Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon

In Daniel 4:29f, Nebuchadnezzar is recorded to be walking on the roof of his palace. The view carries him away: “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” A brand-new book on Babylon by Olof Pedersén (2021) helps us to understand why the king was so impressed. After reading the book, I am almost tempted to agree.

The third and last instalment of looking at Canaanite religion and mythology in the Hebrew Bible is coming next month. I am postponing it to report on an exciting and brand-new book showing us the Babylon that Nebuchadnezzar built.

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The Book

Babylon: The Great City summarizes what we know about the architecture of Babylon based on excavations beginning in the 19th century down to the most recent published results. The e-book version is available as a free download.

Admittedly, for most readers, the level of detail will be tedious. It is, after all, a serious archaeological study. Everything is exactly measured, described, and located.

Still, if you are going to visit the site, it would be stupid not to read this book; there is no better guide to what is there. And even if you are not planning a trip to Iraq – which I suppose includes most of us – the book is worth looking at. It is illustrated with brilliant digital reconstructions.

For copyright reasons, I cannot reproduce them in this issue, but I will offer a brief guide to my personal highlights. Download the book and at least have a look at the illustrations pointed out below; it is well worth the effort.

Nabopolassar

But first, some background. When Nebuchadnezzar was born, Babylon was already an ancient city. Its first mention outside of the Bible dates to around 2300 BC. Genesis 10:10 and 11:1ff suggest it may have been much older than that. However, it is the relatively short period of the neo-Babylonian empire that is best known to us; older remains of the city are mostly under water and therefore out of reach for archaeologists.

The neo-Babylonian empire was founded by Nebuchadnezzar’s father, Nabopolassar. The latter was crowned king of Babylon when it was still part of the Assyrian empire, in 626 BC. During his first ten years on the throne, he managed to gain the independence of Babylon. Then he turned lucky.

In 614 BC, the Medes, a wild warrior nation from the northeast, invaded the Assyrian heartland and destroyed the city of Assur, one of Assyria’s capitals. Nabopolassar allied himself with the Medes, and together they took and obliterated Nineveh (612 BC).

The remnants of Assyrian power retreated to the northwest and – with Egyptian support – held out for a few more years. In the fateful battle of Carchemish in 605 BC, however, they were defeated once and for all.

That same year, Nabopolassar died, and his son succeeded him as king. It was also the year Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem for the first time, taking Daniel and other upper-class youth with him back to Babylon – where Nebuchadnezzar initiated an unprecedented building program.

In the remainder of this issue, I will discuss the resulting architecture – particularly the city walls and palaces – of this ‘new’ Babylon, that is, the city as it was reconstructed and enlarged by Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled the Babylonian empire from 605 until his death in 562 BC.

The New Babylon: Shape, Size, and Substance

Before turning to Pedersén’s book, I should mention a claim made by Herodotus, a Greek historian (ca. 484-425 BC), which is sometimes still repeated. In describing Babylon, he writes of “a wall eighty three feet [lit. 50 cubits, appr. 25 m] thick and three hundred thirty three feet [lit. 200 cubits, appr. 100 m] high” (Herodotus 1920; Hist. 1.178.3).

Walls a hundred meters high? Not likely. Archaeological excavations suggest he was wrong by roughly a factor ten. Pedersén (2021: 28-33, 70f) offers calculations for the height of city walls. Depending on which wall (inner, outer, embankment) and its location, walls were between 7 and 15 m high, possibly up to 30 m in parts of the palace area. Still, the fortifications were impressive and clever, as we will see.

In what follows, I will first list an illustration before commenting on it.

Fig. 1.1 Babylon before Nebuchadnezzar (Pedersén 2021: 11)

Fig. 1:2 Babylon after Nebuchadnezzar’s expansion (Pedersén 2021: 11)

The original form of the city approached that of a rectangle, with the Euphrates flowing through the centre, from north to south. Its size was approximately 4.5 km2 (Pedersén 2021: 12).

Nebuchadnezzar added a new quarter to the east, doubling the size to 9.5 km2 (ibid.). The entire city was surrounded by a moat of about 80 m broad. Notice the expansion in the palace area (the blue arrow points to the famous Ishtar Gate, to which I will return).

Map of Babylon (Pedersén 2020)

It is not just the doubling in size that is noteworthy, but likewise the change in building material. As Pedersén writes,

The basic traditional building materials on the floodplain of Mesopotamia were to a large extent based on clay or mud. Most commonly used for the buildings in Babylon was the unbaked mudbrick … with mortar and plaster of mud. Mudbrick was manufactured from mud mixed with straw and chaff and put in a wooden mould, and then set aside for a period to dry. (Ibid.: 33)

Baked bricks and the use of asphalt as mortar was also known, but was mostly used for ‘wet’ places, where the walls would be in direct contact with water – which, for obvious reasons, mudbricks do not handle well.

Nebuchadnezzar, however, did much of his building with baked bricks, which are much more durable. In addition, baking bricks enabled the production of glazed bricks, used for the decoration for which the new Babylon is famous.

Bricks produced during Nebuchadnezzar’s reign were slightly larger than they had been before. Baked bricks normally measured 33 by 33 cm and were up to 10 cm high; unbaked bricks were 34 by 34 by 12 cm (ibid.: 34). Notice that this is significantly larger than bricks used today; these were heavy stones.

Pedersén (2021: 88) offers an estimate of the number of bricks used for all the wall building (including the outer palace walls) after Nabopolassar: 209,500,000 mudbricks and 384,000,000 baked bricks, a total volume of 6,955,000 cubic meters.

