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<< Our Photo Pages >> Babylon. - Ancient Village or Settlement in Iraq

Submitted by AlexHunger on Tuesday, 03 July 2012  Page Views: 25032

Multi-periodSite Name: Babylon. Alternative Name: Bāb-ilim, Babil, Babilu
Country: Iraq Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Al Hillah  Nearest Village: As Sawrah
Latitude: 32.551450N  Longitude: 44.379331E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
2 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
2 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
3 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4

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Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by AlexHunger : Babylon Gate of Ishtar Also know as the Lions Gate. Blue Ceramic piles and designs of griffons and lions. removed from Babylon in 1930s and reassembled in Berlin Pergamum museum. The special effects guys in Hollywood digitised it and used it in the Alexander the Great movie. (Vote or comment on this photo)
Ancient city dating to 3rd millenium BCE and earlier and one of the most important cities of ancient Mesopotamia. The site today is marked by a broad area of ruins just east of the Euphrates River, about 90 km south of Baghdad, Iraq.

The Babylonian kingdom flourished under the rule of the famous King, Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE). In 1595 BCE, Babylon was captured by the Hittites and shortly thereafter became part of the Kassite kingdom until 1155 BCE. Then it was captured by the Elamites but was still the capital of Babylonia in the 2nd and 1st millennia BCE. Babylon was occupied by he Assyrians between the late 8th and early 7th century BCE. Nabopolassar overthrew the Assyrians in 626 BCE, and Babylon became the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. His son Nebuchadnezzar II (605 BC–562 BCE) made Babylon into one of the wonders of the ancient world. Nebuchadnezzar ordered the complete reconstruction of many public buildings, including the construction of the Ishtar Gate which survives today in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. In 539 BC the Neo-Babylonian Empire fell to Cyrus the Great, king of Persia and remained Persian until Alexander the Great's conquest. A tablet dated 275 BCE states that the inhabitants of Babylon were evicted, after which the site became derelict until rediscovered by archaeologists. German archaeologist Robert Koldewey started excavations in 1899.

Site currently under threat from water damage and a history of neglect, dubious reconstruction and previous military occupation.

Note: Modern curses threaten Iraq's ancient wonder of Babylon
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Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by DrewParsons : Parts of the Ishtar Gate and lions from the Processional Way are in various other museums around the world. This one I saw in the Louvre in Paris in 2009. When I visited Babylon in 1963 there was little evidence of anything historic left, the site was mostly mud rubble except for a stone lion. The rebuilt remains have little in common with the site as I knew it then. Incidentally the Ishtar Ga... (Vote or comment on this photo)

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by davidmorgan : A lion from the throne room of the palace of King Nebuchadnezzar II (reigned 605-562 BCE) in Babylon. In the British Museum, on loan from the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by h_fenton : Lions in relief, from the 'Procession Street' in Babylon. 604-562BC. This street came out of Babylon from the Ishtar gate, it was originally 16metres wide by 300metres long. On each side, the street was decorated with coloured brick relief's of the lion, the sacred animal of the goddess Ishtar. The Lions in this photograph are in Istanbul Archaeological Museum, Turkey. Further lions fro... (Vote or comment on this photo)

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by DrewParsons : One of two Neo-Babylonian panels showing striding lions dated to between 604 and 562 BC both now located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gallery 404. Photographed during a visit in September 2007 (Vote or comment on this photo)

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by durhamnature : Old reconstruction, from "Babylonian Expedition..." via archive.org Site in Iraq (Vote or comment on this photo)

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by durhamnature : One of the frieze of lions, old photo from "Mesopotamian Archaeology" via archive.org Site in Iraq

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by durhamnature : Old drawing of a rock formation mythically associated with the Tower , from "Babylonian Expedition..." via archive.org Site in Iraq

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by durhamnature : Old drawing from "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" via archive.org Site in Iraq

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by durhamnature : Old plan from "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" via archive.org Site in Iraq

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by durhamnature : Ishtar Gate, in situ, old photo from "Life of ancient East..." via archive.org Site in Iraq

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by durhamnature : Tower of Babel, imagined drawing, from "Ninevah and Babylon" via archive.org Site in Iraq

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by durhamnature : Old plan of part of the city, from "Ninevah and Babylon" via archive.org Site in Iraq

