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culture shock at desert life the King has built for her the
Hanging Gardens.
The gardens are not open to the public but you won’t be
disappointed by the immense statues of solid gold you’ll
see in the many temples or by the mighty Etemenanki
ziggurat. The name means “the house where heaven
and earth intersect” and at just shy of 300 feet tall
(about 20 feet shorter than Big Ben) there’s not a taller
building anywhere in the ancient world. The core of the
temple was probably built hundreds of years ago but in
Nebuchadnezzar’s own words:
“I have completed its magnificence with silver, gold,
other metals, stone, enameled bricks, fir and pine.
The first, which is the house of the earth’s base, the
most ancient monument of Babylon; I built and
finished it. I have highly exalted its head with bricks
covered with copper.”
In the millennia ahead this temple will come to be known
as the Tower of Babel. The Sumerian word Babel, from
which comes Babylon, means God’s Gate. It will become
a metaphor for the division of the human race, by many
languages, into groups unable to communicate with each
other. During your day in ancient Babylon you might hear
Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, Persian, Greek, Phoenician,
Egyptian and Scythian, in addition to the Babylonian and
Assyrian dialects of Akkadian.
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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
After a fascinating morning we’ll stop in the precincts
of the Tower of Babel for a lunch of kippu stew with flat
bread, or a vegetarian option of pottage of red lentils,
included in the tour fee. Barley beer, date wine and honey
mead as well as pistachio, melon and prune based desserts
can be selected and paid for as required on the day. Please
don’t ask what kippu is, we still don’t know but we’re
pretty sure it’s not cormorant.
In the afternoon we’re going to take a relaxing cruise on
the Euphrates to see the teams of slaves pumping water
from the river for the hanging gardens. A welcome cup of
sweet mint tea will be served before we head for home at
approximately 575BC. Wouldn’t it be great?
You book your own camels and we’ll do the rest!
It’s not hard to picture jobbing tour guides offering their
services to visitors arriving at Babylon’s Ishtar Gate in
much the same way, as we shall see later, how one of
the first London Blue Badge Guides, Freddie Brampton
MBE, began his guiding career outside the Bloomsbury
hotels in the 1920s. Mankind might not have always been
interested in understanding the wider world but we have
always wanted to know just what it is we are looking at.
And the chances are there has always been someone who
is prepared to tell us. Dare I say that tour guiding is right
up there as one of the oldest professions in the world?