Ere Babylon was dust

Babylon Ere Babylon was dust Apr 10th 2008 From The Economist print edition A fascinating exhibition exploring the history, legends and art of Babylon is now in Paris and will be moving on to Berlin and London Olaf M. Tessmer / SMB-Vorderasiatisches   THE city has been all things to all men. To Jews, whose ancestors had been taken in captivity from Jerusalem in 586BC by King Nebuchadnezzar II, the rivers of Babylon were where they sat down and wept. Genesis claims that these Jews went on to build the Tower of Babel, although there is no physical evidence of its existence (or of the Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world). Reformation Christians depicted Babylon as a whore, dedicated to orgies and feasting; Martin Luther compared the Rome of his day with ancient Babylon. Archaeologists tell a different story. They show that Babylon was a centre of innovation, regarding itself as “the cosmic city”, with a history stretching back to the third millennium BC and lasting until the death of Alexander the Great in Babylon in 323BC. It was a great innovator in medicine, astronomy, astrology, mathematics and banking; the Babylonians may even have believed that the world was round.   Because information was stored on durable clay tablets, baked hard in the sun, these accomplishments are no secret. Appreciating them fully, however, usually means travelling to the Louvre in Paris, the Pergamon Museum in Berlin and the British Museum in London, the three places where the major discoveries from Babylonian civilisation are housed. For a while, this is no longer necessary. A formidable exhibition designed to reconcile Babylonian history and legend is on show in Paris until June 2nd. It moves to Berlin from June 26th to October 5th and will then be in London from November 13th until March 15th 2009. The organisers claim there has never been an exhibition like it. Judged by the crowds filling the galleries at the Louvre, it is already a popular success.   The three exhibitions are not uniformly the same. Berlin will have the most exhibits (about 800) and London the fewest (104); Paris has 466. The British Museum does not currently have space for a big travelling show (it had to seek special permission from English Heritage to use the old Reading Room for the recent exhibition from China). Irving Finkel, assistant keeper in the museum's Near East Department, says the London show is designed to convince the audience that Babylon was a real place, a “most lavish and grandiose affair”. Some objects are too fragile to be moved between the museums. The tall basalt column on which is written the Code of Hammurabi, will not only stay in Paris but Beatrice Andre-Salvini, the exhibition's chief curator, even had qualms about moving it from its permanent place in the Louvre to the exhibition space a stone's throw away. She was persuaded otherwise, and the code is perhaps the most remarkable object on show. Written between 1792BC and 1750BC, it lays down a detailed legal framework, some of which remains familiar: “If a man destroys the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye.” It also dictates the rate of interest: “If a merchant puts out money on interest, for one shekel of silver he shall receive one-sixth of a shekel.”   Both London and Paris will have the pleasure of seeing the lions, cows and dragons (including the dragon shown above) that decorated the Ishtar Gate during Nebuchadnezzar II's reign (605-562BC). The blue enamel gate, which was discovered by Robert Koldewey, a renowned German archaeologist, is the only Babylonian monument from this time to have survived, albeit in thousands of small pieces. The elegant animal statues were painstakingly pieced together in Berlin and placed in the reconstructed gate. The animals travel; the great gate stays in Germany.   Some of the 130,000 tablets that were obtained by the British Museum in the 1870s have not yet been translated, and surprising discoveries are still being made, linking Babylonian and biblical texts. For instance, a tablet from the museum, translated so recently that it only just made the show, names Sarsachim, a Babylonian eunuch who is also listed in the Book of Jeremiah as one of Nebuchadnezzar's henchmen at the siege of Jerusalem.   No tablet has yet proved the existence of the Tower of Babel or the Hanging Gardens, although Mr Finkel has a complete inventory of Babylonian flora. Sebastien Allard, the exhibition's curator for paintings and prints, suggests that artists have used the imagery of Babylonian myth to convey the realities of their own period. Albrecht Durer drew the whore of Babylon; Bruegel the Elder painted the Tower. Voltaire, Rossini, Byron, Verdi, J.M.W. Turner, Delacroix, Dore and Degas sought inspiration from the “cosmic city”. William Blake mocked the British monarchy with his illustration of Nebuchadnezzar eating grass from a story in the Book of Daniel. The Paris exhibition ends in 1957 with a fine drawing by Frank Lloyd Wright of a monument to the legendary caliph Haroun al-Rashid. At the prompting of its director, Neil MacGregor, the British Museum will bring the story of Babylon up to date. Its exhibit will show how Saddam Hussein exploited the symbolism of Babylon by ordering the reconstruction of the King's Palace with bricks stamped with his name, just as Nebuchadnezzar stamped the originals. The last chapter will be of the remains of Babylon as an American and Polish transport hub during the Iraq war. “We won't wallow in it, but we want to create a rueful sadness,” says Mr Finkel.