According to ancient descriptions, the Euphrates flowed beside the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Greek and Roman writers placed the legendary gardens in Babylon, a major Mesopotamian city built along the Euphrates in present-day Iraq.
The river was central to Babylon’s geography, agriculture, and engineering. Canals drew water from the Euphrates to irrigate farmland, while the city’s famous defensive walls and monumental buildings stood near its banks. Ancient accounts imagined the gardens as a towering, irrigated structure filled with trees and other plants.
The Hanging Gardens are unusual among the Seven Wonders because no definitive archaeological evidence has confirmed that they existed in Babylon. Some modern historians have proposed that the descriptions may refer instead to gardens at Nineveh, which was associated with the Tigris and the Assyrian king Sennacherib. Nevertheless, the traditional Babylonian location in ancient sources is beside the Euphrates.
The Euphrates should not be confused with the Tigris, another major Mesopotamian river farther east. Together, these rivers gave the wider region its historic name, Mesopotamia, meaning “between the rivers.”