The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Hanging Gardens were probably built
by Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century BC. The legend says that
he built it to please his wife. Philo of Byzantium listed the
Hanging Gardens as one of his Seven Wonders of the World. I made
this model of the Hanging Gardens by covering a painted board
with mud. I put two boxes and made three columns as a base. The
top of the columns was made out of wood and the bottom out of
plastic. I then constructed garden walls out of cardboard and
covered all of it with mud. I put dirt in the bottom level and
put the second level on top of the dirt, then placed towers on
dirt inside the second level. I filled the towers with dirt.
I then put dried plants and some artificial things on the dirt
and hanging over the top. I also planted some live plants in
the soil. I lined the box with foil for this purpose. The Babylonians
would probably have used clay bricks to build the structure and
they would have planted things like palm and pomegranate trees,
and a wide variety of flowers.
Ziggurat
The ziggurat is an earlier edition of the Egyptian
pyramids. All of the ziggurats were made from either brick or
clay. Our version of the Mesopotamian ziggurat is made from balsa
wood and clay. In Mesopotamia ziggurats were built upon pyramid-like
structures. Our version, though, is built upon a small plateau.
In conclusion, our ziggurat is much like and unlike the ancient
ziggurats of Mesopotamia.
This is another Hanging Garden project
made entirely of clay.
