Robert Bevan separates ancient fact from fiction
From the ‘70s disco schtick of Boney M to Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast, the idea of Babylon has fascinated both high and low culture for centuries. For Rastafarians, the very word ‘Babylon’ is the epitome of all that is wrong with the world, representing a greedy and sinful place – a view derived from Christian and Jewish traditions. On the one hand, Babylon is the home of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world – the Hanging Gardens – on the other, it is personified in Revelations by the “Whore of Babylon”, who has her full name written on her forehead: “Mystery, Babylon the Great, The Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth”.
Sifting myth from reality is difficult in a city that largely vanished into the sands more than two millennia ago and of which only some 3 percent has ever been scientifically excavated. It’s perhaps best to the think of it as many Babylons that have risen and fallen over the course of thousands of years, where the very land on which they were built has vanished as the powerful Euphrates river changed course, sweeping away a city that had once straddled both its banks.
But it is also real place, a series of genuine fragmented mounds and some dubious reconstructions just 52 or so miles south of Baghdad. So what’s the real Babylon story? And where were the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon?
The Tower of Babel by Van Heemskerck, Circle of MaartenColección AMALITA
The Tower of Babel, by Van Heemskerck, Circle of Maarten (From the collection of Colección de Arte Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat)
Babylonian beginnings
Babylon was in Mesopotamia, the fertile land where some of the world’s earliest settled civilizations were founded. The city emerged in around 1900 BCE, as the nomadic Semitic tribe, the Amorites, became merchants. King Hammurabi brought the city fame, establishing the world’s first legal codes as the settled society became increasingly complex. This Old Babylon declined after his death but remained the capital of southern Mesopotamia for centuries under various rulers.
LIFE Photo Collection
Hammurabi receives the code of laws from the god Shamash, from bas relief at top of Code of Hammurabi (From LIFE Photo Collection)
Calcite (limestone) cylinder seal (-2075/-2075)British Museum
Calcite (limestone) cylinder seal (From the collection of British Museum)
A second golden age was the 6th and 7th centuries BCE, when Babylon became what’s thought to be the largest city in the world. The Chaldeans of southeastern Mesopotamia expanded their rule to the whole of Babylonia, shaking off its previous Assyrian rulers and creating the first city to exceed 200,000 inhabitants. Under its Chaldean dynasty king, Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylon was notorious for its wickedness and wildness. It was Nebuchadnezzar who attacked Jerusalem and transported the Jews back to Babylon where they “sat down and wept” (Psalm 137:1). Its citizens, however, saw themselves as inhabitants of a sacred city, a paradise at the cosmic centre of the world where their chief god Marduk had created order out of chaos.
By this time, Babylon covered three square miles and had gates set in its walls such as the blue glaze brick Ishtar Gate – a reconstruction of which is in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin – though this is one of eight, rather than one of 100 gates, as described by the often fanciful Greek historian Herodotus. The grand Processional Way led between palaces and temples, including the great ziggurat of Etemenanki. It is at this time that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were supposedly constructed for Nebuchadnezzar‘s queen Amyitis, who was homesick for the greenery of her mountain origins.
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Pergamonmuseum, Berlin
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From the Hanging Gardens to the Tower of Babel: the architectural myths
But did the gardens ever actually exist? At the beginning of the last century, the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey thought he had discovered the foundations, but others now say they are the remains of a grain store. Some scholars think the gardens were actually in Nineveh as depicted on friezes from that city and suggested by some remains – a place sometimes confused with Babylon in ancient records. There is still no agreement on the whether the gardens were fact or fiction.
LIFE Photo Collection
Artist conception of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (From LIFE Photo Collection)
The Tower of Babel (Babylon), destroyed in the Bible because of man’s hubris in the face of God, may have its origins in, by some accounts, the 200-meters-tall Etemenanki ziggurat. It has been the subject of artworks throughout history, including Bruegel the Elder’s beguiling Tower of Babel (1563), one of many masterpieces brought together for the Louvre’s landmark Babylon exhibition in 2008.
The Tower of Babel (1563) by Pieter Bruegel the ElderKunsthistorisches Museum Wien
The Tower of Babel, by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1563 (From the collection of Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)
A building block from Babel (-604/-562)British Museum
A building block from Babel (From the collection of British Museum)
The decline and fall of Babylon
Babylon’s age of infamy was over by the 539 BCE when it was conquered, first by the Persians, then by Alexander the Great, before Islam arrived in the 7th century AD. It wasn’t properly discovered again until early 19th-century scholars began poking around.
John Martin, The Fall of Babylon, a mezzotint with etching (1831/1831)British Museum
John Martin, The Fall of Babylon, a mezzotint with etching, 1831 (From the collection of the British Museum)
The myth in the 21st century
But it’s the idea of Babylon that has proved more enduring than the city itself. Its fate is still the subject of crackpot religious theories online, and its history and imagery were used by many rulers of Iraq, a country whose boundaries are the legacy of colonialism, to attempt to cement a unified national identity out of its disparate parts. Babylon has appeared on coins and stamps, and replicas of the Ishtar Gate and Ninmakh temple were built on the site in the 1960s.
Saddam Hussein added to this new mythology with his own egotistical projects that included constructing the 250-room Southern Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, and reconstructing the Processional Way. Saddam had his name inscribed on the bricks: "This was built by Saddam Hussein, son of Nebuchadnezzar, to glorify Iraq". In the 1980s Saddam had even proposed building his own hanging gardens at the Babylon site. Such grandiosity was interrupted by the invasion of Iraq in the Gulf War when occupying Coalition forces themselves accidentally caused enormous damage to the archaeological site.
Proceeding Lion, detail from the Processional Way of Babylon (6th century BCE) by UnknownPergamonmuseum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Processional Way, Babylon, unknown, 6th century BCE (From the collection of Pergamonmuseum, National Museums in Berlin)
With this long history of destruction and violence, perhaps Babylon really is damned, as this Isaiah passage in the Bible (13:19-21) asserts: “It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.”
The Second Angel and Babylon Destroyed (about 1255–1260) by UnknownThe J. Paul Getty Museum
The Second Angel and Babylon Destroyed, Unknown, about 1255 - 1260 (From the collection of The J. Paul Getty Museum)
Until recently, barbed wire remained in place around the crumbling Lion of Babylon – the 6-foot-high ancient black basalt lion uncovered from the sand in the 19th century that became a symbol not just of Babylon, but of Iraq itself, with even Saddam’s Soviet-style tanks being named after it. But even the Lion risked toppling until recent conservation work by the World Monuments Fund, alongside efforts to undo some of the damage of recent decades. Many are hoping that Babylon will now once more have a future as well as a past. Whatever Isaiah warns.
By Dmitri KesselLIFE Photo Collection
A lion in the ruins of the Temple of Nebuchadnezzar in the ruins of Babylon (From LIFE Photo Collection)
More on cultural preservation:
- The Surprising History of Dragons