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by durhamnature : Old photo from "The Romance of Excavation..." a wonderful book via archive.org Site in Iraq

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by h_fenton : Puzur-Ishtar, govenor of Mari. Old babylonian period 1894-1594 BCE from Mari (Tell Hariri) the statue was removed from the city of Mari and taken to Babylon as war booty in the Neo-Babylonian period. It was found at Babylon in the palace museum of Nebuchadnezzar II. This statue is now in Istanbul Archaeological Museum

Babylon.
Babylon. submitted by h_fenton : Stele with inscription and relief, 8th century BCE, from the Palace Museum of Babylon. Shamsh-res-usur, governor of Mari and Suhi, attitude of prayer in front of the gods. The inscription states that the governor reigned for 13 years during which time he built the city of Gabarri-ibni, re-established irrigation canals, encouraged the planting of date palms in different cities and worked...

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Bringing Babylon Back from the Dead by bat400 on Tuesday, 04 June 2013
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Bringing Babylon back from the dead

Babylon was one of the glories of the ancient world, its walls and mythic hanging gardens listed among the Seven Wonders.
Founded about 4,000 years ago, the ancient city was the capital of 10 dynasties in Mesopotamia, considered one of the earliest cradles of civilization and the birthplace of writing and literature. But following years of plunder, neglect and conflict, the Babylon of today scarcely conjures that illustrious history.

In recent years, the Iraqi authorities have reopened Babylon to tourists, hoping that one day the site will draw visitors from all over the globe. But despite the site's remarkable archaeological value and impressive views, it is drawing only a smattering of tourists, drawn by a curious mix of ancient and more recent history.
The city -- just 85km (52 miles) south of Baghdad, about a two hour drive, dependent on checkpoints -- still bears the marks of ham-fisted attempts at restoration by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and a subsequent occupation by U.S. forces in 2003.
"They occupied Babylon. They wouldn't let anyone in," says Hussein Saheb, a guard at the historical sites at Babylon, recalling the day U.S. tanks rolled into view, before forces set up camp.

Following excavations in the early 20th century, European archaeologists claimed key features such as the remains of the famous Ishtar Gate -- the glazed brick gate decorated with images of dragons and aurochs, built in about 575 BC by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II as the eighth gate to the inner city. The original now stands as part of a reconstruction of the gate in Berlin's Pergamon Museum, whereas in Babylon itself, visitors enter through a replica. Yet remnants of Babylon's former glory remain, with sections of the city's walls still intact.

Later excavations and conservation work carried out under Saddam's rule greatly despoiled the site, say archaeologists. Iraqi archaeologist Hai Katth Moussa said that during a massive reconstruction project in the early 1980s, Saddam began building a replica of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II on top of the ruins of the ancient palace. Like Nebuchadnezzar, he wrote his name on many of the bricks, with inscriptions such as: "This was built by Saddam, son of Nebuchadnezzar, to glorify Iraq." After the Gulf War, Saddam began building a modern palace for himself on top of ruins in the style of a Sumerian ziggurat.

When U.S. forces arrived in 2003, they occupied the palace, which lies adjacent to Nebuchadnezzar's palace and overlooks the Euphrates River, and left their own mark. Today, a basketball hoop remains in Babylon, while concertina wire left behind by the military is used to prevent visitors from climbing over a 2,500-year-old lion statue -- an ancient symbol of the city.

Even in the new Iraq, Babylon faces ongoing threats. Only 2% of the ancient city has been excavated, but those buried historical treasures are threatened by encroaching development. Tour guide Hussein Al-Ammari says an oil pipeline runs through the eastern part of the ancient city. "It goes through the outer wall of Babylon," he says.

Yet despite the shortcomings in its preservation, Babylon holds a draw for small numbers of Iraqi visitors -- even if only to enter Saddam's marble-lined palaces, still a novelty 10 years after the dictator's downfall. Zained Mohammed, visiting with her family for the first time from Karbala, told CNN: "We were just looking for a change of atmosphere, to have the kids see something different."

Babylon is certainly that.

