How does the hanging garedn of Babylon work

The Hanging Gardensprobably did not really “hang” in the sense of being suspended fromcables or ropes. The name comes from an inexact translation of theGreek word kremastos, or the Latin word pensilis, which means notjust “hanging”, but “overhanging” as in the case of a terrace orbalcony.The Greek geographerStrabo, who described the gardens in first century BC, wrote, “Itconsists of vaulted terraces raised one above another, and restingupon cube-shaped pillars. These are hollow and filled with earth toallow trees of the largest size to be planted. The pillars, thevaults, and terraces are constructed of baked brick andasphalt.””The ascent to thehighest story is by stairs, and at their side are water engines, bymeans of which persons, appointed expressly for the purpose, arecontinually employed in raising water from the Euphrates into thegarden.”Strabo touches on what,to the ancients, was probably the most amazing part of the garden.Babylon rarely received rain and for the garden to survive, itwould have had to been irrigated by using water from the nearbyEuphrates River. That meant lifting the water far into the air soit could flow down through the terraces, watering the plants ateach level. This was an immense task given the lack of modernengines and pressure pumps in the fifth century B.C.. One of thesolutions the designers of the garden may have used to move thewater, however, was a “chain pump.”A chain pump is twolarge wheels, one above the other, connected by a chain. On thechain are hung buckets.