Part 34 (1/2)

There is a simple reason for this.

Of all the Wonders, only one has never never been found: the Hanging Gardens. Not a single trace of them has been unearthed: no foundations, no pillars, not even an aqueduct. been found: the Hanging Gardens. Not a single trace of them has been unearthed: no foundations, no pillars, not even an aqueduct.

In fact, so elusive have the Gardens been throughout the ages that most historians believe they never even existed at all, but were rather the product of the imaginations of Greek poets.

After all, as Alaa Ashmawy, an expert on the Seven Ancient Wonders from the University of Southern Florida, has pointed out, the Babylonians were very careful record-keepers, and yet their records make not a single mention not a single mention of any Hanging Gardens. of any Hanging Gardens.

Nor did the chroniclers of Alexander the Great's many visits to Babylon mention any kind of Gardens.

This lack of evidence, however, has not stopped writers throughout the ages from creating all manner of fabulous descriptions of the Gardens. On these facts, all agree: 1. The Gardens were constructed by the great Mesopotamian king, Nebuchadnezzar, around the year 570 BC, in order to please his homesick new wife, who, hailing from Media, was accustomed to more verdant surroundings; 2. They were built to the east of the Euphrates River; and 3. The centrepiece of the Gardens was a shrine devoted to the rare Persian White Desert Rose, a species that has not survived to the present day.

At this point, however, the descriptions vary greatly.

Some historians say the Gardens sat atop a golden ziggurat, its vines and greenery overflowing from the building's tiers. A dozen waterfalls were said to cascade over its edges.

Others say the Gardens dangled from the side of an immense rocky cliff-face-literally earning the name 'hanging'.

One lone scholar has even suggested that the Gardens hung from a gigantic stalact.i.te-like rock formation inside inside a ma.s.sive cave. a ma.s.sive cave.

An interesting sidenote, however, applies to the Gardens.

In Greek, the Gardens were described as kremastos kremastos, a word which has been translated as hanging hanging, thus the term 'Hanging Gardens' and the notion of some kind of suspended or raised paradise.

But kremastos kremastos can be translated another way. It can be translated as can be translated another way. It can be translated as overhanging overhanging.

Which begs the question: is it possible that those ancient Greek poets were perhaps merely describing an ordinary stone ziggurat whose decorative foliage, left uncut and unkempt, had simply outgrown its tiers and overhung them at the edges? Could this reputed 'Wonder' have really just been very very ordinary?

AIRs.p.a.cE OVER SAUDI ARABIA.

19 MARCH, 2006, 0300 HOURS.

1 DAY BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS.

The Halicarna.s.sus Halicarna.s.sus shoomed through the night sky. shoomed through the night sky.

The big black unregistered 747 zoomed out of Africa on a flight-path that would take it across Saudi Arabia to one of harshest, wildest and most lawless countries on Earth.

Iraq.

It made one stop on the way.

An important stop in a remote corner of Saudi Arabia.

Hidden among some barren rocky hills was a cl.u.s.ter of small man-made caves, long-abandoned, with flapping rags covering their doorways. A long-disused firing range stood nearby, ravaged by dust and time; discarded ammunition boxes lay everywhere.

It was a former terrorist camp.

Once the home of Mustapha Zaeed-and the resting place of all his notes on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Covered by West, Stretch and Pooh Bear, the flex-cuffed Zaeed scrambled inside one particular cave where, behind a false wall, he located a large trunk filled with scrolls, tablets, sandstone bricks, gold and bronze ornaments, and literally dozens dozens of notebooks. of notebooks.

It also contained within it a beautiful black-jade box no bigger than a s...o...b..x. Before he pa.s.sed the trunk out to the others, unseen by West's men, Zaeed grabbed the black-jade box, opened it, and gazed for a moment at the fine-grained orange sand inside it. It lay flat, undisturbed for many years. It was so fine it was almost luminous.

He snapped the jade box shut, slipped it back into the trunk, and pa.s.sed it out to the others.

Then on the way out of the hidden s.p.a.ce in the wall, he triggered a small electronic beacon.

Zaeed emerged from behind the false wall and presented the trunk to West. 'My life's work. It will help.'

'It had better,' West said.

They grabbed the trunk, hauled it back to the Halicarna.s.sus Halicarna.s.sus, and resumed their course for Iraq.

Inside the Halicarna.s.sus Halicarna.s.sus, West's depleted team went about the task of finding the location of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

While West, Pooh Bear and Lily pored over Lily's most recent translation of the Callimachus Text, Zaeed-his flex-cuffs now removed-was on his knees, rummaging through his dusty old trunk.

'You know,' Pooh Bear said, 'it would be nice to have some idea what these Gardens actually looked like.'

West said, 'Most drawings of the Gardens are little more than wild interpretations of vague Greek sources, most of them variations on the cla.s.sic ziggurat shape. No-one has an actual image of them-'

'Don't speak too soon, Captain West! That may not be so! Here it is!' Zaeed called, pulling a crude rectangle of very ancient cloth from his trunk.

It was about the size of an A4 sheet of paper, rough and rectangular. Its edges were worn, ragged, unsewn, like hessian cloth. Zaeed brought it over to the others.

'It's a draft cloth, a simple device used by ancient kings to keep an eye on the progress of their faraway construction sites. The cloth would be taken by a royal messenger to the worksite, where the messenger then drew the scene. The messenger would then bring the cloth back to the king, thus showing him the progress being made.

'I found this cloth in a pauper's tomb underneath the town of Ash Shatra, in central Iraq-the tomb of a horseman who had died near the town, having been robbed and left for dead by bandits. Although he was buried as a pauper, I believe he was actually a royal messenger returning to New Babylon with a draft cloth of the Hanging Gardens for Nebuchadnezzar. Behold Behold, all of you, the only picture, so far as I know, of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon: 'It looks like an open cave in the mountainside,' West said. 'Only they refined the natural opening into a magnificent arch.'

'What is that upside-down triangle suspended from the ceiling of the cave?' Pooh Bear asked.

'It looks like a gigantic stalact.i.te stalact.i.te...' Stretch said.

West said, 'And that structure on the cave-floor directly beneath it appears to be a ziggurat, encased in a construction mud-mound. You used the mound to build the ziggurat and then you took the mound away after you were finished.'

Zaeed eyed West sideways. 'If that is a full-sized ziggurat,Captain, then that stalact.i.te must be at least fifteen storeys tall fifteen storeys tall. It must be immense.'

'What are all those criss-crossing lines covering the two structures?' Lily asked.

'I have long pondered those lines, child,' Zaeed said. 'I believe that they are an ancient form of scaffolding-a multi-levelled temporary structure made of wooden poles used to build the Gardens. Remember, this cloth is a progress report-it depicts the Gardens being built. I therefore surmise that they are a building tool.'

Pooh Bear asked, 'Lily. What does the writing say?'

Zaeed said, 'My brother, this is not written in the language of Thoth. It's just standard cuneiform, written by a messenger for his king-'