History of the Ancient Near East · Part 20 · Babylon and Persia · B1–B2
Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon
Part 20 of History of the Ancient Near East: in the 6th century BCE, Babylon was the greatest city in the world: a blue gate covered in dragons, a temple tower that touched the sky, and priests who watched the stars every night for six hundred years. It was also the city where the exiles of Judah wept, and learned to live. Relative clauses (the city where…), so … that / such … that, and observe, record, predict, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight, the city that every people of the ancient world talked about: Babylon.
Our astronomers talk about it with respect. They say the Chaldeans have watched the sky longer than anyone.
And our travellers say its walls were so wide that chariots could race on top of them.
My people remember it with tears, because it destroyed Jerusalem. But I suspect Babylon hardly noticed us.
Hardly. To a scribe in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, Judah was one rebellious province among many. Let us see Babylon as Babylonians saw it.
After the fall of Assyria in 612 BCE, Babylon became the capital of a new empire, from the Gulf to the borders of Egypt. Its greatest king, Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BCE), rebuilt the city with walls, palaces, temples and the great Ishtar Gate, covered in blue glazed bricks with dragons and bulls. Above the city rose the temple tower of the god Marduk, the Etemenanki, perhaps ninety metres high.
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