Babylon the city of Nebuchadnezzar -2

Then, in 625 BC, its governor, Nabopolassar, proclaimed Babylon independent and himself king. By making an alliance with the Medes (from Iran) Nabopolassar defeated Assyria in 612 BC and destroyed its capital, Nineveh. When Nabopolassar’s son Nebuchadnezzar mounted the throne in 605 BC, the entire area known as the Fertile Crescent – from Jerusalem to the Persian Gulf – was his. All he had to do was to eradicate the last pockets of Assyrian resistance and to restore Babylon as a capital worthy of his ambitions. Under Nebuchadnezzar, the city re-emerged as the queen of the civilized world, built along both banks of the Euphrates, with the main buildings on the east bank. A double exterior wall, 18 km (11 miles) long, enclosed an area that was barely inhabited and may have served as a refuge for villagers and their herds in time of war. This outer line of defense was reinforced to the north by the fortress of Babil, which still stands 22m (72 ft) high; it once contained the summer palace of the king. An inner wall, the shape of a quadrangle and surrounded by a canal, protected the main part of the town. This brick rampart consisted of a front wall 6.5m (21 ft) wide, and a second wall more than 3m (10 ft) wide, between which was built a third wall. Each of the city’s eight gateways was under the protection of a different god. The main palace and the main gate – dedicated to Ishtar, the goddess of lo9ve and battle – were also protected by a fortress.

A sacred processional way skirted the fortress and passed through the Ishtar Gate before entering the city. Here, it ran alongside a double wall which defended the royal palace, making it an impregnable citadel right in the heart of Babylon. The construction of the palace was begun by Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar’s father. His living quarters consisted of two large halls and three private rooms, opening onto a courtyard. Nebuchadnezzar kept the palace but enlarged it. To do this he merely added to it four identical ‘palace units’. These complexes stood side by side and were connected by passages. In one of the enormous hall: the throne room. Outside the palace, the processional way continued as for as the Temple of Marduk, patron god of Babylon.

The temple was a square fortress with a central courtyard. In line with its entrance, a door opened into the sanctuary of Marduk. His golden statue was small and light enough to be carried during processions such as the one held at the New Year. Another room in the temple was reserved for Marduk’s throne; another housed the bed intended for the symbolic weddings of the gods; and some rooms were dedicated to lesser gods - for, like any earthly king, Marduk had his court. Alongside the temple, and isolated within a high well, was an immense tower, or ziggurat. It had been built hundreds of years before the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, but had fallen into disrepair. The king ordered in to be rebuilt so that its top ‘might rival heaven’. Nebuchadnezzar’s tower of sun-dried brick rested on a square base and rose like a pyramid some 90m (295 ft) above the city. Its seven stories were crowned with a temple. According to the historian Diodorus of Sicily, in the 1st century BC the tower was an observatory for Chaldaean astrologers from southern Mesopotamia. Herodotus thought it was used for sacred fertility rites. He reported that there was a bed and gold table on the top storey of the tower, but no statue of a god. ‘Only a woman chosen by the god would spend the night alone there,’ he wrote, adding that ‘sometimes the god came into the temple and slept in the bed.’ The French archaeologist Andre Parrot linked the name of Babylon – literally ‘gateway of the god’ – with Jacob’s vision in the Book of Genesis. As Jacob dreamed, he saw a ladder with reached from the earth up to heaven’s gate. Parrot suggested that the Babylonians, too, saw the tower, with its monumental staircase, as a ‘gateway of the heavens’ and as a resting-place between the heavenly home of the god and his earthly residence in the temple.

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Taking a Class on a School Trip to Manchester

If you’re thinking of taking your class out on a school trip to supplement their classroom learning with some practical, first-hand experience, Manchester is a brilliant choice. The transport links are excellent, there are lots of things to do and the children will love exploring the big city with its friendly people and interesting buildings.

If you’re coming from outside the city, the easiest mode of transport is to hire a coach into Manchester. This means your class can be dropped off directly outside all the big attractions, so there are no long walks between venues, and everyone stays together so you don’t need to worry  about losing anyone. Otherwise, trains into Manchester from London and most major Northern cities are frequent, and buses and trams will take you wherever you need to go across the city.

