Forbidden History - The Lost Wonder: Secrets of Babylon

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

In this episode, we're joined by Tony McMahon to delve into the mystery and grandeur of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. It's one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but its existence remains a subject of fierce debate... Cast List: Tony McMahon: Former BBC news producer, author, print journalist and historian  Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. Of all the great wonders built by ancient hands, only one has vanished without a trace. The great pyramid of Giza still rises from the sands. The ruins of the Temple of Artemis remain. Even the shattered pieces of the Colossus of Rhodes have been found.

But the hanging gardens of Babylon, not a stone. There is zero trace of them today, and of course it has caused some to wonder if they ever existed. A wonder so grand, ancient writers describe terraced mountains blooming in the desert, a man-made paradise, said to defy gravity and nature itself. There is no Babylonian texts from the time that describe the gardens, so we have to to really go from what later ancient Greeks and Romans tell us about it. No archaeological record exists today. But I think the consensus view is that something like them as described did indeed exist built by King Nebuchadnezzar the second for his wife.

In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast, we take a look at the enigmatic hanging gardens of Babylon. Did they ever actually exist? Or is it just a mystical paradise? Today we're joined by investigative historian, journalist, and author, Tony McMahon. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. And what do we mean when we talk about seven wonders of the ancient world? Well, let me list them for you. You had the Great Pyramid of Giza.

That's the only one of the same thing. seven wonders that's still there almost intact, a stunning monument of the ancient world. Then we have the hanging gardens of Babylon, the existence of which are debated, but more than likely they did exist because all the other wonders certainly existed. There's a statue of Zeus at Olympia, which was a massive golden ivory statue of the Greek god Zeus, which was once housed at a temple in Olympia. The temple of Diana at Ephesus, and we know that that that existed, the kind of foundations of it can still be seen. The mausoleum at Harlecharnassus, I've seen that myself, what's left of it.

Unfortunately, it was pulled apart by Crusaders in the Middle Ages to build a castle. The Colossus of Rhodes, this massive statue of the Greek sun god Helios that once bestrode the harbour at Rhodes and then fell into the harbour during an earthquake and remnants of that have been found. And then the lighthouse, or sometimes as it's called the pharos, of Alexandria, which was a huge lighthouse that guided ships into the harbour of Alexandria, but basically fell over during an earthquake. And again, a very well documented wonder of the ancient world. It did exist, even repaired at times, but eventually did collapse. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, magnificent feats of architecture and engineering that captured the imaginative. of generations. Most of them we have physical or historical evidence for. But the

hanging gardens of Babylon stand out, not just for their beauty, but because their very existence is still a mystery. Unlike the others, we have no definitive archaeological proof they were ever there. So that raises a fascinating question. What happened to the hanging gardens of Babylon. So did the hanging gardens of Babylon exist? Yes, I think they more than likely did in some form or other. The Babylonians were a major civilization. They had incredible ruins.

Their walls were sumptuous. Their palaces were sumptuous. And so why not that this civilization would have created this amazing botanical wonder? If this magnificent place really did exist, where exactly in the world was it? And could this fabulous oasis have inspired something even more sacred? Understanding the mystery of the hanging gardens requires a closer look at the empire that supposedly built them, Babylon. By the 6th century BCE, it was a city of staggering scale and ambition. Greek historians spoke of its towering double walls, over 80 feet high, said to be wide enough for chariots to ride.

side by side. At the city's heart stood Etamananaki, a zygorat, possibly 300 feet tall, believed by some to be the very inspiration for the Tower of Babel. It was here that Babylon's most powerful ruler, King Nebuchadnezzar II, sought to leave his mark not through conquest, but through love. The hanging gardens of Babylon were built in Babylon, which was the capital of the Babylonian Empire. An empire was centred more or less on modern Iraq but covered the whole region. And it was built by King Nebuchadnezzar for his wife, Queen Amatis, because she missed apparently the green hills and the valleys of her homeland. And it was built next to a great palace that was termed,

the marvel of mankind. While Babylon's own records remain silent, it's the Greeks and Romans, centuries later, who left us vivid accounts of the hanging gardens. They wrote of an impossibility brought to life. A multi-tiered mountain of stone and soil built not for war or worship, but to recreate nature itself.

