City of History and Legend

Babylon, in present day Iraq, is a city of both history and legend.  There are two major threats to the ancient City of Babylon which includes war damage and development plans that are in place for post-war.

The intention of this post is not to talk about the war in Iraq, but to educate about the City of Babylon.

We do not recommend traveling to this area beyond what I call “Web Traveling” or in other words researching as much info as you can and looking all over the internet. This is a very dangerous area of the world right now.

Unfortunately the ancient City of Babylon is what I would call a threatened location.  What I mean by this is that in the future it may not exist.  With all that the area has suffered the past few years much of the history has been destroyed.

This would never stop us from remembering it though.  The most fabled of ancient cities, Babylon has occupied this prime Mesopotamian site on the Euphrates river since the 3rd millennium B.C.

In the 18th century B.C. Babylon was the capital of Hammurabi’s empire, where the world’s first code of law was written. Under Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 B.C.), the city was transformed into a brilliant capital, with such landmarks as the Etemenanki ziggurat, the Ishtar Gate, and the Hanging Gardens, and named one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Even under Persian rule, Babylon was an administrative capital and center of learning, especially astronomy and mathematics. Twice it was the largest city in the world — from 1770 to 1670 B.C. and from 612 to 320 B.C., with a population that may have topped 200,000. In the ancient world, that would have been huge.

Babylon had lain abandoned for centuries, its sunbaked bricks carted away until only foundations remained. Then in 1985, Saddam Hussein started rebuilding on top of the old ruins, ordering a combination of restoration and new construction to duplicate the city of Nebuchadnezzar (right down to the point of having his name inscribed on building bricks).  The Ishtar Gate was recreated, and the ceremonial stone boulevard leading from it, Processional Way, was restored. Hussein built a ziggurat-style palace for himself over some old ruins, and was just about to string a cable car over Babylon when war broke out (since the downfall of Hussein, the work has ground to a halt).

Iraqi leaders have spun ideas for continuing Hussein’s rebuilding project once the war is over, creating a new cultural center with shopping malls, hotels, and perhaps a theme park-why not? Archaeologists are already shaking their heads.

Much of the information for this post was taken from Frommers.

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