The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199662266/ is a very good book about the current state of research into the Hanging Gardens. As ncmncm notes, there is strong evidence that Babylon never had any such thing, but Nineveh did.

However, the Assyrian Empire and NeoBabylonian Empire, are both Iron Age empires that emerged after the Bronze Age Collapse. So any sources about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon would not have been affected by the Bronze Age Collapse.

This is completely untrue. We have more bronze age records than we have manpower to translate them. We also have many tells that are going unexcavated. Bronze age records are not at all difficult to find. They are plentiful, largely due to being nearly indestructible when fired. (Early records were generally not fired intentionally, but they would be when a city was sacked. Later iron age records were intentionally fired.)

> Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

This is also untrue. Particularly in this case, where the absence of evidence is very strong evidence of absence. I'll quote from the book I mentioned sidethread:

> But it is not just a question of denying Nebuchadnezzar his rightful place as builder of the World Wonder on the suspect testimony of much later sources. As luck would have it, among the many building records of Nebuchadnezzar that have come to light from Babylon and other Babylonian cities, not least is the great East India House Inscription on stone which describes the building of his palace. The king was far from reticent about his achievements in building: the marvellous walls of the city as well as the wonderful temples and palaces; but he never mentions a garden.

> Later, Greek writers describe Babylon without referring to the garden. Chief among them is Herodotus, writing in the time of Artaxerxes I (464-424 BC) who would surely have mentioned that the city contained a World Wonder, whether he had seen it himself, or had relied on hearsay for his information. Much later the Roman writer Pliny the Elder described the city, again without referring to the garden. Equally surprising, the patchwork of texts in several different languages and widely divergent versions now known as the Alexander Romance does not mention it even though the final days and premature death of Alexander the Great in Babylon gave every opportunity to incorporate a reference at the very least to one of the world's marvels. There is no mention in the writings of Plutarch, or of Quintus Curtius Rufus, when they refer to Babylon. Nor does the Book of Daniel mention it; Nebuchadnezzar went up on to the roof of the royal palace to admire his city, but the tale does not mention the supposed garden.

Nebuchadnezzar is not alone, by the way, in providing exhaustive lists of things he built in large royal inscriptions. Not only do all Mesopotamian rulers commemorate their notable achievements this way -- construction was an activity holy to Marduk, the city god of Babylon.