Thanks to coldrum for the link:
CNN.com
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Modern curses threaten Iraq's ancient wonder of Babylon by bat400 on Monday, 02 July 2012
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THE ancient Iraqi city of Babylon is facing a very modern threat from the twin curses of oil and politics. Once the centre of the ancient world, it has been despoiled in modern times by Saddam Hussein's fantasies of grandeur, invading armies and village sprawl.

Now come two more setbacks for the Iraqi city famous for its Hanging Gardens and Tower of Babel: Parts of its grounds have been torn up for an oil pipeline, and a diplomatic spat is hampering its bid for coveted UNESCO heritage status.

The pipeline was laid in March by Iraq's Oil Ministry, overriding outraged Iraqi archaeologists and drawing a rebuke from UNESCO, the global guardian of cultural heritage.

Then Iraq's tourism minister blocked official visits to the site by the World Monuments Fund, a New York-based group that is helping Babylon secure a World Heritage site designation after three rejections.

Growing villages are spilling onto its grounds and rising groundwater threatens the ancient mud brick ruins in the roughly 20 per cent of its area that has been excavated over the past century.

“It's a mess and there are a load of problems,” said Jeffrey Allen, a consultant for the World Monuments Fund.

The new oil pipeline runs 1.7 metres under Babylon for about 1.5 kilometres, alongside two other pipelines dug in the Saddam era.
The antiquities department has sued the ministry, demanding it remove the pipeline. UNESCO said it wrote to the Iraqi authorities, expressing concern.

Meanwhile, the World Monuments Fund is trying to help authorities protect the ruins from rising groundwater caused by the government's irrigation policies, said Allen, the group's Babylon site manager.

The WMF is training Iraqi staff and helping to prepare Babylon's bid for UNESCO recognition. But now the WMF itself has fallen foul of officialdom. Iraq's government decided several months ago to suspend ties with US universities and institutions involved in archaeology in Iraq. It's part of a long-running dispute over the fate of the Iraqi Jewish archives. The trove of books, photos and religious items were found in Baghdad by US troops and taken to the US for study and preservation under an agreement with Iraqi authorities that stipulated they would be returned.

But Iraqi authorities grew impatient to get them back, and now Tourism Minister Liwa Smaysin alleges that the US sent some of the artifacts to Israel for an exhibition, a claim denied both by the US State Department and Israel's Antiquities Authority. The US says the archives will eventually be returned to Iraq.

Qais Rashid, head of Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, said the government also called off a US training course for employees of the antiquities department. “This is a big loss for us, the frozen relations,” he said. But he also argued that Babylon will remain a top archaeological attraction, regardless of its formal designation.
“Babylon can survive on its own.”

For more, see http://www.theaustralian.com.au.
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A Triage to Save the Ruins of Babylon by bat400 on Monday, 21 February 2011
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On the hillside during one of his many visits to the ruins, Jeff Allen, a conservationist working with the World Monuments Fund, said: “All this is unexcavated. There is great potential at this site. You could excavate the street plan of the entire city.”

That is certainly years away given the realities of today’s Iraq. But for the first time since the American invasion in 2003, archaeologists and preservationists have begun working to protect and even restore parts of Babylon and other ancient ruins of Mesopotamia. And there are new sites being excavated for the first time, mostly in secret to avoid attracting the attention of looters, who remain a scourge here.

The World Monuments Fund, working with Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, has drafted a conservation plan to combat any further deterioration of Babylon’s mud-brick ruins and reverse some of the effects of time and Hussein’s propagandistic and archaeologically specious re-creations.

In November, the State Department announced a new $2 million grant to begin work to preserve the site’s most impressive surviving ruins. The objective is to prepare the site and other ruins for what officials hope will someday be a flood of scientists, scholars and tourists that could contribute to Iraq’s economic revival almost as much as oil.

The task at hand is daunting, though, and the threats to the site abundant.
The World Monuments Fund has been carrying out what amounts to archaeological triage since it began its conservation plan in 2009. It has created computer scans to provide precise records of the damage to the ruins and identified the most pernicious threats, starting with erosion caused by salty groundwater. “What we’ve got to do is create a stable environment,” Mr. Allen said at the site in November. “Right now it’s on the fast road to falling apart.”

The wicking of groundwater into mud bricks, compounded by a modern concrete walkway and the excavations conducted by the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey more than a century ago, have already eaten away some of the 2,500-year-old brick reliefs at the Ishtar Gate’s base.

