The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

Today’s Wonder is the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

There is a poignant story that describes the creation of these gardens. The Medean princess, Amyitis, wife of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, was homesick, and so the king had the gardens built for her to remind her of her homeland. Like the Prodigal Son after he came to his senses, Amyitis longed to be home.

Here’s a description of Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon:

After six centuries had passed, the Neb-u-chad-nez’zar whose story is told in the Old Testament conquered Je-ru’sa-lem, carried away the silver and gold from Sol’o-mon’s temple, and burned the temple itself. The people he made slaves. Bab’y-lon became his capital, and such a capital as it was! He had taken so many thousand captives in his wars that there was no limit to the number of men that could be forced to work for him. He built and repaired temples by the score. He built himself a palace that was six miles in circumference. Around it were three walls, entered by three gates made of brass taken from Jerusalem. The most famous of his structures were the Hanging Gardens, that were counted as one of the seven wonders of the world. Nebuchadnezzar’s wife came from a country of mountains, and she had no liking for the level plains over which her husband ruled. Therefore he set to work to make a mountain for her. First, he had terraces built of earth resting on heavy piers. These formed a mound four hundred feet high. Trees were set out on this mound, which were moistened by water drawn up from the river Euphrates below. Whether the queen was pleased, no one can say; but in a flat country even a little hill seems lofty, and on the level plains of Babylonia the Gardens must have looked much like a real mountain.

~ from a story about ancient Babylon

Read also this interesting discussion of the gardens.

The Great Pyramid of Giza

Today we’ll look at the oldest — and only remaining — of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Great Pyramid at Giza. Ancient Egypt was the home of many natural and cultural wonders, among them the river Nile, the pyramids and tombs, burial sites of the rulers of the land, and one of the earliest and most accomplished of human civilizations. Moses, the great prophet of the Old Testament, was raised as an Egyptian prince, and to Egypt Our Lord himself fled when Herod sought to kill him. Moses and the child Jesus would have seen the same pyramid which we ourselves can still see today.

The Lighthouse at Alexandria

In Search of Beauty

Every day (or as often as time permits) we’ll seek out something of beauty. This could be a natural wonder, art, architecture, music, and so on.

It seems fitting to start with the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, of which, today we’ll focus in on Alexandria — the place where St. Clement lived and wrote his Paedagogus. We’ll consider the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria.