Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [97]
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 stalactite-like rock formation inside a massive cave.
An interesting sidenote, however, applies to the Gardens.
In Greek, the Gardens were described as kremastos, a word which has been translated as hanging, thus the term ‘Hanging Gardens’ and the notion of some kind of suspended or raised paradise.
But kremastos can be translated another way. It can be translated as 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?
AIRSPACE OVER SAUDI ARABIA
19 MARCH, 2006, 0300 HOURS
1 DAY BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS
The Halicarnassus 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 cluster 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 of notebooks.
It also contained within it a beautiful black-jade box no bigger than a shoebox. Before he passed 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 passed it out to the others.
Then on the way out of the hidden space 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 Halicarnassus, and resumed their course for Iraq.
Inside the Halicarnassus, 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 classic 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.