The Hanging Gardens of Babylon was located in the east bank of Euphrates, South of Baghdad in Iraq. King Hammurabi was the most famous king of the Babylonian kingdom. Under his rule, the entire kingdom flourished. His son Nebuchadnezzar was the one who built the Hanging gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven marvels of world. Some stories have it that the Hanging Gardens went hundreds of feet into the air, but archaeological explorations have proved it wrong. The gardens did not really hang on the roof using cables or ropes, but derives this name from the fact that it was built on the roof top. According to the popular notion, Nebuchadnezzar built it to alleviate his wife's homesickness. He was married to Amyitis, daughter of the king Medes who seems to have had a passion for mountainous surroundings. Babylon's flat desert-like landscape made her pine for the mountains of Media where she was brought up. So the king decided to build an artificial, terraced hill lushly cultivated with trees and flowering plants. However some attribute this wonder to the Assyrian Queen Semiramis.

According to Herodotus, the outer walls of the garden were 80 feet thick, 320 feet high, and 56 miles in length. Inside the inner walls there were fortresses and temples containing immense statues of solid gold.

G etting the water to the top and also avoiding the wreckage of the foundation once the water was released, posed a serious problem. Devising a workable watering system was more of a challenge than erecting the gardens. Babylon was an arid country and water from the Euphrates River had to be used to irrigate it. A chain pump was used to lift water to each level. A chain pump is two large wheels on top of each other. Buckets are hung on a chain that connects the wheels. The bucket goes into the water then comes up and goes into a new pool. The empty buckets go back into the water to be refilled. The water at the top is then emptied through into a channel gate that is like an artificial stream to water the gardens. Special care had to be taken while watering the garden because the garden ran the risk of collapsing if water were absorbed by the brick columns and foundation supporting the gardens.

1. Look at the text. Some words are in bold type. What do they mean in your language? Put them down and find the translation.

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2. Find ten facts about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Underline them in the text. Ask a partner, using Wh- questions, as in the example:

E. g. What caused the main problem in the maintenance of the Hanging Gardens?

3. Look at these words from the text. What parts of speech are they? Divide them into columns. Don’t forget to find them in the text again if you don’t know in which column you should put them.

flourished, proved, alleviate, lushly, attribute, wreckage, arid, irrigate, water, collapsing

Nouns Verbs Adjectives Adverbs

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4. Give a short summary of the text.

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