Timestream, my new fantasy time-travel novel, is in the writing stage. Harper Knight is from the year 2101. She travels to many different years in the past to search for her mother who entered the timestream to prevent the Voice of God tech from being used by globalists. But when her mother is taken captive and poisoned with a powerful truth serum, Harper must travel to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to retrieve the healing roots of the golden mandrake for an antidote.
According to Hellenic culture, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The city of Babylon was founded more than 4000 years ago. The city ruins are located in present-day Iraq near the east bank of the Euphrates River. The gardens were filled with blossoming flowers, overzealous fruit trees, lush vegetation cascading over tiered terraces, and an ingeniously engineered water irrigation system. The gardens were said to be destroyed by earthquakes in the 2ndcentury BC. The gardens were described by Greek historians Strabo and Diodorus Siculus. According to many historians and archeologists, there’s no conclusive evidence of this garden existing in Babylon, but other researchers claim there’s evidence in Nivaveh.
Since Harper is traveling to the gardens regardless of where or if they even existed, I took the accounts given by five principal writers who described them, although they also took accounts from each other, and none were known to see the gardens in person. The gardens had four floors constructed of mud brick with columns separating them that were 27 meters high. The walls were twenty-two feet thick, which might explain how the floor held the dirt needed for roots to thrive. It was an irregular quadrangle, although some claim it was square-shaped and placed atop a citadel, with terraces holding independent gardens connected by creeping plants and hanging vines. There were grand hallways, statues, and staircases. An irrigation system brought water to the top terrace from the Euphrates River with Archimedes screws acting as water pumps. The system brought the water to the top terrace, creating streams and waterfalls that watered the lower terraces. Trees were said to include Juniper, Oak, and possibly imported trees like Cedar, Walnut, and Willow. There were also ripe fruits like quince and pear, nuts like almonds, figs, grape vines, date palms, and more mixed with aromatic, colorful, and rare plants and flowers.
The story is that the Neo-Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar built the garden beside his grand palace for his wife, Queen Amytis, who missed the beauty of the greenery from her homeland. Since there’s no evidence of the gardens existing in Babylon and the braggadocios king never mentioned them in all the building projects he listed, I’ve decided to send Harper to Nineveh, where another legendary garden was said to have been built by the Assyrian King Sennacherib along the Tigris River near the modern-day city of Mosul. Oxford scholar Stephanie Dalley claimed the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and their construction is well-documented by the Assyrian King Sennacherib. Archeologists have found a series of canals, dams, and aqueducts used to carry water to Nineveh with water-raising screws. The name Babylon means “Gate of the Gods, which was a name given to many Mesopotamian cities. This may be where the confusion comes in since King Sennacherib’s garden was said to be a year-round oasis and a marvelous achievement of water engineering. There was also a tradition of Assyrian royal garden building, while King Ashurnasirpal II created a canal that cut through the mountains. King Sennacherib was proud of the technologies he employed and described them in detail in his inscriptions. He also claimed he built a “Wonder for all Peoples” and said he was the first to use the “lost wax” casting technique to create the screws needed to raise the water up the mountain.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are depicted in many works of art.