The grant from the United States will pay for repairs to channel the water away from the gate’s foundation, yards beneath the surrounding area. Similar repairs are planned for two of Babylon’s temples, Ninmakh and Nabu-sha-Khare, the most complete sets of ruins, though they too suffer from erosion and harmful restorations. “It’s difficult to say which is doing more,” Mr. Allen said, “but the two together are nearly toxic for the preservation of monuments.”

The American reconstruction team has refurbished a modern museum on the site, as well as a model of the Ishtar Gate that for decades served as a visitors’ entrance. The fate of Babylon is already being disputed by Iraqi leaders, with antiquities officials clashing with local authorities. Even now they are clashing over whether the admission fee should go to the antiquities board or the provincial government.

Another of the more dire threats to the site has been development inside the boundaries of the old city walls, enclosing nearly three square miles. Mr. Allen, who oversees the fund’s work, said the preservation of Babylon would require collaboration among competing constituencies that is extremely rare amid Iraq’s political instability.

“We’re looking at not just archaeology,” he said of the project. “We’re looking at the economic opportunities and viability for local people. They need to see something out of this site. That’s possible, and possible at the same time to preserve the integrity of the site.”

Thanks to coldrum and Flyvapnet for links to these articles. For much more, see http://www.nytimes.com and video.nytimes.com.
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Pythagoras, a math genius? Not by Babylonian standards by davidmorgan on Sunday, 26 December 2010
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Over 1,000 years before Pythagoras was calculating the length of a hypotenuse, sophisticated scribes in Mesopotamia were working with the same theory to calculate the area of their farmland.

Working on clay tablets, students would "write" out their math problems in cuneiform script, a method that involved making wedge-shaped impressions in the clay with a blunt reed.

These tablets bear evidence of practical as well as more advanced theoretical math and show just how sophisticated the ancient Babylonians were with numbers -- more than a millennium before Pythagoras and Euclid were doing the same in ancient Greece.

"They are the most sophisticated mathematics from anywhere in the world at that time," said Alexander Jones, a Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity at New York University.

He is co-curator of "Before Pythagoras: The Culture of Old Babylonian Mathematics," an exhibition at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in New York.
They are the most sophisticated mathematics from anywhere in the world at that time
--Curator Alexander Jones

"This is nearly 4,000 years ago and there's no other ancient culture at that time that we know of that is doing anything like that level of work. It seems to be going beyond anything that daily life needs," he said.

Many scribes were trained in the ancient city of Nippur in what is now southern Iraq, where a large number of tablets were discovered between the mid-19th century and the 1920s.

Typical problems they worked on involved calculating the area of a given field, or the width of a trench.

These problems, says Jones, required the kind of math training taught to American Grade 10 students, but not in a format we would now recognize.

"It's not like algebra, it's all written out in words and numerals but no symbols and no times signs or equals or anything like that," he said.

This system, and the lack of recognizable Western mathematical symbols such as x and y, meant that it was several years before historians and archaeologists understood just what was represented on these tablets.

It took a young Austrian mathematician in the 1920s, named Otto Neugebauer, to crack the mathematical system and work out what the ancient Babylonians were calculating. But despite his advances, it is only recently that interest in Babylonian math has started to take hold.

"I think that before Neugebauer and even after Neugebauer, there wasn't a lot of attention placed on mathematical training in Babylon even though we have this rich cuneiform history with the tablets," said Jennifer Chi, Associate Director for Exhibitions and Public Programs at Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.
When we think of ancient mathematics, the first names that come to mind are Pythagoras and Euclid. That shouldn't be the case.

One of the aims of the institute, she says, is to find interconnections between ancient cultures as well as look at what the institute sees as under-represented ancient cultures -- and the culture of ancient Babylonian math, she says, is ripe for popular revision.

"When we think of ancient mathematics, the first names that come to mind are Pythagoras and Euclid," she said, but that "this shouldn't be the case."

And though ancient Babylonia is often referred to in popular culture as a "lost" world, in fact much more evidence of mathematical learning from the period exists than from ancient Greece, said Chi.

