There has long been a slight problem with the declaration of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world—there was no proof it actually existed. Now, an Oxford University researcher says she’s tracked down evidence the garden did indeed grow in what is now Iraq, just some 300 miles north of where legend placed it. Stephanie Dalley spent roughly two decades pinpointing its location, which she has IDed as being located 300 miles from Babylon in Nineveh, and built by an entirely different king—an enemy one at that, reports the Guardian. Though the story went that Babylonia’s King Nebuchadnezzar constructed the gardens to appease his homesick wife, Dalley asserts that it was instead Assyria’s King Sennacherib behind them. Using her expertise in the region’s ancient language, Dalley translated a number of Babylonian, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman texts, and found what the Independent describes as “four key pieces of evidence.”
