Myth world: ancient Babylon visits Britain
A tower which has haunted the imagination of artists and writers for thousands of years will rise again in the first exhibition devoted to the art, archaeology and dreams of ancient Babylon.
"When we asked people about Babylon many weren't quite sure whether it was a real place or a kind of fairytale, but what they had heard of was the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens," said Irving Finkel, curator of the British Museum exhibition. "We have lavish evidence for one and not a scrap for the other, but we'll do our best."
The exhibition will recreate a lost city renowned for its engineers and mathematicians but also for its magicians and dream interpreters, with displays including brilliantly-coloured tile panels of lions and dragons taken from the great processional way towards the towering Ishtar gate.
The ancient city drew scholars from all over the world: the exhibition will show that the captured Jews may have sat down and wept by the waters of Babylon after the sack of Jerusalem - but after they were freed, many chose not to go home.
Although versions of the exhibition have been seen in Berlin and Paris, the British Museum's will be the first to bring together archaeological evidence with contemporary artworks and Old Masters, as well as photographs showing the damage done in the current Iraq war when the ancient city became an American tank park.
The Old Testament Tower of Babel, supposedly toppled by a God affronted by human arrogance, was the city's great step pyramid ziggurat, then the tallest building in the world. Nothing remains of the structure except a water-filled square ditch. As well as a model based on recent archaeological evidence, the exhibition assembles works showing how it loomed in the imagination of artists such as Dürer and Blake, right up to a haunting piece by Michael Lassel showing a tower of asylum seekers' shoes.
The Hanging Gardens are trickier: the story is they were a lushly planted artificial hill, built for a queen yearning for the green mountains of her homeland. Centuries of archaeologists have hunted for the gardens and found nothing.
"But they did have gardens, and they certainly had the engineering skills to make water flow uphill - the tradition of the gardens in early Greek sources is so strong and so consistent I have no doubt they really existed," Finkel said...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
"When we asked people about Babylon many weren't quite sure whether it was a real place or a kind of fairytale, but what they had heard of was the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens," said Irving Finkel, curator of the British Museum exhibition. "We have lavish evidence for one and not a scrap for the other, but we'll do our best."
The exhibition will recreate a lost city renowned for its engineers and mathematicians but also for its magicians and dream interpreters, with displays including brilliantly-coloured tile panels of lions and dragons taken from the great processional way towards the towering Ishtar gate.
The ancient city drew scholars from all over the world: the exhibition will show that the captured Jews may have sat down and wept by the waters of Babylon after the sack of Jerusalem - but after they were freed, many chose not to go home.
Although versions of the exhibition have been seen in Berlin and Paris, the British Museum's will be the first to bring together archaeological evidence with contemporary artworks and Old Masters, as well as photographs showing the damage done in the current Iraq war when the ancient city became an American tank park.
The Old Testament Tower of Babel, supposedly toppled by a God affronted by human arrogance, was the city's great step pyramid ziggurat, then the tallest building in the world. Nothing remains of the structure except a water-filled square ditch. As well as a model based on recent archaeological evidence, the exhibition assembles works showing how it loomed in the imagination of artists such as Dürer and Blake, right up to a haunting piece by Michael Lassel showing a tower of asylum seekers' shoes.
The Hanging Gardens are trickier: the story is they were a lushly planted artificial hill, built for a queen yearning for the green mountains of her homeland. Centuries of archaeologists have hunted for the gardens and found nothing.
"But they did have gardens, and they certainly had the engineering skills to make water flow uphill - the tradition of the gardens in early Greek sources is so strong and so consistent I have no doubt they really existed," Finkel said...