Jones of New York University believes that there is much more that could be excavated but that, of course, current conditions in Iraq are not favorable. Still, there are enough tablets in collections across the world for mathematical historians to get stuck into.

For non-mathematicians, these tablets are a fascinating document of life in Mesopotamia. Most of the problems displayed are gr

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Re: Ancient Tablets Reveal Mathematical Achievements of Ancient Babylonian Culture by cerrig on Friday, 26 November 2010
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That's really interesting stuff. It makes me wonder where the Babylonian's got it from.
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Ancient Tablets Reveal Mathematical Achievements of Ancient Babylonian Culture by davidmorgan on Wednesday, 24 November 2010
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An illuminating exhibition of thirteen ancient Babylonian tablets, along with supplemental documentary material, opens at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) on November 12, 2010. Before Pythagoras: The Culture of Old Babylonian Mathematics reveals the highly sophisticated mathematical practice and education that flourished in Babylonia—present-day Iraq—more than 1,000 years before the time of the Greek sages Thales and Pythagoras, with whom mathematics is traditionally said to have begun.

The tablets in the exhibition, at once beautiful and enlightening, date from the Old Babylonian Period (ca. 1900–1700 BCE). They have been assembled from three important collections: the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University; the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology; and the Yale Babylonian Collection, Yale University.

Before Pythagoras has been curated by Alexander Jones, ISAW Professor of the History of the Exact Sciences in Antiquity, and ISAW visiting scholar Christine Proust, historian of mathematics and ancient sciences at the Institut Méditerranéen de Recherches Avancées, in Marseille. The exhibition remains on view at ISAW through December 17, 2010.

Jennifer Chi, ISAW director for exhibitions and public programs, states, “It has long been widely recognized that many of the critical achievements of Western Civilization, including writing and the code of law that is the basis for our present-day legal system, developed in ancient Mesopotamia. However, the stunningly advanced state of mathematics in this region has largely been known only to scholars. By demonstrating the richness and sophistication of ancient Mesopotamian mathematics, Before Pythagoras adds an important dimension to the public knowledge of the history of historic cultures and attainments of present-day Iraq.”

Babylonian mathematics is known to the modern world through the work of scribes, primarily young men who, coming from wealthy families in which literacy and professional expertise were handed down through generations, were formally trained in reading and writing. Destined to work in such fields as accounting, building-project planning, and other professions in which mathematics is essential, the scribes learned and practiced mathematics by copying symbols and solving problems—some practical, others theoretical—such as those seen in the tablets in the exhibition.

Alexander Jones notes, “The evidence we have for Old Babylonian mathematics is amazing not only in its abundance, but also in its range, from basic arithmetic to really challenging problems and investigations. And since the documents are the actual manuscripts of the scribes, not copies selected and edited by later generations, we feel as if we were looking over their shoulders as they work; we can even see them getting confused and making mistakes. Recent research has made this human dimension very vivid, using archeological evidence to re-imagine the schools and the process of teaching and learning. Moreover, the contents of the tablets are still recognizable, as they continue to be taught in contemporary mathematics.”

The tablets in Before Pythagoras, inscribed in cuneiform script, cover the full spectrum of mathematical activity, from arithmetical tables copied by scribes-in-training to sophisticated work on topics that today would be classified as number theory and algebra. In so doing, they illuminate three major themes: arithmetic exploiting a notation of numbers based entirely on two basic symbols; the scribal schools of Nippur, which was the most prestigious center of scribal education; and advanced mathematical training.

Many of the problems solved by scribes at the advanced level of training were in fact much more difficult than any they would have to deal with in their careers, and their solutions depended on principles that, before the rediscovery of the Babylonian table

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The Sound of Akkadian - Listen to Ancient Babylonian online by davidmorgan on Sunday, 17 October 2010
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From coldrum:

Almost 2,000 years after its last native speakers disappeared, the sound of Ancient Babylonian makes a comeback in an online audio archive. The recordings include excerpts from some of the earliest known works of world literature, dating back to the first years of the second millennium BC.

Prompted by the enquiries of curious colleagues and friends, Dr. Martin Worthington, an expert in Babylonian and Assyrian grammar from the University of Cambridge, has begun to record readings of Babylonian poems, myths and other texts in the original tongue. In an effort to present users with a variety of voices, the readings – available online for free at http://www.speechisfire.com – are given by Dr. Worthington's fellow Assyriologists.

