The excavations at Babylon — Themes and Context

The Logic of the Trench

Koldewey does not present the excavation as a single continuous campaign. Instead, he describes a sequence of targeted cuts driven by the need to answer specific questions before funds run out. By the end of 1899, the Procession Street of Marduk had been opened as far as the north-east corner of the Principal Citadel, and a cross-cut was driven through the north front of that citadel. In early 1900, the team excavated the Temple of Ninmach. The narrative moves from one structure to the next not by geography alone but by the logic of what each discovery implies for the next. Koldewey repeatedly uses the phrase “accordingly” to link a new decision to a previous result, making the reader follow the reasoning behind each shift of the spade.

Enamelled Brick and the Ishtar Gate

The fragments that first drew Koldewey to Babylon were pieces of enamelled brick reliefs. He describes their “peculiar beauty” and their importance for the history of art, but he also treats them as material evidence. The bricks are not merely decorative; their colors and glazes survive because of the firing process, and their arrangement on the gate is reconstructed from the positions in which they fell. Koldewey notes that the reliefs show animals—lions and dragons—in procession, and he compares the style to other known examples from the ancient Near East. The gate itself, he explains, was built by Nebuchadnezzar II, and its dimensions are given with the same precision as the city walls: the outer gate is 17 meters thick, the inner gate 22 meters.

Objects as Booty and Evidence

Koldewey frequently interprets objects not just as art but as indicators of historical movement. A stela of Shamashresh-ussur, found in Babylon, bears a Neo-Babylonian inscription that records canal restoration, date-palm planting, and the founding of a town. But the stela, Koldewey argues, “does not appear to have arrived in Babylon by peaceful methods”—it was likely war booty. Similarly, an ancient Hittite stela depicting the weather god Teshup, with a still-undeciphered hieroglyphic inscription, must also have been brought from the north, probably from the region of Sendjirli. Koldewey reads these objects as evidence of conquest and cultural transfer, not just as museum pieces.

The Daily Rhythm of the Dig

Koldewey includes practical details that anchor the grand scale in daily labor. The work force numbered 200 to 250 men, working “both summer and winter.” He notes the tools and methods: the use of the “Hattre” club, still in use among local Arabs, and the “Mugwar” club with an asphalt head. He compares the girdle worn by the god Adad to that of “town Arabs of to-day,” and the mountain pattern on pedestals to the designs on Persian cotton-print hangings. These observations tie the ancient city to the living landscape of the early twentieth century, reminding the reader that the excavation was not a sterile removal of artifacts but an encounter with a place still inhabited and worked.

Koldewey’s report is best read as a field journal in which the sequence of discoveries is inseparable from the reasoning behind them. The reader should pay attention to the dates and the cross-references between structures: the Procession Street, the citadels, the temples, and the gates form a network that Koldewey reconstructs piece by piece. The illustrations and plans that accompany the text are essential to following the argument. This is not a narrative of a lost city but a working document of how that city was brought back into view.

Koldewey’s notes on Babylon’s mud-brick layers felt less like archaeology and more like listening to someone describe a slow, patient friendship with the earth. It made me think of A History of Science — Volume 2 — Context and Discussion, where similar quiet persistence appears in how old ideas settle, one atop another, waiting to be noticed.