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The Hanging Gardens of Babylon weren't hanging at all but an inexact translation of the Greek word ''kremastos'' or the Latin word ''pensilis'', which mean not just "hanging", but "overhanging" as in the case of a terrace or balcony. So if the gardens existed (and there is no irrefutable archaeological evidence that they did) they were terraces.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon weren't hanging at all but an inexact translation of the Greek word ''kremastos'' or the Latin word ''pensilis'', which mean not just "hanging", but "overhanging" as in the case of a terrace or balcony. So if the gardens existed (and there is no irrefutable archaeological evidence that they did) they were terraces.

The gardens are described by [[Greek]] historians including Berossus and Diodorus Siculus, who apparently never saw them, but there are no Babylonian records of them, even on tablets from the time of [[Nebuchadnezzar]], although there are tablets describing his palace, the city and the walls. Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BC) is supposed to have built the hanging gardens to please his wife, who had been brought up in a mountainous country and missed the scenery in the flat lands by the Euphrates.<ref>The Chronicle of Sargon, II, 15f</ref> The legend may have been spread by the soldiers of [[Alexander the Great]], who were impressed by the fertility and beauty of [[Mesopotamia]], and told stories about gardens and the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, [[the tower of Babel]] and [[ziggurats]]. These may have got mixed together and garbled to produce the fabled Hanging Gardens.  

The gardens are described by [[Greek]] historians including Berossus and Diodorus Siculus, who apparently never saw them, but there are no Babylonian records of them, even on tablets from the time of [[Nebuchadnezzar II]], although there are tablets describing his palace, the city and the walls. [[Nebuchadnezzar II]] (604-562 BC) is supposed to have built the hanging gardens to please his wife, who had been brought up in a mountainous country and missed the scenery in the flat lands by the Euphrates.<ref>The Chronicle of Sargon, II, 15f</ref> The legend may have been spread by the soldiers of [[Alexander the Great]], who were impressed by the fertility and beauty of [[Mesopotamia]], and told stories about gardens and the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, [[the tower of Babel]] and [[ziggurats]]. These may have got mixed together and garbled to produce the fabled Hanging Gardens.  

There is no conclusive [[archeology|archeological]] evidence. One of the problems is that one of the suggested sites, where there are some vaulted ruins that correspond to some descriptions of the foundations of the gardens, is too far from the river to have been efficiently irrigated - which would have been essential to maintain gardens on such a scale in a dry country. Recently, excavations have uncovered walls up to 25m thick in the area between the river and the palace (a logical place for the gardens) that may have been terraced, but this would be on a smaller scale than the Greek writers suggest. However, since one Greek historian suggested that the walls of Babylon were 50 miles long and 320 feet high, while archaeological evidence suggests they were 10 miles long and considerably lower, it seems we cannot rely on the Greeks as an accurate source of evidence.

There is no conclusive [[archeology|archeological]] evidence. One of the problems is that one of the suggested sites, where there are some vaulted ruins that correspond to some descriptions of the foundations of the gardens, is too far from the river to have been efficiently irrigated - which would have been essential to maintain gardens on such a scale in a dry country. Recently, excavations have uncovered walls up to 25m thick in the area between the river and the palace (a logical place for the gardens) that may have been terraced, but this would be on a smaller scale than the Greek writers suggest. However, since one Greek historian suggested that the walls of Babylon were 50 miles long and 320 feet high, while archaeological evidence suggests they were 10 miles long and considerably lower, it seems we cannot rely on the Greeks as an accurate source of evidence.