Page 35 - The Prophet-statesman a Drama of Daniel

silhouette against the setting sun; and my ears long for the music of the waterfall close
behind our house and the babbling of the brook as it passed under my window.”

The monarch leaped to his feet and shouted: “You shall have them, beloved one, I,
Nebuchadnezzar pledge it. Let it not be said that Media affords anything that Babylon
lacks, and let it not be said that the queen of the empire yearns for that which the
emperor cannot provide. By the great god Bel, if the city of Babylon needs a mountain

to enhance its beauty and gratify its queen, I will erect one within the city and without!”

The comely and simple-hearted Rhea was at first startled by this outburst. Realizing
immediately that such a construction would be a stupendous proceeding and would

almost certainly jeopardise the property and lives of many of the inhabitants, she rather
regretted that she had spoken out at all. So sympathetic with the needs of the people
was she, that she shrank from the thought that her wishes might be gratified at the
expense of the enforced labor of the masses and the demolition of the homes of the poor.

But it would now be impossible to persuade Nebuchadnezzar to retreat from his
determination.

The day following he summoned to the palace the leading construction engineers of

the city and demanded that they should collaborate with him in drawing up plans for
setting up a mountain within the city. The idea of transporting sufficient earth into the
city to be piled up into a mountain of any size was shortly abandoned in favor of the
establishment of an immense artificial framework to be placed together to form a huge

arbor. This alternative plan was agreed upon for the mountain-in-the city upon which
the darling of Nebuchadnezzar might gaze to assuage her homesickness for the wooded
hills of Media.

At her urgent request, the people who were displaced from their homes were given
full compensation and relocated to other parts of the city.

The gigantic undertaking proved a benefit to the people as providing gainful

employment for a vast number on a higher wage-scale than any they had previously
known.

The genius of the engineers, the skill of the workmen, the artistry of the
horticulturists were combined to procure a mountain in the midst of a city, not only
presenting an optical illusion of a hill covered with verdure, but as a great garden
covered with every conceivable flower of delicacy, beauty and fragrance.

The ancient world had never beheld such a monument of human genius, and
Nebuchadnezzar’s “hanging gardens” as they were known then and subsequently,