Babylonian is one of two variants (or dialects) of Akkadian, the other being Assyrian. Akkadian became the 'lingua franca' of the Near East around, until its use began to decline around the 8th century BC. The last Akkadian cuneiform document dates to the 1st century AD.

Dr Worthington's hope is that having heard the sound of the extinct language – the earliest attested Semitic language, some listeners will be sufficiently intrigued to investigate further, and perhaps end up studying the history, language or culture of the period.

"Whenever I tell people what I do, the first question they ask is what did Babylonian sound like, and how do you know?" Dr. Worthington said. "In the end I decided that the best thing to do would be to create a resource where they can listen to it for themselves."

It's essentially detective work," Dr. Worthington said. "We will never know for sure that a Babylonian would have approved of our attempts at pronunciation, but by looking at the original sources closely, we can make a pretty good guess.

"I also wanted to dispel some long-standing myths. Many people think that the further you go back in history, the less you know about it. In fact, we have masses of information about the Babylonians. The site aims to give users a taste of the richness and complexity of Ancient Mesopotamian culture, which is not something you normally learn much about at school."

The existing collection focuses on poetry in particular. Most of this is known from cuneiform inscriptions found on clay tablets in the area that was once Mesopotamia, and now comprises Iraq, as well as parts of Syria, Turkey and Iran.

"In many cases they are the equivalent of Old English tales like Beowulf," Dr. Worthington added. "Through them, we meet gods, giants, monsters and all sorts of other weird and wonderful creatures. As stories they are amazing fun."

Many also bear parallels with Biblical tales. Tablet XI of The Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, contains a deluge story; Utanapishtim tells the hero-king Gilgamesh how he was instructed by the gods to prepare a boat ahead of a great flood, and to put on board "the seed of all living creatures".

Beyond literature and poetry, the site has also contains other important documents from the period. Part of the Codex Hammurabi, for example, the ancient law code from 1790 BC, can be both read and heard - although you are (not yet) treated to all 281 of the laws and parallel punishments Hammurabi had listed.

Working out how Babylonian, or any dead language, sounded relies on a variety of strategies and techniques. In some cases, researchers can use Babylonian and Assyrian words transcribed into alphabets other than cuneiform, but often the sound is forensically deduced through the careful study of letter combinations and spelling patterns, using the original Cuneiform texts.

"It's essentially detective work," Dr. Worthington said. "We will never know for sure that a Babylonian would have approved of our attempts at pronunciation, but by looking at the original sources closely, we can make a pretty good guess."

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After Years of War and Abuse, New Hope for Ancient Babylon by bat400 on Wednesday, 05 May 2010
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Submitted by coldrum --

The most immediate threat to preserving the ruins of Babylon is water soaking the ground and undermining what is left in present-day Iraq of a great city from the time of King Nebuchadnezzar II. It is also one of the oldest threats. The king himself faced water problems 2,600 years ago. Neglect, reckless reconstruction and wartime looting have also taken their toll in recent times, but archaeologists and experts in the preservation of cultural relics say nothing substantial should be done to correct that until the water problem is brought under control.

A current study, "Future of Babylon" project, documents the damage from water mainly associated with the Euphrates River and irrigation systems nearby. The ground is saturated. Bricks are crumbling, temples collapsing.

Leaders of the international project, said that any plan for reclaiming Babylon as an attraction and a place for archaeological research must include water control as “the highest priority.” The study, aimed at developing a master plan for the ancient city, was begun last year by the World Monuments Fund and Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. A $700,000 grant from the US Dept of State is financing the initial study and preliminary management plan.

Consider the depredations Babylon has suffered in recent history. German archaeologists who made the first careful study of the site recognized the despoiling inroads of irrigation waters drawn from a tributary of the Euphrates.

The first German investigators, led by Robert Koldewey, reported finding extensive water damage to mud-brick structures and the intrusion of agricultural fields and villages within boundaries of the original city. People had already carted off bricks and stones, leaving almost nothing of the Ziggurat, known from the historian Herodotus and the Bible as the Tower of Babel. The Germans hauled off the elaborate Ishtar Gate to a museum in Berlin.

