Babylon - Myth and Reality

The article I looked over was about the upcoming exhibit surrounding the ancient city of Babylon at the British Museum (Babylon: Myth and Reality) opening in November. The author of the article focuses mainly on the fact that many of the pieces’ interpretation of what the city of Babylon actually stood for – the lust and over-indulgence of human society. Many of the images that the author speaks about focus mainly on the mythical Tower of Babel, the ancient structure and the story surrounding it hold many meanings to human nature in general. The author of the piece goes on to mention that the focus of the gallery according to its director was to gain the audience of the many Iraqi’s living in Great Britain through to celebrating the ancient history of modern Iraq. The author tries to explain the history of Babylon, as well, as it relates to the taking over of Palestine (modern Israel) by Nebuchadnezzar (the king of Babylon) yet I feel that an uninformed reader of his piece would not really grasp the subject material from his brief notes.

The detail of the venue is very clear, the date, the time and location of the show are all clearly represented in the article, and it seems he did quite a bit of research of the subject matter and had a detailed interview with the team that put together the exhibit. However, I don’t feel he was able to present the extensive history of the subject matter until the end of the article, where if I had no previous knowledge of the subject matter would have passed over his piece after the second paragraph. Babylon’s rich history and mystery can only really be seen in ancient stories from the art and works in the museum themselves and not from his piece. Still, the author gave me the urge to want to travel to England to see this exhibit.