{"it":{"id":"MES-001","kind":"site","sub":"Mesopotamia and Iran","name":"Babylon","place":"Babylonia; Neo-Assyrian Empire; Neo-Babylonian Empire; Achaemenid Empire; Macedonia;…","lat":32.542,"lon":44.421,"date":"Its rulers established two important empires in antiquity, the 19th–16th century BC Old…","mat":"clay;earth;limestone","nfacts":8,"tags":["Near East"],"sum":"Babylon lies about 85 km south of Baghdad on the Euphrates. Estimates of the old city's area run from about 450 to 1,000 hectares (single source, an article without references). For a time it may have been the largest city in the world.\n\nIts rulers built two great empires, the Old Babylonian (19th–16th centuries BCE) and the Neo-Babylonian.","why":"It is one of the best-known cities of the ancient world, and its most famous wonder may never have stood there.","src":[281,608],"nsrc":3,"yt":"Were the Hanging Gardens real, and if so, were they at Babylon or Nineveh?","rel":["TEO-TEO"],"hook":"Bricks in Babylon's rebuilt palace read: 'built by Saddam Hussein, son of Nebuchadnezzar, to glorify Iraq.'"},"S":{"281":["Wikipedia: Babylon","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon"],"608":["UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Babylon","https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/278"]},"rec":{"id":"MES-001","alias":[],"ms":[{"f":"in southern Mesopotamia within modern-day Hillah Iraq about","a":"distance (not a site dimension)","v":"85","u":"km","o":"Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about 85 km south of modern-day Baghdad.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babylon&oldid=1381288220","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381288220 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1960"},{"f":"200 000 REF4 in an area of about","a":"area","v":"900","u":"ha","o":"It was perhaps the first city to reach a population above 200,000 REF4 in an area of about 900 ha.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babylon&oldid=1381288220","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381288220 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1961"},{"f":"The site covers an area of about","a":"area","v":"1000","u":"ha","o":"The site covers an area of about 1,000 ha, with about 450 ha within the several kilometer (mile) long city walls, containing a number of mounds, the most prominent of which are Kasr, Merkes (13 m above the plain), Homera, Ishin-Aswad, Sahn, Amran, and Babil.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babylon&oldid=1381288220","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381288220 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1962"},{"f":"area of about 1 000 ha with about","a":"area","v":"450","u":"ha","o":"The site covers an area of about 1,000 ha, with about 450 ha within the several kilometer (mile) long city walls, containing a number of mounds, the most prominent of which are Kasr, Merkes (13 m above the plain), Homera, Ishin-Aswad, Sahn, Amran, and Babil.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babylon&oldid=1381288220","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381288220 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1963"},{"f":"the most prominent of which are Kasr Merkes","a":"dimension (unspecified)","v":"13","u":"m","o":"The site covers an area of about 1,000 ha, with about 450 ha within the several kilometer (mile) long city walls, containing a number of mounds, the most prominent of which are Kasr, Merkes (13 m above the plain), Homera, Ishin-Aswad, Sahn, Amran, and Babil.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babylon&oldid=1381288220","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381288220 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1964"},{"f":"the center of the site and rises to","a":"height","v":"19","u":"m","o":"It lies in the center of the site and rises to 19 m above the plain.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babylon&oldid=1381288220","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381288220 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1965"},{"f":"Amran Ibn Ali about","a":"height","v":"22","u":"m","o":"*Amran Ibn Ali – about 22 m high and at the south of the site.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babylon&oldid=1381288220","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381288220 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1966"},{"f":"Babil a mound about","a":"height","v":"25","u":"m","o":"*Babil – a mound about 25 m high at the northern end of the site.