The gardens wouldn't have been the only grand sight in Babylon. This ancient city was filled with shining palaces and sturdy ziggurats. Even the city gates were adorned with carvings and gleamed with glazed bricks But in a desert country as dry as Iraq, canopying fronds and blooms would have been an awesome sight to see.If Babylon's buildings boasted of its great wealth, then the gardens would've demonstrated the engineering skills of their architect. It's no small feat to keep plants thriving in the desert, but to transport water to flowers perched atop a nearly five-story building is a monstrous challenge. The gardens would have relied on the Euphrates as their irrigation source, and the water would likely have been transported through a pumping system made of reeds and stone and stored in a massive holding tank. From the tank, a shaduf (a manually-operated water-lifting device) would have delivered water to the plants.