Some claimed it was built within the royal palace complex, a secluded paradise suspended above the desert. Others believed it stood apart, a green marvel among the dusty plains, but all agreed on one thing. It was like nothing else on earth. This must have been quite something to behold, but there is no Babylonian texts from the time that describe the gardens,

so we have to really go from what later ancient Greeks and Romans tell us about. And one of those later accounts describes it as in a palace, the king erected very high walls supported by stone pillars, and by planting what was called a pencil paradise and replenishing it with all sorts of trees, he rendered the prospect an exact resemblance of a mountainous country. The hanging gardens were more than a royal display of wealth. They were an illusion, a deliberate reconstruction of the mountainous terrain, Queen Amatis had once called home. Ancient sources described not a flat garden, but a teared and

rising marvel, a carefully engineered landscape designed to mimic hills and valleys, built layer upon layer using mud bricks and stone supports. This he did to gratify his queen because she had been brought up in Medea and was fond of a mountainous situation. This wasn't simply landscaping, it was symbolic architecture, a vision of nature rising above the man-made world, pyramid-like temples that reached towards the heavens. So basically the king was kind of reconstructing something very naturalistic, but under the framework of which was this pyramid, what's often referred to as a ziggurat. Recreating a mountain in the middle of the Mesopotamian plains was a feat of ambition.

But keeping it alive was a miracle of engineering. Babylon's climate was punishing. With summer temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius or 104 degrees Fahrenheit, and minimal rainfall, no garden could survive without a constant and controlled supply of water. Yet according to ancient descriptions, the gardens flourished, filled with trees, shrubs, and climbing vines. The key to their survival likely lay beneath the surface.

Underneath this infrastructure were a series of pumps that irrigated this garden from the river Euphrates, one of the rivers that flows through modern Iraq. This network would have needed to lift thousands of liters of water each day from the nearby Euphrates River to the upper terraces, defying both gravity and climate and not to make. mention being centuries ahead of its time. The remarkable irrigation system is said to have used either a chain pump which was an early type of water lifting device involving a loop of buckets on a chain. Or it may have been an early version of the Archimedes screw, a device traditionally credited

to the Greek inventor Archimedes, which could have had earlier origins in Mesopotamia. This screw-like mechanism would have lifted water in a spiraling motion up to the terraces of the gardens, allowing lush vegetation to thrive in the arid Mesopotamian climate. But if such an advanced irrigation system existed, why haven't historians and archaeologists found any definitive evidence of the gardens themselves? We continue the mystery of the hanging gardens of Babylon after the break. While Nebuchadnezzar is the figure most commonly linked to the hanging gardens, not all scholars or ancient sources agree.

Some stories reach even further back to the 9th century BCE, long before Nebuchadnezzar's reign. There, in the blurred territory between legend and history, stands another ruler, Queen Shamaramot, known to the Greeks as Semiramis. Described as a brilliant strategist, an architect of cities, and a warrior queen who led armies into battle, Semiramis was said to have ruled with both intellect and iron. And according to some accounts, she, not Nebuchadnezzar, was the true creator of the hanging gardens. Investigative historian, author, and journalist, Tony McMahon explains more. Now some have argued that the gardens, the hanging gardens of Babylon, were not built by King Nebuchadnezzar,

but actually were built by a woman, by a queen called Shamuramat in the 9th century BC. And she was something of a legendary figure, also known as Semidamus, a skilled warrior. Though as often happens with powerful women in the ancient world, she could. get something of a bad press, you know, because women are not supposed to, you know, to rise to that sort of height. Semiramis may have ruled in a time when history blurred easily into myth, but the legends surrounding her are rich, specific, and persistent. She's credited with the siege of Bactria, with expanding the Assyrian Empire, and even with reshaping the very garments worn by her people.

ancient world, where power was almost exclusively male, she stood as an exception, one that both fascinated and unnerved later writers. Was she a brilliant tactician? A builder of cities? A political myth designed to explain an unmatched piece of architecture. Whatever the truth, the stories give her credit for accomplishments that echo far beyond war and conquest. So she's seen as scheming and evil and so on. But nevertheless, in a lot of Persian Greek and Roman literature, she is treated respectfully and she is honored for her abilities in battle. She secured victory during a siege of the city of Bactria.

And she was also apparently involved in the invention of certain types of clothing, particularly a form of trousers, believe it or not. so she's also a courtier as well as a warrior. But many people believe that stories around her are mythical, but again this could be just a way of denigrating her, that she was a great female ruler and warrior and inventor, and that among her many accomplishments she built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. If the Hanging Gardens were a monument to love,

they were also in the eyes of later writers, a symbol of excess and divine. judgment. The mainstream theory is that the hanging gardens of Babylon were built by Nebuchadnezzar, who was one of the most famous, or the most famous Babylonian king, and he famously enslaved the Jews in Babylon. This was their Babylonian captivity. And so projects like the hanging gardens would have been seen as evidence of his hubris and his arrogance. And in the book of Daniel, in the Old Testament, it's said that Nebuchadnezzar is punished with a seven-year period of madness. He goes down with a disease.

