Babylon, Iraq - UNESCO World Heritage Site

 Place: Babylon, Iraq

Weather: Sunny skies with gusty winds, 88/115F.

Route: From Samarra 273 km SSE on route 1.

Significance: I chose Babylon to be the last place I visit on this trip. I chose it because it's so iconic that it doesn't even seem like a real place. Multiple religions have stories that are centered on Babylon.  It appears in Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament as the place where a united human race existed, that was then split into different peoples with different languages from the tower of Babel. 

But, it was a real place. It had two separate eras where it was the largest city in the world. It was likely the first city to have a population of more than 200,000 people. The first era was in the early second millennium BC  - the time of Hammurabi, famous for the first known legal code. The second era was in the 6th century BC, the time of Nebuchadnezzar - when the famous hanging gardens were built. In between there were many Empires that ruled Babylon - the Hittites, the Elamites, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Muslims. 

Babylon is also interesting because it hasn't been a city since 1000 CE. It shows how changeable the world is. Nothing is forever.  Places that seemed the center of the entire world can become obsolete. Not only can they become obsolete, they all have.  

The final reason that I chose this as the last place is that it's in a country that we've recently been at war with. It is in a place that we don't go to as a tourist. It's a place that on some levels we fear. But it has a humanity and an importance as great as any place on earth. It should be a place that we treasure as being a cradle of civilization.  This planet is a complex place. We should be able to hold in our minds that we might not like what a particular government is doing, but still be able to value the history and culture of that place.

I started this trip on April 1, 2020 - a few weeks after everything shut down due to COVID. It was supposed to be a reminder to me - that during a time when our individual worlds were made small, that the world was still big. Unfortunately we have come out of that period of isolation seemingly more divided. Conflict is inevitable, but we can still respect each others humanity and the ability of all people to create beauty in philosophy and art and music and architecture from which we can learn something.  

Website: UNESCO World Heritage Site

Images:

Marduk Gate (from whc.unesco.org)

Recreation of the Ishtar Gate at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin (from chalddeannews.com)