ABSTRACT
T he name Babylon evokes a sense of mystery and remoteness. Even the name is poetic: it means “gateway of the gods.” Today little remains of the city except some brownish, crumbling ruins and partial reconstruction dating from the era of Saddam Hussein. To the Greeks, however, Babylon was a place of astonishing, legendary wonders, such as the hanging gardens, which they described in travel guides. Herodotus, the famous Greek historian who lived in the 400s BCE, found Babylon impressive, but his colorful account had many exaggerations and inaccuracies. For instance, he erroneously stated that women were required to prostitute themselves at temples to strangers, which added to the image of Babylon as a place of sexual license. Then to the Jews, Babylon was a place of alienation and oppression, to which they had been deported forcibly, and they feared assimilation into a foreign culture with a polytheistic religion. Our vision of Babylon remains that of an infamous city, doomed for its extravagance and excess. Many people today associate Babylon with biblical stories like the destruction of the Tower of Babel or the account of Belshazzar’s feast, when divine hand-writing appeared on the wall of the palace, foretelling the collapse of the Babylonian monarchy. Over time, these episodes were imaginatively represented in the visual arts, opera, and film, thereby the way we perceive ancient Babylon. Even the television science fiction series Babylon used the themes of religion, dreams, prophecies, power, conflict, 40and destruction that have become associated with ancient Babylon. Today the city’s name still stands as a cautionary reminder of the dangers inherent in urban society driven toward expansion and consumption of resources.
