The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

The Creators: Conclusion

If we refuse to be manipulated by perceptions of Semiramis and Nebuchadnezzar as inculcated by the Bible and by sloppy references on the web, the weight of evidence tends to favour Semiramis as builder of the gardens.

Summary

1. The attribution to her goes back to the two earliest writers about the gardens: Ctesias and Clitarchus
2. The archaeological evidence (such as it is) seems to reflect the best description associated with her: that of Ctesias
3. As a real person and a co-founder of Babylon, she would have been involved in many of its building projects
4. The attribution to Nebuchadnezzar only appears 150 years after the first records of the gardens

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon begin to look quite credible. In the previous section we resolved the worst conflicts between the written sources and determined the most reliable description. And in this section we identified the most likely builder.

We still need to consider those "Greek poets" that turn up all over the web and seem to have confused the issue so much. But before we can do that, we really must come to grips with the ancient understanding of truth