Hanging Gardens of Babylon belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 600 BCE at Babylon, Mesopotamia. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
Greek writers described terraces of trees watered as if a mountain had been built in the flat alluvium of the Euphrates.
How it was made
If the gardens stood in Babylon, they needed screws or chain pumps to lift river water; some scholars now look to Nineveh instead.
Why it still counts as a wonder
It sits on the canonical Greek list of seven wonders of the ancient world — a tourist poster already in Hellenistic poetry.
No inscription of Nebuchadnezzar boasts of hanging gardens. The wonder survives as a problem in sources — and as the dream of a green ziggurat.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 600 BCE may have been founded earlier, rebuilt later, or famous only in one phase. Where ancient writers disagree — as they do for Babylon’s gardens — we say so.
This is story 2 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.