![]() to restore two monuments in urgent need of rescue: the 2,500-year-old Nabu-Sha-Khare temple and the remains of the monumental Ishtar Gate, once the main entrance to Nebuchadnezzar’s city. Given the state of the remains, the World Monument Fund is expanding its project, seeking up to $1 million from the U.S. He also exiled the Jewish people from Israel, gaining Babylon a bad rap in the Judeo-Christian tradition the city’s name has since become synonymous with sin. Nebuchadnezzar built the famed hanging gardens, one of the seven wonders of the world, for his homesick wife. ![]() In subsequent centuries the city was conquered, razed and rebuilt several times, becoming the largest city in the world with 250,000 inhabitants under King Nebuchadnezzar II in 600 B.C. “I’m optimistic, because what is happening in Babylon is the proper and scientific step and, God willing, the work in Babylon will open up new horizons,” said Qais Hussein Rashid, head of Iraq’s impoverished antiquities department.įounded in the 3rd millennium B.C., Babylon rose to prominence nearly 4,000 years ago under King Hammurabi, whose famous law tablet resides in Paris’ Louvre Museum. State Department and carried out by the New York-based World Monument Fund, began last year and if it succeeds, the Babylon project could be a model for saving other ancient sites in this country that witnessed the birth of urban civilization. The site is filled with overgrown hillocks hiding the estimated 95 percent of the city that remains unexcavated and which archaeologists hope could eventually be uncovered.īut for that to happen, they argue, they need to train Iraqis in conservation methods and draw up a preservation plan that can be used to drum up international funds and get the site UNESCO World Heritage status.Ī $700,000, two-year project to do that, funded by the U.S. military base on the site did further damage. Deep in Iraq’s verdant south, the cluster of excavated temples and palaces were mostly rebuilt by former ruler Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, using modern yellow brick to erect towering structures that marred the fragile remains of the original mud brick ruins. The ruins of the millennia-old city, famed for its Hanging Gardens and the Tower of Babel, have suffered heavily over the past decades. Iraqi officials are at odds over keeping the site authentic or making money off it. ![]() Jeffrey Allen, right, co-coordinator of a U.S.-funded project to restore the ancient city of Babylon, talks to guide Mohammed Taher outside a reproduction of the Ishtar gate at the site.
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