—2000

[Ann O'Maly]

On 7/13/2016 at 6:26 AM, JAMMY said:

Do we have any changed info regarding this subject?

Zip, as far I can tell. The last mention of Babylon's 'hanging gardens' in the Org's literature was 2011 - 2 years before Stephanie Dalley published her research.