If you need inspiration for places to go, you’re in luck: Manchester has something suitable for almost every subject. If you’re taking a sports club off on a trip, head to the Manchester United or Manchester City stadiums. Here, you will be able to take a tour of the grounds and browse the museums showing the fascinating history of the clubs. Learn the story of the teams, the managers and the grounds, and take a look at some of the vintage kits from seasons gone by.

For a Religious Education trip, there is no better place to take your class than the grand Manchester Cathedral. Guided tours are available to teach the class about the history of the church and the different components of the building. There is a new modern visitor centre where children can find out more about the Cathedral from the knowledgeable staff so that they leave with all their questions answered.

Any classes learning about local history will really benefit from a trip to Manchester with its dozens of museums. Visit an old family home such as Wythenshawe Hall, a 16^th century home formerly belonging to Manchester’s Tatton family. Alternatively, Bolton Museum contains a comprehensive range of world history, from Ancient Egypt to amazing archaeological discoveries. There is an aquarium in the same building which is perfect for science lessons.

For younger children, the Stockport Story Museum is the perfect choice. It’s free, it’s child-friendly and there are lots of interactive games and activities to keep them amused as they learn about the history of Stockport through the form of entertaining exhibits and displays.

If you want to take your class on a trip with a bit of a difference, head to Manchester. The children will find the day fun and educational, and you can come away knowing that they’ve picked up some knowledge to help them achieve their potential back at school.

Cleo Turnbull has been taking school children on trips to Manchester for over 15 years and still enjoys the city as much today as when she first visited as a child

Babylon the city of Nebuchadnezzar -1

An immense mud-brick stump in present-day Iraq is all that is left of Babylon’s most infamous building, the Tower of Babel. But the tower was once a wonder of the ancient world, in a great city that surpassed in splendour all others of its time. THE GREEKS DESCRIBED BABYLON’S ‘HANGING GARDENS’ as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The Book of Genesis referred to its tower, which soared more than 90m (29 ft) above the surrounding countryside, as the Tower of Babel. For the Old Testament writers this attempt to reach heaven represented the ultimate in human vanity. But there was once good reason for this vanity: the city of Babylon was the pounding heart of an empire which stretched all the way from Egypt in the west to the old kingdom of Elam (south-west Iran) in the east.

 All that remains today of what was once the largest city in the world is dun-coloured field of dried mud ruins. And, until the 20th century, all that was known about Babylon came from the writings of the Greek kistorian Herodotus (c. 484 – 425 BC) and from Biblical denunciations. ‘Babylon the Great’, thunders a New Testament writer, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.’ Herodotus’s view differed. Around 450 BC the much-travelled historian made the journey from Greece across the mountains and deserts of Syria and down the river Euphrates. What he saw impressed him. He described a vast capital straddling the Euphrates protected by a gigantic rampart so wide that there was enough space for a four-horse chariot to run. He told of walls more than 86 km (53 miles) round, and studded with 100 bronze gateways. Babylon, he wrote, ‘surpasses in splendour any city of the known world’. He also recounted some of the customs of the city’s inhabitants: how, for example, every woman was obliged, once in her life, ‘to reside in the sanctuary of Aphrodite and unite with a stranger’; how auctions of women were held every year, when the most beautiful were acquired by the rich, and the plainer-looking fell to the lot of the poor. But he knew little about the history of Babylon and had not even heard the name of Nebuchadnezzar II, its emperor from 605 to 562 BC. It was not until the start of the 20th century that historians could begin to disentangle fact form fantasy. In 1899, German archaeologists under the architect Robert Koldewey undertook the first intensive exploration Babylon.

