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Millennia after its destruction, the city of Babylon remains a symbol of extravagance and wealth. Its most
celebrated feature was one of the 'Seven Wonders of the World'.The so-called 'Hanging Gardens of Babylon'
astounded and perplexed observers. In the first century BC Diodorus Siculus described them as 'gardens suspended in the air'. From a distance they were described as looking like a terraced hillside, or the rows of
seats in a Greek theatre.They are said to have been built for a favoured wife of Nebuchadnezzar who came from the mountainous country in the North. Some experts even believe that the ancient chroniclers got the location wrong and that the gardens were not at Babylon at all, rather that they were built centuries earlier by King Sennacherib of Nineveh.


But wherever they were located the mystery remains - how could such elaborate gardens possibly have been
irrigated? Ancient sources describe a mysterious, hidden system of irrigation which carried water to the summit. So what was this system and how did it work? Without any archaeological evidence for the gardens surviving this question becomes even more difficult to answer.The experts are divided.