CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION



Gwendolyn Leick

I

n the book of Genesis (XI, 9 ) the etymology of ‘Babel’ is given as ‘confusion’, the

result of divine intervention in order to punish a people for their wish ‘to make a

name for themselves’ by building ‘a city and a tower whose top may reach unto

heaven’. Language or indeed the proliferation of languages, urbanism (it is the first

mention of a city in the Bible), monumental architecture and historical memory, are

thus all associated with the toponym ‘Babel’. In the later Biblical books a great deal

more will be said about Babylon and its kings who waged war against Judah. While

in these accounts, the Babylonians, just like other powerful and repressive nations of

the Ancient Near East, were to be doomed to destruction and annihilation, the Biblical

writings did keep their memory alive until the post-Enlightenment explorers brought

back tangible evidence of ancient writings, monuments and cities.

For the last century and a half, the Babylonians have once more become part of

our modernity. Cuneiform documents are relatively robust and they survived the

sacking of cities; having been buried in the sand for millennia they now constitute

an ever growing data bank comprising many thousands of tablets. The current state

of affairs in Iraq, however, has a serious impact on scholarship; witness the destruction

of sites by looters and military activities, the dispersal of material without established

context and the loss of unpublished artefacts from Iraqi museum collections.

Scientifically conducted archaeological excavations have almost ceased. Academic life

in Iraqi departments has suffered from the destruction of libraries and facilities. The

trauma of displacement will echo across the Assyriological world for some time but

it is also affected by developments in the academic world in general. Considerable

economic pressure on universities to follow the ‘market’ jeopardizes ‘minority sub-

jects’ such as Assyriology and this has led to the closure of several departments and

has restricted research funding. On the other hand Assyriology has spread around

the world, with institutes in China, Japan, Latin America and South Africa, and the

current volume documents the continuing vitality of the subject and the commitment

of scholars from all continents to keep connected to the Babylonian world.