The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— Heather D. Baker —
with excavated remains, while others can only be approximately located. Van De
Mieroop prefers to attribute the reshaping of Babylon to the Neo-Babylonian kings
Nabopolassar (625–605 BC) and Nebukadrezzar II (604–562 BC), perhaps following
the example of the late Assyrian kings (Van De Mieroop 1999: 88). In doing so,
he rejects a late second millennium date for the series Tin.tir on the grounds that it
is only attested in later exemplars (the earliest ones are from the library of Ashurbanipal).
However, the transmission of the series in late exemplars does not rule out a
late second-millennium composition for it. Moreover, the fact that the series was
already known in the time of Ashurbanipal implies that the topographical features
were laid down in his reign at the latest, and yet there is no evidence for the wholesale
remodelling of Babylon during the Neo-Assyrian period. An inscription of
Ashurbanipal attests to his rebuilding of Imgur-Enlil and Nemetti-Enlil, the paired
inner walls of Babylon, implying that they were already well established by his
time.
This author prefers, therefore, to be guided by George’s dating of the series Tin.tir
= Babylon, and believes that the basic layout of Babylon – the city walls, the gates
and the major, processional streets – were essentially already in place by some time
in the late second millennium. The Neo-Babylonian rulers largely fitted their extensive
monumental building projects into this existing framework. It is worth noting
that Reuther, writing on the street network in the Merkes area, observed that these
thoroughfares invariably followed long-established courses; sometimes they could be
shown to go back as far as the Old Babylonian period (Reuther 1926: 66). He also
notes that the Processional Way of Nebukadrezzar II was a later insert and was not
aligned precisely with the streets of Merkes.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
In the foregoing paragraphs we have described the basic elements which made up the
Babylonian city during the first millennium BC and identified some of the key factors
which influenced its form. These latter include: social structure; climatic conditions;
materials and the state of technical know-how, and existing property boundaries
combined with patterns of ownership, transmission and inheritance. The king, as the
agent of any central planning, was himself subject to social and religious tradition,
and was no doubt motivated by the desire for display and the prestige that it conferred.
The complex interaction of all of these factors shaped the Babylonian city and, of
course, they did not operate equally across the city but, rather, each element of the
urban layout was more susceptible to certain influences than to others. It would therefore
be misleading to use the terms ‘planned’ and ‘organic’ as though they were mutually
exclusive, opposite categories. Both elements can be found in the Babylonian city.
Moreover, as we have shown, great caution has to be exercised in inferring any grand
plan on the basis of the street layout, since the evidence for the existence of a regular
grid of streets, as has been proposed for Babylon and Borsippa, is much more slight
than has been realised up to now. In any case, the fact that the Neo-Babylonian rulers
essentially worked with an existing pattern for the city hardly diminishes their great
achievements in the sphere of monumental architecture, as exemplified by Nebukadrezzar’s
Babylon.
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