Ancient Babylon: History and Archaeology

By Michael James

In this book you will find the following questions:

• BABABYLON IN THE CLASSICAL AUTHORS AND THE BIBLE
• THE DISCOVERY OF THE CITY OF BABYLON
• HISTORY OF BABYLON
• THE MONUMENTS OF BABYLON
• MARDUK, THE GOD OF BABYLON

• KINGS OF BABYLON

• BABYLON TODAY

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael James
• Release date: Dec 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201343033

Michael James

Michael James is a father of three who creates stories for his children to treasure and others to enjoy. His writing draws upon his travels, experiences of the world from yesteryear… and now family life too. His stories demonstrate that during times of adversity being creative and fun is a positive route to take.

Book preview

1 INTRODUCTION

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Babylon is an ancient city in Mesopotamia located on the banks of the Euphrates River in present-day Iraq. But it is much more than a city. Archaeology and cuneiform writing tablets have shown that over time it became a hegemonic empire in Mesopotamia and in the imagination of the ancient people the cause of all misfortunes, especially of the people of Israel. In short, a legendary city whose memory lingered on between myth and legend. That is, until the Germans rediscovered it and reached the present-day Babylon, named in July 2019 as a World Heritage Site.

There were several travelers who since the Middle Ages visited Mesopotamia, some even visited the ruins of the ancient city and sought the famous tower, but could not to see it, because it was not preserved. Some even confused it with Birs Nimrud. The ruins of the real Babylon are near the present village of Hilla, but the later French works, without any result, only revealed the confusion of this site. It was not until the arrival of the Germans in the East that the ancient biblical city was revealed in all its splendor.

The image we have of Babylon is due to the mission of the German Orientalist Society led by Robert Koldewey who worked there from 1899 to 1917. The German excavations surpassed the quality of all those that had previously been carried out in Mesopotamia. Koldewey's team used architectural principles, accurately documented the findings, and produced photos, elevations, reconstructions of the buildings, maps and plans of Babylon.

The result was rigorous publications that far exceeded what had been done so far and the possibility of reconstructing such impressive structures as the Ishtar Gate in Berlin.

2 BABYLON IN THE CLASSICAL AUTHORS AND THE BIBLE

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Herodotus was the first of the classical authors to mention Babylon in his Histories, but he does so in 450 B.C., almost a century after the fall of the city to the Persians. Therefore, the historian of Halicarnassus spoke of hearsay and the facts he mentions belong to the field of legend and tradition. Besides the plant, the structures and the architectural techniques of Babylon, Herodotus spoke to us about the customs of its inhabitants.

Diodoro Sículo in his Historical Library described the main monuments of the city, but sometimes he confuses Babylon with Nineveh. Beroso, a priest in Babylon in the third century B.C. wrote Babylonka, but it has only reached us through later authors such as Flavius Josephus or Eusebius of Caesarea. This work provides a list of kings of Babylon until the arrival of Alexander the Great, of the works carried out by Nebuchadnezzar II and of the completion of the famous hanging gardens of Babylon. Some centuries later, Strabo will also mention the gardens, but his work has quite a few inaccuracies.

The Roman authors also admired Babylon and quote it in their works relatively often, but by that time the city of Mesopotamia was already uninhabited and the data they offer is based on previous works or legends.

But if there is one text that has helped to make Babylon known, it is the Bible. In the Genesis appears the well-known episode of the Tower of Babel that brought about the confusion of languages. But apart from Genesis there are several books of the Old Testament that mention Babylon, especially in relation to the issue of the deportation of the Hebrews.

In the New Testament, specifically in the Apocalypse, Babylon the Great is mentioned to refer to the set of existing false religions and one of the characters is known as the whore of Babylon. As we see, the vision of the city offered by the Holy Scriptures is totally negative. But in these texts the image of the city is deliberately distorted.

3 THE DISCOVERY OF THE CITY OF BABYLON

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Although its ruins had already been visited by explorers since the Middle Ages, it was not until the 19th century, and in particular the German Orientalist Society, that the city came to light. For this we must look back to the early nineteenth century, when there was a strong interest in Assyrianism in Germany and in 1799 the Academy of Architecture of Berlin was created, which will be a forum for studies on the architecture of the classical world. The Academy would teach building and construction history, developing an excavation methodology. In Berlin they were interested in building techniques and not in art, something that later was going to be one of the signs of identity of the German Orientalist Society.

Frederick William IV himself in 1830 sent an expedition to Egypt that brought with it pieces that would be part of the Egyptian museum, and a few years later, in 1846, the stele of Sargon II was acquired. At the same time, specialists in the ancient East were appearing in Germany who introduced the Assyriology in the universities of Berlin and Leipzig.

In 1878 the first class of German Assyriologists appeared, among whom were some of those who a few years later would work with Koldewey in Babylon. Magazines began to be published and oriental antiquities began to be collected, which until then had been scattered. Thus, it is not surprising that in the last years of the 19th century the Comité Oriente, the Revista de Literatura Oriental, the Department of the Near East of the Royal Museum of Berlin and the German Orientalist Society were founded.

3.1. The German Orientalist Society (DOG)

In June 1887 the Orient Committee was founded with the aim of excavating in the Orient and collecting pieces to form a museum like those being formed in Paris and London. But several members of the Orient Committee realized that they needed to link up with more influential people in order to obtain a larger budget. Thus, the German Orientalist Society was born.

The German Orientalist Society was founded on January 24, 1898 by several political figures, businessmen, Orientalists and Egyptologists. The headquarters was established in the Berlin Museum and its objective was the study of the ancient East, to make it known to the public and form a collection of antiques. The main engine of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (DOG) was the merchant James Simon, an art collector who contributed 3000 Deutschmarks for the first campaign of excavation in Babylon.

With James Simon's support, the German Orientalist Society soon began to grow. In just one year it had more than 500 members. But one of the main reasons for its growth was the support it received from Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Society received public grants and began to publish its own magazine with 3 or 4 issues a year. From the beginning the German Orientalist Society looked for a site to excavate in the East and debated whether this should be Babylon, Uruk, Larsa, Assur or Nineveh.

Finally, the members of the German Orientalist Society chose Babylon and entrusted Robert Koldewey with the task. The objectives that the society asked him was to excavate buildings and make elevations and then publish them, take good pictures, and get pieces for the Royal Museum in Berlin. However, the Society soon began to excavate in Nimrud, Abu Hatab, Assur, Kar Tukulti Ninurta, Hatra or Uruk.

In the excavation of Babylon, the experience of archaeology until then and the new contributions of the Germans are clearly appreciated. Koldewey raised a general plane of the archaeological area of Babylon, squared by a net of coordinates, and where the coordinates would be indicated by reference to a zero-point fixed in the Kasr.

The publications dedicated to the temples include detailed plans in which each adobe and brick is specified, including stratigraphic sections down to the water table. Thanks to this detailed information the archaeologists of the German Orientalist Society were able to propose hypotheses for the reconstruction of buildings. In the volume dedicated to the Ishtar Gate, he demonstrated his attention to the laws of construction and the principles of the ancients, with numerous photographs between text and exceptional plans and cuts.

After the First World War the protection of the kaiser to the German Orientalist Society disappeared. During the Weimar Republic it continued to function with great prestige, even beginning to excavate new sites. But the Third Reich