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babylon&oldid=1381288220","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381288220 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M1967"}],"lab":[{"k":"Materials","mat":"site material (as stated in article)","m":"documentary mention (Wikipedia, auto-extracted)","v":"A fragmentary limestone votive inscription dated by paleography to the Early Dynastic II period (c. 2700 BC) was suggested to include the name of Babylon.","by":"no inline ref in article","b":"S","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babylon&oldid=1381288220"}],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[],"dat":[],"aa":[],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"sub":[],"site":{"age":"Its rulers established two important empires in antiquity, the 19th–16th century BC Old Babylonian Empire, and the 7th–6th century BC Neo-Babylonian Empire.","dm":"[see dating_excerpt; method not extracted]","lab":"NO: inference only (style/context/king list/textual)","weak":"no direct lab result on the structure in our records; date from stylistic, contextual or textual inference","unesco":"","dens":"CENSUS"},"co":{"lat":"32.5425","lon":"44.42111111","src":"Wikidata P625 only + curated wave0 value agrees","agree":"agree (inside OSM feature extent)","b":"V","note":"two independent sources agree; max delta 0.0107 deg (~1.19 km)","osm":"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/961272499"},"src":[{"id":"S0265","t":"no inline ref in article","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babylon&oldid=1381288220"},{"id":"S0433","t":"Wikipedia: Babylon","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon"},{"id":"S2609","t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Babylon","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/278"},{"id":"VMES-001-4","t":"BBC News (2008) article 7729064","u":"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7729064.stm"},{"id":"VMES-001-5","t":"Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft: research project","u":"https://www.orient-gesellschaft.de/forschungen/projekt.php?a=50"},{"id":"VMES-001-6","t":"OUPblog (2013): The mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon","u":"https://blog.oup.com/2013/06/mystery-hanging-garden-babylon/"},{"id":"VMES-001-7","t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Babylon","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/278/"},{"id":null,"t":"Robert Koldewey, The Excavations at Babylon, trans. A. S. Johns (London: Macmillan, 1914), chapters I, VII, XIV, XXX. Public-domain scan.","u":"https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_NTmFAAAAIAAJ"},{"id":null,"t":"Herodotus, Histories 1.178–181, trans. G. C. Macaulay (Project Gutenberg 2707).","u":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2707"},{"id":null,"t":"Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, “From Fragment to Monument: The Ishtar Gate in Berlin” (exhibition page, 2020–21).","u":"https://www.smb.museum/en/exhibitions/detail/from-fragment-to-monument"},{"id":null,"t":"Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg, “The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were at … Nineveh!” (30 January 2018), summarising S. Dalley, The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon (Oxford University Press, 2013).","u":"https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publications/mesopotamia/2018-01-30.html"},{"id":null,"t":"Martin Rundkvist, “An Attempt To Move The Hanging Gardens”, Aardvarchaeology, ScienceBlogs (3 October 2013), review of Dalley 2013.","u":"https://www.scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2013/10/03/an-attempt-to-move-the-hanging-gardens"}],"sum":"Herodotus had said there would be reeds. Writing in the fifth century BC, the Greek historian described how Babylon's great wall was made: clay dug from the moat was shaped into bricks and baked, hot asphalt served as mortar, and the builders laid \"reed mats at every thirty courses of brickwork.\" More than two thousand years later, the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey cut into the mud walls of Babylon and found the reed layers, just where the Greek said they would be. It was a small vindication for an ancient writer whose figures for the walls were far too large. It also set the pattern for everything Babylon has taught since: the old stories are sometimes wrong in the measurements and right in the details, and the hardest thing is telling which is which.