Water Against Gravity

If the gardens existed, their real marvel was not the plants but the water delivery system. Babylon receives less than 150 mm of rain per year. Keeping massive terraces of tropical plants alive would have required lifting thousands of liters of water daily from the Euphrates River.

Ancient texts describe something resembling an Archimedes screw — centuries before Archimedes was born. Whether real or imagined, the Hanging Gardens capture an old human ambition: bending a harsh landscape to human will.