Seven Ancient Wonders

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

13 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.

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, 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 stalactite . . .' 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 stalactite must be at least 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—'

'Lily can read cuneiform,' West said. 'Go on, Lily.'

Lily read the text box: 'It says: Progress report: Construction continuing as scheduled. Nineteen worker deaths. Sixty-two injuries. Losses tolerable.'

'Losses tolerable,' Stretch repeated. 'Doesn't look like the despots of this region have changed much over the ages.'

They returned to Lily's translation of the Callimachus Text's sixth entry:

The Hanging Paradise of Old Babylonia.

March towards the rising Sun,

From the point where the two life-givers become one.

In the shadow of the mountains of Zagros,

Behold the triple falls fashioned by the Third Great Architect

To conceal the path he hewed

That climbs to the Paradise

Which mighty Nebuchadnezzar built for his bride.

'Well, it begins straightforwardly enough,' West said. 'You march due east from the point where the two life- givers become