\n\nBabylon lies on the lower Euphrates in southern Mesopotamia, near the modern town of Hillah, about 85 kilometres south of Baghdad in Iraq. UNESCO, which inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 2019, calls it \"one of the largest, oldest settlements in Mesopotamia and the Middle East.\" Its rulers built two great empires: the Old Babylonian of the nineteenth to sixteenth centuries BC, seat of the lawgiver Hammurabi, and the Neo-Babylonian, which UNESCO dates from 626 to 539 BC, the age of Nebuchadnezzar II. The protected site takes in the outer and inner walls, gates, palaces and temples, \"including the ziggurat, the probable inspiration for the Tower of Babel.\"\n\nHow big was it? The figures vary with what is being measured. The site today covers about 1,000 hectares, with about 450 hectares inside the city walls. Babylon was perhaps the first city to pass 200,000 people, on about 900 hectares. The German Oriental Society, which ran the main excavation, reckoned the city around 550 BC at about 1,000 hectares, the largest walled city before imperial Rome. Its mounds still rise from the plain: Babil at the northern end about 25 metres high, Amran Ibn Ali in the south about 22, Merkes 13.\n\nHerodotus described a square city, each face \"one hundred and twenty furlongs\" long, ringed by a moat and a wall \"fifty royal cubits in thickness and two hundred cubits in height.\" Koldewey measured the real circuit at about 18 kilometres. Herodotus implies about 86, and Ctesias, another Greek writer, about 65; Koldewey suspected Ctesias had mistaken the whole circuit for one side. His verdict was fair: the measurements \"are not in accordance with those actually preserved,\" yet the general description \"is usually accurate.\"\n\nThe colour came first. Glazed brick fragments lying on the ground were \"one of the motives for choosing Babylon,\" Koldewey wrote, and digging began on 26 March 1899. The excavation ran until 1915, with 200 to 250 workers a day and about 1.2 million working days in all. The fragments went to Berlin, shared with Istanbul in 1903 and Baghdad in 1926. Teams of up to thirty people assembled 72 animal reliefs in two years, filling gaps with modern bricks, and the rebuilt Ishtar Gate opened in Berlin in 1930. Nebuchadnezzar's own inscription on the gate boasts of cedar ceilings, bronze thresholds and bricks \"of blue enamel, on which wild oxen and dragons (sir-ruš) were pictured.\"\n\nBabylon has always been a stage for power. Nebuchadnezzar stamped his name on his bricks. In the 1980s Saddam Hussein's government rebuilt part of his palace in a \"Revival of Babylon Project,\" and some of the new bricks carry their own inscription: \"This was built by Saddam Hussein, son of Nebuchadnezzar, to glorify Iraq.\" UNESCO notes that those reconstructions \"negatively affected the integrity of the property,\" and lists illegal building, trash burning and pollution as further threats. Kings have claimed this ground for nearly four thousand years, and the claims are written into the bricks.\n\nThe tower is another lesson in what survives. Herodotus described a temple of Zeus Belos with a stepped tower, \"up to the number of eight towers,\" with a winding ramp and a shrine at the top. Koldewey found the base of Etemenanki, the great ziggurat, with almost no rubble on it. Nearby, at Homera, lay a huge mound of debris with no building inside. He linked the two through Strabo, who wrote that Alexander the Great planned to rebuild the fallen tower and paid to clear its rubble. Babel, on his reading, had been carted away.\n\nThen there is the most famous wonder of all. Babylon left thousands of clay tablets, royal building inscriptions and stamped bricks, and not one of them, as far as anyone has found, describes the Hanging Gardens. The University of Hamburg's manuscript centre puts it plainly: Babylon's royal inscriptions \"do not offer any descriptions which could relate to these mysterious gardens.\" Nebuchadnezzar listed his works in detail, yet never mentions them. Herodotus, who wrote at length about Babylon, never mentions them either. They appear only in later Hellenistic and Roman writers, and of the ancient authors only Josephus names Nebuchadnezzar as their builder.\n\nKoldewey thought he had found them. In the north-east corner of the Southern Citadel lay a crypt of fourteen vaulted cells, \"the only crypt found in Babylon,\" with a well of three shafts that he took for a chain pump. Hewn stone was rare in Babylon, and ancient writers mention it in only two places, one of them the gardens. He found stone here too. \"I consider them to be identical,\" he wrote, though he admitted the match \"bristles with difficulties.