We think it's something called boanthropy, but it's basically he believed he was an animal, possibly a cow, and he lives as a cow for seven years, just eating the grass and just basically grazing like an animal. So he's gone completely mad. Now, what is the purpose of this madness? it's God teaching him that God, the Jewish God, should be respected and his chosen people should be freed and until he sees reason, he will be forced to live like a cow. After seven years, he was restored to his senses and he acknowledged, of course, the power of God.

Needless to say, historians do not accept the accuracy of this story. They think it's something more symbolic and allegorical. The story is strange, symbolic, but its subject is clear. Nebuchadnezzar. And in this telling, the great builder of Babylon is reduced to a beast until he learns humility and acknowledges the power of the Hebrew god. Nevertheless, what we're told in the book of Daniel is that Nebuchadnezzar, architect the hanging gardens of Babylon, lived like a cow,

maybe he ate some of his own flowers in the hanging gardens of Babylon, who knows. And that having then been allowed to return to being a human being, he then frees the Jews and sees the error of his ways. So how do we reconcile this biblical account with the grandeur attributed to Nebuchadnezzar and the hanging gardens? Could the story of the gardens themselves be more myth than reality? Coming up after the break, we dig into the evidence, the theories, and why some historians believe the gardens might not have been in Babylon at all.

For centuries, explorers and archaeologists have searched the ruins of Babylon in vain, looking for traces of the hanging gardens. But what if they've been looking in the wrong place entirely? There is a theory that's been advanced by Dr. Stephanie Dali at Oxford University. and she believes that the reason that there's no evidence of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon that has been found is because they went in Babylon. They were actually in Nineveh, which was the capital of the rival Assyrian Empire. According to Dali, the ancient writers who preserved the story may have confused one city for another.

And if she's right, then the sight of this lost wonder isn't in southern Iraq. but hundreds of miles to the north in the ruins of Nineveh, near the modern-day city of Mosul, Iraq. In which case they weren't built by Nebuchadnezzar either, and she believes that the Assyrian king Sinacharib actually built the hanging gardens of what were Nineveh, the hanging gardens of Nineveh and not the hanging gardens of Babylon. The idea of a lush garden in the middle of a hostile world has deep roots, not just in history, but in theology, a self-contained paradise, watered by rivers, overflowing with life. Some scholars believe the hanging gardens may have helped shape one of the most enduring stories

ever told. Now one view in relation to the Bible is that if the hanging garden existed, they may have actually provided the inspiration for the story of the Garden of Eden. And it's interesting because much of the Bible, much of the Old Testament was written by the Jews when they were in captivity in Babylon. And is it possible that this very early part of the Old Testament was actually written far later than we think by Jews living in. in Babylon, who'd seen the hanging gardens of Babylon, and who created this kind of mythical paradise based on this wonder of the ancient world. Could the myth of Eden, a paradise lost,

be a cultural memory for something very real? A garden built by human hands, witnessed by captives, and reimagined as the home of the first humans? And if the gardens did exist, what destroyed them? Now if the gardens did exist, then it's more than likely that they were destroyed around about the year 226 BCE by a massive earthquake. It's according to some theories. And there were a lot of earthquakes in the region and we know that some of the other ancient wonders of the world, the Colossus of Rhodes, for example, was destroyed by an earthquake. Earthquakes happened a great deal, destroyed many buildings, entire cities. So it's entirely plausible that it's a seismic shift that basically brought down the hanging gardens of Babylon, and that's why we cannot find them today. Mesopotamia has always been seismically active.

It's possible the hanging gardens met the same fate, swallowed by the shifting ground and buried by time. We are fascinated by the ancient world and enthralled by the ancient world. and enthralled by the vast structures that were built by our ancestors. And of course we still have the pyramids today, the survivors from the ancient world, the only one of the ancient wonders that once existed. And the fact that the Great Pyramids still exists, I think is a pretty good indication that the other six ancient wonders also existed.

And as I said, we do have evidence for some of the others, some of the rubble that's still there. So did the Hanging Gardens of Babylon exist? Yes, I think they more than likely did in some form or other. While we may never uncover definitive proof of the Hanging Gardens, the persistence of their story passed down through generations, written in ancient texts, and rooted in the imagination of historians and poets alike, suggests they left a mark, whether physical or symbolic.

Perhaps they were in Babylon, or maybe even in Nineveh. Perhaps they were real, or perhaps they were embellished. But like all great legends, their mystery is part of their magic. And in that sense, the hanging gardens still live on. Not in stone or soil, but in the stories we continue to tell. Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you liked this episode, please be sure to follow for more. We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday.

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