The City Walls

Fig. 2.10-2.12 The double mudbrick wall of Nabopolassar’s reign and its development under Nebuchadnezzar (Pedersén 2021: 54)

Before Nebuchadnezzar, the city was surrounded by a double wall of mudbricks. Nebuchadnezzar added a third wall or embankment, made of baked brick, at the waterfront.

Thus, the old city was surrounded by a double wall of mudbricks and an embankment wall of baked bricks, three in all. The new, outer city added by Nebuchadnezzar had one instead of two mudbrick walls. As mentioned, the entire city was surrounded by a moat 80 m broad.

Fig. 2.7 The three walls (Pedersén 2021: 51)

This made Babylon hard to take or even attack. One had to cross the moat and then break through the embankment wall (where there was no space to stand, let alone operate). Had this succeeded, one would be confined between the breached wall and a mud-brick wall, again with little space to manoeuvre, and – in the old city – with still two walls to breach.

Palace Area and Ishtar Gate

Fig. 2.21 The palace area during the reign of Nabopolassar, seen from the north (Pedersén 2021: 64)

Fig. 2.25 The palace area late in Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, seen from the north (Pedersén 2021: 66)

Nebuchadnezzar replaced the existing South Palace and added another palace to the north as well as extensive fortifications in this area. The South Palace was originally made of mudbricks and was completely redone. It counted almost 600 rooms and more than 50 courtyards.

In the illustrations, the famous ziggurat or ‘Tower of Babel’ is visible in the background. The arrows in Fig. 2.25 point to the newly built North Gate and the reconstructed Ishtar Gate behind it. The latter was originally made of mudbricks but rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar using baked bricks.

Fig. 3.23 The North Palace with terrace and fortifications (Pedersén 2021: 114)

The North Palace was built into the moat, which was moved further out. The North Palace had a terrace facing west of about 200 by 300 m (ibid.: 114). Most likely, the legendary so-called Hanging Gardens were located here.

Fig. 2.31 Processional Way leading up to the Ishtar Gate (Pedersén 2021: 76)

Fig. 2.32 Ishtar Gate (Pedersén 2021: 77)

The so-called Processional Way leads up from the first gate through the Ishtar Gate into the city. The distance between the two gates is 180 m. The walls siding the way here were beautifully decorated with lions. The gate itself was decorated with blue glazed bricks and bulls and dragons (see illustrations below).

One of the dragons decorating the Ishtar Gate (Van der Crabben 2012a)

Temples

There must have been more than 40 temples at this time in Babylon, but only eight have been excavated and four have been reconstructed (Pedersén 2021: 139). Most impressive of these was the ziggurat tower or temple, between the South Palace and the Marduk Temple further south.

Fig. 4.18 The ziggurat (Pedersén 2021: 162)

The ziggurat measured just over 90 by 90 m at ground level. It consisted of a 15 m-thick wall of baked bricks surrounding a core of unbaked mudbricks. Its height is estimated to have been 90 m as well. Considering Babylon was in a plain, the ziggurat made for an impressive landmark. The top level was decorated with intense blue glazed bricks, symbolizing the connection to heaven and to the gods. The platform on top is where the gods would come down to communicate with humans.

Babylon in Modern Perspective

Fig. 3.34 Palace area, looking south (Pedersén 2021: 125)

Take a moment to imagine the view, and one can understand Nebuchadnezzar was carried away while walking on the palace roof.

Impressive – and yet… By today’s standards, new Babylon, with its 9.5 square kilometres and perhaps 200,000 inhabitants (‘Babylon’ 2021), was not even a large city. Most of us live better and more comfortable lives than Nebuchadnezzar, at his time the richest and most powerful man on earth. One would have been wrong to be overly impressed with his accomplishments. “You ain’t seen nothing yet”, would be one way to respond to Nebuchadnezzar’s self-admiration in Daniel 4:30.

Babylon today (Fig. 4.49 in Pedersén 2021: 162)

What was great and magnificent back then is not so today. What looks great and magnificent today (or tomorrow) won’t look so in the future. What God has in mind, his answer to Babylon, is a people guided by love and wisdom instead of empire and control. This nation has the potential to far surpass all of this.

Let’s not be overly impressed with the splendour of today, or yesterday, or tomorrow. We ain’t seen nothing yet.

References

All Bible quotations from: The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2001 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles)

‘Babylon’. 2021. Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Babylon&oldid=1026230476> [accessed 1 June 2021]

Herodotus. 1920. The Histories, ed. by A. D. Godley, trans. by A. D. Godley (Medford, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920)

Pedersén, Olof. 2020. ‘Babylon: City Area and Gates’ <https://uppsala.app.box.com/s/cgm386mr39f0we39y8v49ktecc664k0k/file/722124240853> [accessed 2 June 2021]

———. 2021. Babylon: The Great City (Münster: Zaphon Verlag) <http://public.eblib.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=6577470> [accessed 1 June 2021]

Van der Crabben, Jan. 2012a. ‘Dragon of the Ishtar Gate’, World History Encyclopedia <https://www.worldhistory.org/image/732/dragon-of-the-ishtar-gate/> [accessed 8 June 2021] CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

———. 2012b. ‘Lion of Babylon, Ishtar Gate’, World History Encyclopedia <https://www.worldhistory.org/image/724/lion-of-babylon-ishtar-gate/> [accessed 8 June 2021] CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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