Babylon: City of Wonders

This slim volume about the history of ancient Babylon is published by the British Museum Press. It is written by Irving Finkel and Michael Seymour, both of whom work for the British Museum.

The authors have edited a more comprehensive volume entitled Babylon: Myth and Reality, which is also published by the British Museum Press.

Both books were published to coincide with a temporary exhibition about Babylon at the British Museum, arranged in collaboration with two other museums: the Louvre in Paris and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

The slim volume is a lovely little book: less than 100 pages, small size (16 x 18 cm) and published in hard cover. It is meant to be a brief introduction to the history of ancient Babylon, and as such it works well.

The text is clear and concise. It is divided into eight short chapters, plus a preface and an introduction. At the end of the book there is a list with illustration acknowledgments. There is no bibliography and no index.

The illustrations are numerous and useful. Most of them are in colour. For obvious reasons the scale is rather small, but they still work well.

There is much to like here, but I have to mention a few things that bother me.

(a) There is an unfortunate mistake - perhaps just a silly misunderstanding - on page 38 where the authors mention the temple tower of Babylon:

“Its size is known to have been 91 square metres at the base, with a height probably well over 70 metres.”

If the base is 91 square metres, it means that each side of the tower is only 9.5 metres.

9.5 x 9.5 = 91

What they want to say is that the base was 91 metres per side.

91 x 91 = 8,281 square metres

The caption on page 45 refers to a picture on page 44: 

“A school drawing shows a ziggurat in elevation. Its base is given as only 21 metres per side…”

This is the phrase they should have used on page 38.

I have sent a message to the authors to tell them about this unfortunate mistake. I hope it will be corrected, if there is a second edition of the book.

(b) There is no bibliography. I know how the authors will respond. They will refer me to the more comprehensive volume, Babylon: Myth and Reality. So perhaps I can live without a bibliography.

(c) There is no index. In this case the authors cannot refer me to another book. Why not include an index? These days it is easy to make one. The computer can do it for you.

(d) There are no maps. I would like a map which shows the location of Babylon in ancient Mesopotamia. I would like another map which shows the location of ancient Babylon within the borders of the present-day state of Iraq.

(e) The focus is on King Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled for more than forty years, 605-562 BC. This is fine. But what about King Hammurabi (sometimes spelled Hammurapi), who is famous for his code of laws? He is mentioned in the introduction on page 10, but after this he disappears. Why mention him and then let him go? Why could they not give us a few pages about him?

As a brief introduction to the history of ancient Babylon this slim volume works well. But for reasons explained above I can only give it four out of five stars.

PS # 1. The University of California Press has published a dictionary about the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia: Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians edited by Enrico Ascalone (2007).

PS # 2. White Star has published a picture book about the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia: The Assyrians and The Babylonians by Alfredo Rizza (2007).

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Irving Finkel and Michael Seymour,

Babylon: City of Wonders,

The British Museum Press, 2008, 96 pages

 

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