<P> The account of Strabo (c. 64 BC--21 AD) possibly based his account on the lost account of Onesicritus from the 4th century BC He mentions that the gardens were watered by means of a screw leading to the gardens from the Euphrates . </P> <P> Philo of Byzantium (4th--5th century AD) is the last of the classical sources . The description of the gardens in his A Handbook to the Seven Wonders of the World is thought to be independent of earlier Greek sources . The method of raising water by screw matches that described by Strabo . He marvels at the engineering and ingenuity of building vast areas of deep soil, which had a tremendous mass, so far above the natural grade of the surrounding land . The irrigation techniques were also a marvel . </P> <P> There is some controversy as to whether the Hanging Gardens were an actual construction or a poetic creation, owing to the lack of documentation in contemporaneous Babylonian sources . There is also no mention of Nebuchadnezzar's wife Amyitis (or any other wives), although a political marriage to a Median or Persian would not have been unusual . Many records exist of Nebuchadnezzar's works, yet his long and complete inscriptions do not mention any garden . </P> <P> Herodotus, who describes Babylon in his Histories, does not mention the Hanging Gardens . </P>

Who built the famous hanging gardens of babylon