Monday!
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group is for us to check in at to let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It's also so we can find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. Members come here to check in. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
We have split up the publishing duties, but we welcome everyone in IAN to do daily diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
Ok, we have a current diary schedule. If you would like to fill in, either post in thread or send FloridaSNMom a Kosmail with the date. If you need someone to fill in, ditto. FSNMom is here on and off through the day usually from around 9:30 or 10 am eastern to around 11 pm eastern.
Monday: BadKitties
Tuesday: bigjacbigjacbigjac
Wednesday: Caedy
Thursday: weck
Friday: FloridaSNMOM
Saturday:broths
Sunday: loggersbrat
If you'd like to be part of the Itzl Alert Network, please leave a comment asking to join, or send us a message asking to join. We'd love to have you. The bigger our network, the less likely someone will be stranded all alone.
Artist's conception of the Gardens
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World," and it is generally agreed that they were located in what is now modern-day Iraq, although there might be some evidence that they were in Nineveh, about 350 miles away. The reason for this confusion could be because Nineveh was known as "New Babylon."
Accounts indicate that the garden was built by King Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled the city for 43 years starting in 605 BC (There is an alternative story that the gardens were built by the Assyrian Queen Semiramis during her five year reign starting in 810 BC). This was the height of the city's power and influence and King Nebuchadnezzar is known to have constructed an astonishing array of temples, streets, palaces and walls.
According to accounts, the gardens were built to cheer up Nebuchadnezzar's homesick wife, Amyitis. Amyitis, daughter of the king of the Medes, was married to Nebuchadnezzar to create an alliance between the two nations. The land she came from, though, was green, rugged and mountainous, and she found the flat, sun-baked terrain of Mesopotamia depressing. The king decided to relieve her depression by recreating her homeland through the building of an artificial mountain with rooftop gardens.
The Hanging Gardens were said to have been built to please King Nebuchadnezzar's wife, Amyitis. (Copyright Lee Krystek, 2010)
The Hanging Gardens probably did not really "hang" in the sense of being suspended from cables or ropes. The name comes from an inexact translation of the Greek word kremastos, or the Latin word pensilis, which means not just "hanging", but "overhanging" as in the case of a terrace or balcony.
More
The story above is the one that has been generally accepted for many, many years. But a British scholar disagrees. Dr. Stephanie Dalley of Oxford University studied ancient texts and found that, although one text stated that the gardens were built for Amyitis by Nebuchadnezzar, there is no mention of them in any text written by either one of them.
Finding that strange, Dr. Dalley studied the texts in greater depth, and found a prism written in cuneiform at the British Museum.
Cuneiform is an ancient language dating back to the Babylonian era, that was also used by the Assyrian empires.
The prism contains details of a king called Sennacherib who was leader of the Assyrian empire and lived a century before Nebuchadnezzar.
The writing included references to a palace built near the Assyrian capital of Nineveh as well as a garden he called ‘wonder for all people.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...
However...
"It must be admitted at the outset that the hanging gardens of Babylon ... have never been conclusively identified, nor, indeed, has their existence been proved," wrote Irving Finkel, the British Museum's curator of cuneiform in 1988.
The Hanging Gardens of...Nineveh?
Not all Mesopotamian academics believe in the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh, however, contending that a lack of evidence so far doesn't necessarily mean the gardens weren't in Babylon.
McGuire Gibson, professor of Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, says that there is a location in Babylon that would have been suitable for raised gardens—the Southern Citadel, "a massive group of walls that are right on the river. This is the only place that would have made it easy to gain access to the water." The royal family's living quarters were convenient to any gardens there, he says, and "the technology, even then, would have allowed the raising of the water in stages."
National Geographic
So it remains controversial as to whether the gardens actually existed, who built them, when they were built, and where.
Dr. Dalley's book, published August 2013
There is a lot more information to be found, here and here. These sources further support Dr. Dalley's theory that the gardens were in Nineveh.
Happy St. Patrick's Day to all! A friend on Long Island posted a hideous picture of a green bagel, which she claims is a tradition. It looked mossy and will haunt my dreams.