It has fired the imagination of
historians and archaeologists for centuries, but the mystery of the
Hanging Gardens of Babylon may finally have been solved – with a
surprising twist.
A
leading Oxford-based historian says the fabled gardens, one of the
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, were not built in Hillah by King
Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. In fact they weren’t in Babylon at all.
Dr
Stephanie Dalley, of Oxford University’s Oriental Institute, says the
gardens were actually located 300 miles to the north in Nineveh,
Babylon's rival, by the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib.
Glory of the ancients: A sixteenth century
illustration of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which may not have been
in Babylon at all. An Oxford historian claims they were actually built
in the Assyrian city of Nineveh
She first put the proposal forward in 1992 and has spent 20 years piecing the mystery together, reports The Independent.
There are four key components of Dr Dalley's theory, which will be outlined in a book released later this month.
As
she studied historical descriptions of the gardens, she discovered that
a nineteenth century bas-relief from Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh
showed trees growing on a roofed colonnade exactly as described by early accounts.