Then, in the 1970s and ’80s, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, casting himself as heir to Nebuchadnezzar’s greatness, had his own imposing palace built at Babylon along the lines of his royal predecessor’s. He even adopted the king’s practice of stamping his own name on the bricks for the reconstruction. Archaeologists were aghast. The new palace and a few other restorations, they say, are hardly authentic, and yet they dominate the site.

Elizabeth C. Stone, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University in New York who is familiar with Babylon, said she supported efforts to reopen the site to tourists, especially Iraqis themselves. “It’s near Baghdad and is the one site where you used to see Iraqis going to get a sense of their past,” she said.

Further damage was incurred during the Iraq war, started in 2003. Looting was prevalent there and at other archaeological sites. The US military occupied Babylon for several years, protecting it from plundering but leaving other scars. About one square kilometer of surface soil, some of it with artifacts, “got removed one way or another,” Dr. Stone said.
“The military certainly did not do the place any good,” said Lisa Ackerman, executive vice president of the monuments fund. “They moved a lot of dirt around, but that damage is largely fixable.”

The site was returned to Iraqi control more than a year ago. Ms. Ackerman and Mr. Allen said the project had already surveyed the remains, building by building, and started the restoration of two museums.

For more, see http://www.nytimes.com.
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US military damaged ancient Babylon site by coldrum on Thursday, 16 July 2009
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Researchers working for the United Nations cultural agency say the US military in Iraq inflicted considerable damage on one of the world's most important archaeological sites at Babylon.

UNESCO has vowed to make Babylon a World Heritage site to prevent similar vandalism in future wars.

Its ruins, 90 kilometres south of Baghdad, are considered one of the world's Seven Wonders, and are more than 4000 years old. Soon after the US-led invasion in 2003, the site became military "Camp Alpha".

The UNESCO report presented yesterday says US troops and contractors dug trenches several hundred metres long through sensitive areas, levelled hilltops and drove heavy vehicles over the fragile paving of once-sacred pathways.

Yesterday the Dutch Government turned over dozens of antiquities stolen from Iraq to Baghdad's ambassador and urged other countries to clamp down on the illicit trade.

The 69 pieces include cylindrical stone seals more than 4000 years old and a terracotta relief depicting a bearded man praying.

"These things should not be bought and sold," said Diederik Meijer, an archaeologist with the Dutch National Museum for Antiquities, which will display the treasures before they are returned to Iraq. Dr Meijer declined to put a value on the artefacts, saying it could encourage illegal trade.

Despite efforts to clamp down on the looting of historical sites, such theft is still happening in Iraq. Dr Meijer showed an aerial photo of an official dig surrounded by a landscape pockmarked with illegal excavations.

The Dutch Science Minister, Ronald Plasterk, said the stolen artefacts were surrendered by Dutch art traders after police informed them they were stolen. US customs authorities and Interpol had alerted Dutch officials that the items were being sold in the Netherlands.

Mr Plasterk said the artefacts came from the "cradle of civilisation", the area between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates once known as Mesopotamia. Among other items Mr Plasterk handed to Iraq's ambassador, Siamand Banaa, was a fragment of a flagstone with an inscription of King Nebuchadnezzar dating from 570BC.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/us-military-damaged-ancient-babylon-site-20090710-deuh.html

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Iraqi archaeologists find ancient Babylonian relics by coldrum on Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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Iraqi archaeologists find ancient Babylonian relics

Iraqi archaeologists have discovered 4,000 artifacts, most of them from ancient Babylonian times, including royal seals, talismans and clay tablets marked in Sumerian cuneiform - the earliest known form of writing.

The treasures came to light, the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said, after two years of excavations across 20 different sites in the regions between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the land ancient Greeks referred to as "Mesopotamia."

In addition to Babylonian artifacts, the finds included artifacts from the ancient Persian Empire and more recent medieval Islamic cities.

"The results of this excavation are evidence that Iraq's antiquities aren't going to run out any time soon," Abdel-Zahra al-Telagani, spokesman for the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry, said. "They also give us the incentive to continue to work to rehabilitate our ancient sites to become tourist attractions."

