The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Gwendolyn Leick
In the book of Genesis (XI, 9) the etymology of ‘Babel’ is given as ‘confusion’, the
result of divine intervention in order to punish a people for their wish ‘to make a
name for themselves’ by building ‘a city and a tower whose top may reach unto
heaven’. Language or indeed the proliferation of languages, urbanism (it is the first
mention of a city in the Bible), monumental architecture and historical memory, are
thus all associated with the toponym ‘Babel’. In the later Biblical books a great deal
more will be said about Babylon and its kings who waged war against Judah. While
in these accounts, the Babylonians, just like other powerful and repressive nations of
the Ancient Near East, were to be doomed to destruction and annihilation, the Biblical
writings did keep their memory alive until the post-Enlightenment explorers brought
back tangible evidence of ancient writings, monuments and cities.
For the last century and a half, the Babylonians have once more become part of
our modernity. Cuneiform documents are relatively robust and they survived the
sacking of cities; having been buried in the sand for millennia they now constitute
an ever growing data bank comprising many thousands of tablets. The current state
of affairs in Iraq, however, has a serious impact on scholarship; witness the destruction
of sites by looters and military activities, the dispersal of material without established
context and the loss of unpublished artefacts from Iraqi museum collections.
Scientifically conducted archaeological excavations have almost ceased. Academic life
in Iraqi departments has suffered from the destruction of libraries and facilities. The
trauma of displacement will echo across the Assyriological world for some time but
it is also affected by developments in the academic world in general. Considerable
economic pressure on universities to follow the ‘market’ jeopardizes ‘minority subjects’
such as Assyriology and this has led to the closure of several departments and
has restricted research funding. On the other hand Assyriology has spread around
the world, with institutes in China, Japan, Latin America and South Africa, and the
current volume documents the continuing vitality of the subject and the commitment
of scholars from all continents to keep connected to the Babylonian world.
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