Photos of the Beautiful Ancient Babylon Art Museum Antiquities

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Photos of the Best Ancient Babylon Art & Museum Antiquities

Photos of Ancient Babylon Art & Museum Antiquities from the great museums of Europe & the Near East..

Ancient Babylon was city state on the banks of the Euphrates in Mesopotamia. Babylon became one of the 4 major powers of the Ancient World. The Old Babylonian Empire achieved regional dominance between the 19th and 15th centuries BC. Babylon again came to dominate with the Neo-Babylonian Empire in the 7th and 6th centuries BC.

One of the most famous stele antiquities from Babylon is the Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed c. 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organised, and best-preserved legal text from ancient Mesopotamia .

It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hammurabi, sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon. The primary copy of the text is inscribed on a basalt or diorite stele 2.25 m (7 ft 4+1⁄2 in) tall.

The Ishtar Gate was the eighth gate of the inner city of Babylon. It was constructed in about 575 BCE by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city.

A grand walled processional way lead into the city from the Ishtar gate decorated with magnificent glazed bricks. Mostly with blue backgrounds the tile panels depicted animals.

When German archaeologists excavated in Babylon in the 1930s, they dismantled the Ishtar Gate and packed it up to take with them to Berlin. It was meticulously reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum.