Inspired by the current British Museum exhibition entitled “Babylon: Myth and Reality”, Leila Taheri gives a brief synopsis of that famous civilization, the remnants of which are still a major archaeological site in Iraq today.

Dragon of Marduk on glazed brick, a striking feature of the Ishtar gate. © Trustees of the British Museum

Babylon is a city steeped in legend and history. Fantastic stories have been told of the city of the Hanging Gardens, and countless artists have put brush to canvas to make the myth of the Tower of Babel an imagined reality. Today, the ruins of Babylon sit under sand and soldiers, with all the glory and splendor of this past civilization dead and buried.

The city of Babylon lay within Mesopotamia, the Greek word for ‘between the rivers’, those being the Euphrates and Tigris. It was the home of many Babylonian kings as well as being the religious, political and commercial centre of the Babylonian empire. Most of ancient Mesopotamia is now modern Iraq, and the city of Babylon itself is about 55 miles south of the capital Baghdad.

The most dramatic era in the city’s history was the period of rule of Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BC). Nebuchadnezzar ordered the complete reconstruction of the imperial grounds, including rebuilding the Etemenanki ziggurat and the construction of the Ishtar Gate – the most spectacular of eight gates that ringed the perimeter of Babylon. The Ishtar Gate survives today in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Ziggurats are tall, stepped religious structures built from layers of mud brick, and Nebuchadnezzar’s ziggurat is thought to be the source of the biblical tradition of the Tower of Babel.

The book of Genesis (11:1-9) tells of the city of Babylon uniting humanity, its people all speaking a single language. King Nimrod and the people decided their city should have a tower so immense that it would have “its top in the heavens”.  However, this tower was built to celebrate the glory of man, and not to worship God.

According to the Genesis, when God saw what could be achieved when a people are one he confused their language and scattered them upon the face of the Earth.

Nebuchadnezzar is also attributed to building one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, to remind his homesick wife Amyitis of the green hills of her homeland. Legend has described it as a terraced garden full of trees and flowing plants, although whether the Hanging Gardens actually existed is still a matter of dispute.

The ancient Mesopotamians believed the universe was controlled by gods and goddesses who had to be obeyed and worshipped with prayers and offerings. Temples were centres of religious activity and contained statues of gods and goddesses. The deity of Babylon was the god Marduk and after the city became the capital of Mesopotamia he was elevated to the level of supreme god.

Tablet with cuneiform inscription and a map of the world with Babylon at the centre © Trustees of the British Museum

Nebuchadnezzar played a pivotal role in the history of the Jews. He attacked the ancient kingdom of Judah and was responsible for the deportation and exile of many Jews, an event known as the “Babylonian captivity”. This event meant that until very recently Iraq had a substantial Jewish population. The integration of Jews into Mesopotamian life spread the idea of Marduk as the one, all high god, with the other gods thought to be different aspects of him, but this idea never gained widespread popularity.

The fall of Babylon came in the form of the Persian King Cyrus. The last Babylonian king, Nabonidus, was unable to resist the expanding Persian Empire and in 539 BC, King Cyrus captured Babylon, made it his capital, and incorporated the rest of the land into the Achaemenid Empire.

Today Babylon lies under a US military base camp. The occupation of the ancient Babylonian sites by US forces has cause irreparable damage to the archeological site. In a report by the British Museum’s Near East department, Dr John Curtis describes how parts of the archaeological site were levelled to create a landing area for helicopters, and parking lots for heavy vehicles.

Curtis wrote that the occupation forces: “caused substantial damage to the [replica of the] Ishtar Gate, one of the most famous monuments from antiquity [...] US military vehicles crushed 2,600 year old brick pavements, archaeological fragments were scattered across the site, more than 12 trenches were driven into ancient deposits and military earth-moving projects contaminated the site for future generations of scientists [...] Add to all that the damage caused to nine of the moulded brick figures of dragons in the Ishtar Gate by soldiers trying to remove the bricks from the wall.” He compared the actions of the US army as “tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain”.

“Babylon: Myth and Reality” exhibition was on at the British Museum in London until 15th March 2009.

To learn more about ancient Babylonia, check out the useful microsite: www.mesopotamia.co.uk/menu.html