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Document Details : Title: Babylon Subtitle: Some Problems with Evidence Author(s): DALLEY, Stephanie Journal: Bibliotheca Orientalis Volume: 79 Issue: 5-6 Date: 2022 Pages: 427-445 DOI: 10.2143/BIOR.79.5.3292078 Abstract : The new book by Olof Pedersén (Babylon. The Great City, Münster 2021) gives an instructive approach to the building works of Babylon. It uses digital reconstructions based on archaeological and textual evidence where possible. However, the so-called ‘Babylon Stela’ of Nebuchadnezzar II from the collection of Martin Schøyen is a fake. As various details from text and iconography show, it should not be accepted as evidence for the ziggurat at Babylon. Also, there is no evidence for battlements coloured with dark blue glazed bricks on city, temple and gateway walls, and some possible differences between Assyrian, Babylonian, and other styles in architecture are raised. The proposal for locating the Hanging Garden on the baked brick terracing of the North Palace should be discounted, not least because it relies on a mistaken understanding of warqum as ‘trees’. Widespread evidence for warqum as ‘pale gold’ and the related verb warāqum meaning ‘to be pale gold’, Š-stem ‘to gild’ is assembled and explained. |
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