The artifacts will be transferred to the National Museum in Baghdad, which remains in need of restocking since looters stole approximately 15,000 artifacts after the 2003 US-led invasion. Some 6,000 have since been reported as returned.

Qais Hussein Rasheed, acting head of the antiquities and heritage committee, said Iraq still had a big problem with looters ransacking archaeological sites.

"These sites are vulnerable to endless robbery by thieves, smugglers and organized gangs because they are not protected," he said. "We have asked the relevant ministries to allocate policemen but haven't received very many so far."

Iraq is hoping a decrease in violence will encourage tourists to visit its ancient sites.

Potential highlights include the Biblical city of Babylon, fabled home to the Hanging Gardens, the Assyrian city of Nineveh in the north, relics of numerous medieval Islamic citadels, and some of Shiite Islam's holiest mosques and shrines.

Iraq saw its first group of Western tourists last month, and officials hope more will follow.

Abbas Fadhil, the head of the excavation team, believes some of the finds may be hugely significant. Of the two rare talismans dug up, one shows a face carved in Sumerian style framed by a triangle. The other is a red stone with a running antelope carved into it. - Reuters

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=4&Article_id=100630
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Babylon Ruins Reopen in Iraq, to Controversy by coldrum on Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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Babylon Ruins Reopen in Iraq, to Controversy

After decades of dictatorship and disrepair, Iraq is celebrating its renewed sovereignty over the Babylon archaeological site — by fighting over the place, over its past and future and, of course, over its spoils.
Time long ago eroded the sun-dried bricks that shaped ancient Babylon, the city of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, where Daniel read the writing on the wall and Alexander the Great died.

Colonial archaeologists packed off its treasures to Europe a century ago. Saddam Hussein rebuilt the site in his own megalomaniacal image. American and Polish troops turned it into a military camp, digging trenches and filling barricades with soil peppered with fragments of a biblical-era civilization.

Now, the provincial government in Babil has seized control of much of Babylon — unlawfully, according to the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage — and opened a park beside a branch of the Euphrates River, a place that draws visitors by the busload.

It has begun to charge a fee to visit the looted shell of the grandiose palace that Mr. Hussein built in the 1980s, along with the hill it stands on. And it has refurbished a collection of buildings from the Hussein era and rented their rooms out as suites. For $175 a night Iraqis can honeymoon in a room advertised as one of Mr. Hussein’s bedrooms (though in truth, almost certainly a mere guest room).

“Our problem, in terms of archaeology, is that we actually deal with ignorant people, whether in the Saddam era or the current era,” said Qais Hussein Rashid, the acting director of the board of antiquities, which has legal authority over Babylon, but apparently not very much power.

“Most of the people and some officials have no respect for heritage,” he went on. “They think archaeological sites are just a bunch of bricks that have no value at all.”

Now with the support of some officials in Baghdad, the local government has reopened the excavated ruins of Babylon’s ancient core, shuttered ever since the American invasion in 2003. It has done so despite warnings by archaeologists that the reopening threatens to damage further what remains of one of the world’s first great cities before the site can be adequately protected.

The fight over ancient Babylon is about more than the competing interests of preservation and tourism. It reflects problems that hinder Iraq’s new government, including an uncertain division between local and federal authority and political rivalries that consume government ministries.

“The political situation in our country is not stable,” Mr. Rashid said. “The federal government is weak.”

Mr. Rashid’s board, part of the Ministry of Culture, is at odds with the newly created State Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, its priorities made clear in its name — and the dispute is not their first.

The agencies clashed over the reopening of the National Museum in Baghdad in February, and then as now, the tourism ministry, which favored reopening, prevailed. Its power stems not from the Constitution, but from proximity to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who has pressed for reopening historic and cultural sites as symbols of the country’s stability and progress. His government made control of ancient sites a provision in the security agreement with the United States that took effect in January. Next month, the American military will turn over the last of them, Ur, the ancient Sumerian capital in southern Iraq.

“Our goal is that these sites will be tourist attractions — to convey the real, civilized image of Iraq and to bring as many tourists as possible,” said the tourism ministry’s director, Qahtan al-Jibouri. “Iraq needs another source of funding in addition to oil.”

The ruins at Babylon have long suffered. Mud bricks lack the durability of the marble of Greece or the limesto

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