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  • ARCHAEOLOGY

    Magical Beasts of Babylon

    Oct 10, 2019 4 minutes
    by JARRETT A. LOBELL

    HE RESIDENTS OF BABYLON in the first millennium B.C. saw themselves as facing their past and walking backward into the future. In the Akkadian language of ancient Mesopotamia, the word , or “face,” relates to the past, whereas “behind” is a word associated with the future. Reverence for the past was at the heart of the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II’s (r. ca. 604–562 B.C.) plan to rebuild Babylon. By his time, the city was already more than 1,500 years old and had been shattered by a recent war with the Assyrian Empire. The king and his advisers, called , who were considered to be descended from divine sages and were experts in religion, architecture, and magic, wanted to

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