THE BABYLON EXHIBITION at the British Museum is reviewed in the Telegraph. Excerpt:

Babylon, subject of a new exhibition at the British Museum, was then capital of an empire that stretched from Gaza in the west to the Persian Gulf in the east, from Armenia in the north to the Arabian desert in the south. Variously known as Babel, Babil and Babilu, to its inhabitants it was the "Sacred City" - site of dozens of shrines and temples, and location of the great ziggurat of Etemenanki - "the foundation platform of heaven and earth". The latter, rebuilt and beatified by Nebuchadnezzar, climbed 70 metres above the flat plain of the lower Euphrates, its top decorated with glazed blue bricks, flashing in the sun.

Babylon's misfortune was that its historical reputation was largely created by the captive labour force who constructed that great ziggurat and the other monuments of Nebuchadnezzar's city: the Jewish craftsmen and workers taken captive from Jerusalem in 587BC and 598BC. For them, Babylon was a place of imprisonment. "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Zion." In the Bible, Babylon became the emblematic location of vainglory and injustice: the archetypal sinful city. The sacred ziggurat of Etemenanki was transformed into the Tower of Babel. Babylon was where Daniel was thrust into the lion's den, and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into Fiery Furnace. Babylon was where Belshazzar - like Nebuchadnezzar, a historical person - saw the writing on the wall. As a punishment for his pride, Nebuchadnezzar was sent mad and ate grass like a cow, his hair grown like the "feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird".

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