 Their excavations continued until 1917. It was delicate work, for the temples, palaces and housed in Mesopotamia – the fertile valley bounded by the rivers Tigris and Euphrates – were built of sun-dried brick, extremely crumbly and difficult to distinguish from the surrounding soil. Nonetheless, Babylon’s high walls, some of them coated with glazed bricks, were finally unearthed. The ghost of a ruined city rose from the dead, and a picture of its history gradually took shape before the archaeologists’ eyes. As the excavation work continued, students of Assyrian history deciphered the thousands of texts that were uncovered. From these they learnt that Babylon was a relatively young city – at least measured against the history of Mesopotamia. The Sumerian cities of Ur, Uruk and Nippur, for example, had been founded hundreds of years earlier. In about 2000 BC the Amorites, a nomadic people from the Syrian desert, overran much of Mesopotamia and sounded a series of kingdoms in Ashur an Mari and father south, gained control of the old Sumerian cities, including Babylon. Here, at the start of the 19th century BC, they founded their first royal dynasty. Hammurabi was this first Babylonian dynasty’s fifth king, and his reign from 1792 to 1750 BC was undoubtedly glorious.


One by one he crushed all his enemies, most of whom were Amorites like himself, until he had set up an empire which embraced all of southern Mesopotamia – north into Assyria, westward towards the Mediterranean and southwards to the Persian Gulf. His genius for unification was reflected in his legal code, a concisely written body of common law. No treasures from Hammurabi’s time remain in Babylon itself, partly because its valuables were scattered during the maelstrom that followed. For 1,000 years after Babylon’s founding, the warring peoples who populate the pages of the Old Testament disputed Mesopotamia. The Kassites – from the Zagros Mountains in western Iran – took and held Babylon for four and a half centuries. After that, invading Elamites carried off many of the city’s riches to their own capital, Susa. These included the stele that shows Hammurabi receiving the contents of his laws from Shamash, god of justice. In the 13th century BC Babylonia fell victim, for the first time, to the Assyrians, and from the 9th century onwards it was a vassal state of Assyria. Babylon found its subjugation intolerable. There were several revolutions, and during the course of the 7th century BC the Assyrians destroyed the city twice.

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Susa Home of the Elamites Part.IV

This lust for treasure resulted in an invaluable service to posterity. Among the loot was a polished basalt stele, or engraved stone, from the Temple of Shamash at Sippar, north-west of Susa. The stele bears the fullest surviving text of the famous Code of Hammurabi, the most complete collection of laws to survive from ancient Mesopotamia. Hammurabi is shown standing in homage before the seated Shamash, the Babylonian Sun god. Nearly 300 laws – dealing with crime, trade, wages, marriage, and a host of other matters – are inscribed in vertical columns below the figures. The new dynasty abandoned Al-Untash-Napirisha and set up a number of the captured monuments in Susa itself, where new temples were built in a distinctive style. The outer walls were made of glazed and moulded bricks, which depicted royal couples and the guardian spirits of the building. Only fragments of the bricks have been found, but survived intact.

It depicts two figure taking part in a ritual, and an inscription reveals that it illustrates the ceremony of the Rising Sun – Sit Shamshi. The ritual takes place between two temples, probably those of Inshushinak and his wife at Susa. Offerings have been placed around the larger of the temples, beside some raised stones. Trees nearby indicate the existence of a sacred grove. The piece suggests yet more unexpected affinities, in this case with the Semitic peoples of the Biblical lands far to the north-west: Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Though the temples are Elamite in style, the simple raised stones recall those worshipped as idols by the Canaanites. The wooded grove was revered by the Semites, who held all green trees sacred, and a miniature vase in the sculpture is similar to an item found in the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. Underground tombs beside the temple of the god Inshushinak in Susa contain the cremated remains of the royal dead. Partially burnt furniture has been found in these vaults, but the remains of precious gold and silver leaf bear witness to their original splendour. Statuettes of precious metal have also been discovered. Toys and games similar to modern solitaire had been buried there, too.

Ancient relics from earlier eras have also been preserved: stamp seals and cylinder seals, which were already more than 2,000 years old; and exotic axe heads. These relics, imported from eastern Persia, seem to have been placed in the tombs to reinforce the monarchy’s claim to descent from the woman known as the Gracious Mother, the wife of the first Elamite kin, Kindattu, who had reunited Anshan and Susa at the beginning of the second millennium BC. Safe in the vault, they survived the holocaust to come. At the end of the 12th century BC the Babylonians recovered their supremacy and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Elamites. The ancient civilization crumbled as its enemies set it alight. The scale of the fire is almost unimaginable: a thick layer of ash covers the whole of the site of Susa – a terrible reminder of the size of the conflagration which ended Elam’s most glorious period. Darkness fell over the conquered lands for some 400 years, and Elam never fully recovered. During those years, dramatic changes were to transform the Middle East completely. In about 1000 BC, the plateau was engulfed by a wave of Aryan peoples from the Caucasus, from whom Iran derived it name. The Aryans founded the first Persian kingdom at Anshan. Meanwhile, a new power was rising in Mesopotamia – the empire of the Assyrians. Caught between these two power blocs, Elam’s fallen civilization was doomed.

At the end of the 8th century BC, an ambitious king of Susa called Shutur Nahhunte revived some of the splendour of the metropolis, and for a few decades it citizens enjoyed an uneasy peace through alliances first with Assyria, then with Persia. But it was not to last. In 646 BC, the Elamite capital was devastated once more, this time by the merciless ruler of Assyria, Assurbanipal (669-627 BC). Susa was looted, its royal tombs desecrated, and the images of its gods and kings were taken away. But Susa refused to die. The Persians rebuilt the city in the 6th century BC, and it became the administrative capital of their empire. Later, in 331 BC, it fell to Alexander the Great. It continued its role as a trade centre until gradual decline set in during the late Middle Ages, reducing it into a cluster of deserted hillocks overlooking the barren plain of Khuzestan. But in one way the site preserved its history across thousands of years – it has retained its ancient name, in the form of Shush, from the time of the first written records until today.

4 Bugs That Make You Want to Leave This Planet

Some people don't have a problem squashing insects, but to me and a good amount of the world population, insects are terrifying. I just don't like the idea that a creature a fraction of my size can infiltrate my body and ruin me. I'm going to make this situation much worse for us scaredy-cats by exposing some insects from around the world.

1. Japanese Giant Hornet

At this point, many of you are probably familiar with these dudes, but for those of you who aren't, be happy that these are not indigenous to America. These flying creatures are roughly the size of an average human thumb and have stingers a quarter of an inch long. Their venom is strong enough to destroy our skin tissues and directly targets our nervous system. Studies show that a swarm of 30 of these hornets can take down a nest of nearly 30,000 bees. Oh, did I mention that they call in reinforcements with a pheromone that doubles as an acid to attack their prey? Yeah, that too.

2. Bat-eating spiders

This species of spiders is known as Nephila pilipes, but to me, more commonly known as "What the hell?" Even though the bats they eat are a smaller, insect eating kind, these spiders are still eating bats. According to my logic, if Spider-Man and Batman were to engage in battle, Batman would lose in a terrifying manner. These spiders have been found on all continents except Antartica. So pack your bags, guys, we're leaving this place.

3. Army Ant

You can find these guys in the Amazon Basin. They're ants that grow up to half an inch in length. Being ants, they have a strong swarm mentality, but army ants take that to another level. Their entire colony can consist of up to over one million ants and they're completely mobile. They destroy anything that comes into their path. To make matters worse, they're blind. You're probably thinking "How is that worse? They can't see me!" Being blind just means that they are completely indiscriminate in their destruction; whatever they roll over can and will be eaten. They move around by constantly crawling over each other, building bridges with their own bodies if needed. No amount of Raid can stop the rampage these ants are on.

4. Bot fly

No one is okay with these guys. We don't know why they exist. Bot flies come in a lot of varieties. Their name usually indicates what they like to burrow in. That's right: burrow in. And thank goodness for us two-legged creatures, there's a species called the Human Bot Fly. One of their favorite activities is to lay their eggs on a carrier that interacts with humans, like a mosquito. The egg will then find it's way to a human and make it's home there. When the egg hatches, the larvae makes it's home wherever it lands. For example, there have been accounts of bot fly larvae finding their way into human brains.

Now that you know about these insects, space exploration has never been more exciting. Let's hurry up and get off this rock!

About the author: Michael is a blogger for Smith Monitoring, an Austin home security company. In the presence of any bug, he can be found in the nearest corner, armed with a can of raid and a newspaper.