Babylon

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/6/2021
  

  In Beleaguered Babylon, Doing Battle Against Time, Water and Modern Civilization

  The ancient city of Babylon is a World Heritage Site, but it faces threats old and new. As some of its walls crumble, preservationists are fighting to preserve the past.

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• SOURCE: History.com
  10/9/2020
  

  How Hammurabi Transformed Babylon Into a Powerful City-State

  Hammurabi's governing strategies of building support through public works, pursuing information, and self-promotion are not unfamiliar to contemporary politics.

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• SOURCE: The Telegraph
  11-25-13
  

  Pictured: the 'real site' of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon

  A British academic believes she has identified the precise spot of the elusive Hanging Gardens of Babylon - in one of the most dangerous places on earth.

• SOURCE: Telegraph (UK)
  5-6-13
  

  Hanging gardens not in Babylon

  No trace of the Hanging Garden has ever been found in Babylon for the simple reason that this wonder of the ancient world was never there in the first place, according to an Oxford researcher.Instead, the Hanging Garden was actually created 300 miles further north in Ninevah, a feat of artistic prowess achieved by the Assyrian civilisation under King Sennacherib, writes Stephanie Daley, a Research Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford.For centuries, Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylonia, has been credited with the birth of a lavishly watered paradise in the fertile crescent of what is now central Iraq in the 6th century BC.But there is one problem: no remains of the Hanging Garden have ever been found in Babylon. When a German team spent 19 years excavating the site during the last century, Ms Daley writes that they "expected to find inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar confirming that he built the garden"....

• SOURCE: CNN.com
  4-4-13
  

  Bringing Babylon back from the dead

  (CNN) -- Babylon was one of the glories of the ancient world, its walls and mythic hanging gardens listed among the Seven Wonders.Founded about 4,000 years ago, the ancient city was the capital of 10 dynasties in Mesopotamia, considered one of the earliest cradles of civilization and the birthplace of writing and literature.But following years of plunder, neglect and conflict, the Babylon of today scarcely conjures that illustrious history.In recent years, the Iraqi authorities have reopened Babylon to tourists, hoping that one day the site will draw visitors from all over the globe. But despite the site's remarkable archaeological value and impressive views, it is drawing only a smattering of tourists, drawn by a curious mix of ancient and more recent history....