\" Later scholars have not all followed him.\n\nThe strongest alternative comes from the Oxford Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley, who in 2013 placed the gardens at Nineveh, built by the Assyrian king Sennacherib. His inscriptions describe \"a botanic garden, a replica of Mount Amanus,\" watered by a canal through the hills, with screws cast in bronze (copper, in another rendering) raised above wells to lift water, fed by an aqueduct of more than two million dressed stones. Reliefs from his palace show trees on terraces. Greek writers often confused Babylon and Nineveh. The archaeologist Martin Rundkvist granted her \"a fine solid case for a set of Hanging Gardens in Niniveh,\" but argued that ancient travellers \"had several centuries to realise their mistake\" if Babylon had none. \"None ever did,\" he wrote. Others doubt the gardens stood anywhere.\n\nThe mainstream view of Babylon itself is secure: a great capital, rebuilt by successive empires, well documented by its own texts and by a century of digging. The open questions are pointed. Why are Babylon's own records silent on a building the Greeks called a wonder? Was Koldewey's crypt a garden base or something more ordinary? And UNESCO's most striking figure answers neither: \"Eighty-five percent of the property remains unexcavated.\"\n\nPicture the old city as Herodotus heard of it: walls of baked brick laid in black asphalt, a reed mat pressed in every thirty courses, blue-glazed wild oxen and dragons glowing at the gates, the tower rising in its stages, and somewhere, if anywhere, terraces of trees lifted above the flat plain by water that men had taught to climb.","qs":["Were the Hanging Gardens real, and if so, were they at Babylon or Nineveh?","When a modern state rebuilds a ruin on top of itself, what is lost and what is gained?","Why might ancient writers have moved a wonder from one city to another?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Ishtar_Gate.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ishtar_Gate.jpg","title":"Ishtar Gate.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0","by":"David Stanley","cap":"Ishtar Gate in Hillah"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/001125-Babylon-IMG_8063-2.jpg/1280px-001125-Babylon-IMG_8063-2.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:001125-Babylon-IMG_8063-2.jpg","title":"001125-Babylon-IMG 8063-2.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Safa.daneshvar","cap":"Babylon, the old city, Hillah, Iraq - February 2022 - Photo by: Safa Daneshvar شهر قدیم بابل - حله - عراق - بهمن ۱۴۰۰ - عکس از صفا دانشور","alt":"Babylon, the old city, Hillah, Iraq - February 2022 - Photo by: Safa Daneshvar"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Ancient_Remains_in_Babylon.jpg/1280px-Ancient_Remains_in_Babylon.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ancient_Remains_in_Babylon.jpg","title":"Ancient Remains in Babylon.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Osama Sarm","cap":"Ancient Remains in Babylon."},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Babylon%2C_1932.jpg/1280px-Babylon%2C_1932.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Babylon,_1932.jpg","title":"Babylon, 1932.jpg","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"American Colony (Jerusalem). Photo Dept., photographer.","cap":"Babylon, Iraq, 1932 CALL NUMBER: LC-M33- 14474[P&P] REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-DIG-matpc-13231 (digital file from original photo) PART OF: G. Eric and Edith Matson"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Charles_Le_Brun_-_Entry_of_Alexander_into_Babylon.JPG/1280px-Charles_Le_Brun_-_Entry_of_Alexander_into_Babylon.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Le_Brun_-_Entry_of_Alexander_into_Babylon.JPG","title":"Charles Le Brun - Entry of Alexander into Babylon.JPG","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Charles Le Brun","cap":"","alt":"Charles Le Brun - Entry of Alexander into Babylon"}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"2200 BC","h":"First known mention of Babylon, as a small town on an Akkadian clay tablet","s":[36]},{"v":"16th century BC","h":"The 19th–16th century BC Old Babylonian Empire","s":[36]},{"v":"Clay","h":"Made of: Clay, earth, limestone","s":[36]}],"hs":{"36":["Wikipedia: Babylon (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/MES-001.webp","w":1024,"h":768,"o":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Ishtar_Gate.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled"}}