[Illustration: EASTERN TOWERS OF THE ISHTAR GATE]
Two alternative schemes are put forward to reconstitute the upper structure of this building. Its massive walls suggest in any case that they were intended to support a considerable weight, and it may be that the core of the building, constructed over the subterranean vaults, towered high above its surrounding chambers which are on the palace-level. This would have been in accordance with the current conception of a hanging garden; and, since on two sides it was bounded by the palace-wall, its trees and vegetation would have been visible from outside the citadel. Seen thus from the lower level of the town, the height of the garden would have been reinforced by the whole height of the Citadel-mound on which the palace stands, and imagination once kindled might have played freely with its actual measurements.
On the other hand, the semicircular arches, still preserved within the central core, may have directly supported the thick layer of earth in which the trees of the garden were planted. These would then have been growing on the palace-level, as it were in a garden-court, perhaps surrounded by a pillared colonnade with the outer chambers opening on to it on the west and south sides. In either scheme the subterranean vaults can only have been used as stores or magazines, since they were entirely without light. As a matter of fact, a large number of tablets were found in the stairway-chamber that leads down to them; and, since the inscriptions upon them relate to grain, it would seem that some at least were used as granaries. But this is a use to which they could only have been put if the space above them was not a garden, watered continuously by an irrigation-pump, as moisture would have been bound to reach the vaults.[93]
Whichever alternative scheme we adopt, it must be confessed that the Hanging Gardens have not justified their reputation. And if they merely formed a garden-court, as Dr. Koldewey inclines to believe, it is difficult to explain the adjectives [κρεμαστός] and _pensilis._ For the subterranean vaults would have been completely out of sight, and, even when known to be below the pavement-level, were not such as to excite wonder or to suggest the idea of suspension in the air. One cannot help suspecting that the vaulted building may really, after all, be nothing more than the palace granary, and the triple well one of the main water-supplies for domestic use. We may, at least for the present, be permitted to hope that a more convincing site for the gardens will be found in the Central Citadel after further excavation.