King Nebuchadnezzar II supposedly built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in the sixth century B.C. as a gift for his wife, Amytis of Media. According to ancient historians, Amytis had difficulty adjusting to life in the flat deserts of Babylon and longed for the forests and mountains of her native Media (modern-day Kurdistan). To cure her homesickness, Nebuchadnezzar II ordered the construction of a series of terraced gardens within the walls of the city. The Hanging Gardens—later included as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World—were supposedly hundreds of meters wide and filled with a variety of exotic plants, herbs and flowers. A marvel of engineering, the desert oasis was likely irrigated by water from the river Euphrates via a complex system of pumps. Modern archaeologists have questioned whether the gardens actually existed or are simply the stuff of legend.