Amytis of Babylon (c. 630-565 BCE;

Median In statistics and probability theory, the median is the value separating the higher half from the lower half of a data sample, a population, or a probability distribution. For a data set, it may be thought of as "the middle" value. The basic fe ...

: ;

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

: grc, Αμυτις, Amutis; la, Amytis) was a Queen consort of Ancient Babylon. She was the daughter of the Median king

Cyaxares Cyaxares (Median: ; Old Persian: ; Akkadian: ; Old Phrygian: ; grc, Κυαξαρης, Kuaxarēs; Latin: ; reigned 625–585 BCE) was the third king of the Medes. Cyaxares collaborated with the Babylonians to destroy the Assyrian Empire, and ...

, and the wife of

Nebuchadnezzar II Nebuchadnezzar II (Babylonian cuneiform: ''Nabû-kudurri-uṣur'', meaning "Nabu, watch over my heir"; Biblical Hebrew: ''Nəḇūḵaḏneʾṣṣar''), also spelled Nebuchadrezzar II, was the second king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling ...

Name

The female name is the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

ised form of the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

name (), which perhaps may reflect (with vowel metathesis) an original

name , meaning "having good thought," and which is an equivalent of the

Avestan Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...

term ().

Life

Amytis was the daughter of

, and the sister of

Astyages Astyages (Median: ; Akkadian: ; Ancient Greek: grc, Αστυαγης, Astuagēs, , romanized: , , romanized: ; la, Astyages, , ; reigned 585–550 BC) was the last king of the Median Empire. The son of Cyaxares; he was dethroned in 550 BC by h ...

. Amytis had a niece, also named Amytis, from her brother Astyages. Amytis married Nebuchadnezzar to formalize the alliance between the Babylonian and Median dynasties.

Hanging Gardens of Babylon

Tradition relates that Amytis' yearning for the forested mountains of

Media Media may refer to: Communication * Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass el ...

led to the construction of the

Hanging Gardens of Babylon The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World listed by Hellenic culture. They were described as a remarkable feat of engineering with an ascending series of tiered gardens containing a wide variety of tre ...

, as Nebuchadnezzar attempted to please her by planting the

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are ...

s and

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclud ...

s of her homeland.

Historical evidence Historical method is the collection of techniques and guidelines that historians use to research and write history, histories of the past. Secondary sources, primary sources and material evidence such as that derived from archaeology may all be ...

, however, does not lend support to this tradition.

References

Bibliography

* Median people Babylonian people Neo-Babylonian Empire 6th-century BC women Ancient queens consort Ancient Mesopotamian women 7th-century BC Iranian people 6th-century BC Iranian people Chaldean dynasty Median dynasty Hanging Gardens of Babylon {{Iran-royal-stub