in the first millennium BC, but also for any attempt to place the Babylonian cities
in a wider historical context from the point of view of urban development.
In fact, this view that we are dealing with a grid layout has to be challenged,
because it is based on a reconstructed street network which is almost entirely hypo-
thetical and which has little basis in excavated reality. If one traces the genealogy of
the city maps presented by these two authors (who are only the most recent in a long
tradition), one discovers that they go back to reconstructions published by Unger in
his study of the topography of Babylon in 1931 (pl. 57 , fig. 64 for Babylon; pl. 18 ,
fig. 27 for Borsippa). Unger knew from his study of the cuneiform topographical
tablets concerning Babylon that certain streets bore names explicitly associating them
with a specific city gate, such as ‘street of the Urash Gate’. His method, so it seems,
was to project a straight line from the inside of each gate (not all of whose locations
were known), on a course roughly perpendicular to the line of the city wall, towards
the centre of the city (or towards another projected street intersecting with the street
in question). He then labelled the street accordingly. However, very nearly all of the
streets reconstructed in this way are entirely conjectural and, of the nine gates marked
on Unger’s plan, the identification and location of only five can be defended (see
below). Very few actual streets have been excavated, namely, the Processional Way
and the streets of the Merkes quarter of Babylon – the latter being generally more
or less straight but by no means forming a grid pattern. Stretches of streets have
been found in other areas, for example to the south-east and north-west of the Ninurta
temple (see Wetzel 1930 : pl. 10 ), but these are not sufficient to enable their courses
to be projected over a longer distance. One textually attested street, the Processional
Way of Nabû, can be located with some certainty, since it is known to have run from
the Urash Gate to Esagil, the temple of Marduk.
Following Unger, Wiseman ( 1985 : 46 , fig. 3 ) added further streets to the
reconstruction of Babylon on the basis of his own study of the topographical tablets,
but the location of these is equally conjectural and that of the gates erroneous. These
additions were incorporated into the plan of Babylon presented by Gates ( 2003 : 183 ,
fig. 10. 12 ). However, recent work by George has resulted in an improved scheme for
identifying and locating the gates of Babylon. Therefore, the conjectural streets –
which, we recall, were placed in relation to the gates with which they are associated
- would have to be moved too! It is better to follow the example of George ( 1992 :
24 , fig. 4 ), who omits the street network altogether from his reconstruction of sixth
century BCBabylon, apart from the excavated stretch of the Processional Way.
The situation as regards Borsippa is even less satisfactory. Unger’s reconstruction
( 1932 : pl. 59 ) shows a city that is square in outline, crossed by a grid of straight
streets, with the main temple enclosure at the centre. But this is highly schematic,
compared with the 1859 survey of W.B. Selby, which is reproduced by Unger ( 1932 :
pl. 55 ). Selby’s map of Borsippa shows the ziggurat and Ezida situated near the edge
of the city rather than in the centre; moreover, according to it the shape of the city
was not square, and there were no visible gates that could be used in reconstructing
a street grid. The only detailed, measured plan available for Borsippa is that of the
ziggurat and the Nabû Temple and vicinity, as published by the German excavators
(Koldewey 1911 : pl. 12 ). A sounding was made in the city wall (see Koldewey 1911 :
51 and fig. 91 for a photograph), but neither the location of the trench nor the wall
itself is shown on any plan.
— Heather D. Baker —