Before Baghdad: Cities of Ancient Mesopotamia MWF 1-1:50pm, RI 008
26. Babylon Comparative Mesopotamian cities
1. Aššur 2. Šubat Enlil (Tell Leilan) 3. Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta 4. Mari (Tell Hariri) 5. Nineveh 6. Kalhu (Tell Nimrud) 7. Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad) 8. Erbil 9. Ur 10.Uruk Collapse of the Assyrian Empire (overromanticized): Late 7th c. BC (Not so easy to explain)
• Civil war in Assyria following death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BC.
• Sack of Nineveh by Medes and Babylonians in 612 BC.
• Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC.
• New archaeological evidence from Dur-Katlimmu (Tell Sheikh Hamad): continuity of Assyrian provincial administration well after 612 BC.
• Nomadism: Saka/Scythians in Northern Black Sea, Transcaucases. Elaborate metalworking technologies. (Herodotus) Neo-Babylonian Dynasty: important kings
Nabopolassar (625-605 BC)
Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BC)
Nabonidus (555-539 BC) Neo-Babylonian Dynasty:
Nabopolassar (626-605 BC)
Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BC)
Nabonidus (555-539 BC)
• Takeover of Assyrian provincial administration. Political, bureaucratic, cultural, cultic continuity.
• Ambitious building projects especially in Babylon, and other significantly ancient urban centers of Southern Mesopotamia
•Neo-Babylonian interest in the past: memory practices, material engagements with the past. Assyrian Soldiers in the Halzi Gate, Nineveh Empire of Nebuchadnezzar (604-562 BC)
Babylon Genesis 11:1-9 1And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. 2And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. 6And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. 8So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The Tower of Babel. 1563 Babylon = TIN.TIRKI The Inner City of Babylon German excavations at Babylon Director architect/archaeologist Robert Koldewey feeds cats 1899-1917. Excavations at the Ishtar Gate
Ishtar Gate and the Processional Street Creatures of Marduk
Kassite period (LB) temple of Karaindash, Uruk
Ishtar Gate and the Processional Street
Reconstructed in Berlin, Pergamon Museum
Façade of Nebuchadnezzar’s Throne Room Ishtar Gate and the Babylonian Palaces Reconstructed Nebuchadnezzar’s Palace
Old Babylonian royal statues from Mari
Memory p(a)laces: Babylon’s Northern Palace: ancient “museum” and its “antiquities”
Syro-Anatolian stele of the Storm God Syro-Anatolian lion statue Marduk
Enuma Elish The Babylonian creation epic:
Marduk’s defeat of Tiamat and the making of the world
Elevation of Marduk in the Mesopotamian pantheon Sanctuary of Marduk, Plan and reconstructed model
Etemenanki: “House/Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth”
Esagila: “Lofty Temple/House” The Tower of Babel Stele, Schoyen collection
The ceremonial center and the processional street
the akitu festival social performance and state spectacles Saddam as the reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar Saddam’s Nebuchadnezzar’s palace palace
US Army Helipad (Landing Zone)
Marduk’s ziqqurat