Robert Koldewey and one of the hundreds of well-preserved
animal reliefs found on the gateways and walls of Babylon.<\/b><\/p>\n
Look at a photograph or drawing of the vast area and the huge structures exposed to view by the excavations at ancient Babylon directed by Robert Koldewey and his assistant, Walter Andrae, and you will be impressed with the magnitude of his work. The first to use hand pushed \u201crailroad cars\u201d for earth moving, he also inaugurated truly scientific excavation in Mesopotamia by his careful stratigraphic procedures.<\/p>\n
\u201cTypically German,\u201d you might say, were his dull reports, which failed to reach the general public. Yet his prestigious patrons – Berlin Museum, German Oriental Society and Kaiser Wilhelm II – funded him to the extent of nearly half a million dollars. Doubtless he earned it, for he prepared well for his career by studying architecture, archaeology, and ancient history at Berlin Museum, and Vienna.<\/p>\n
After two expeditions in the classical world under the German Archaeological Institute and one in Iraq (1887, under the British Museum),<\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 3:4 (Autumn 1990) p. 120<\/p>\n
Koldewey spent ten years of combined teaching at Gorlitz and excavating in the Mediterranean region. Then, in 1897, he began to see his wildest dreams materialize, when the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft commissioned him to survey for promising sites in Mesopotamia. Their primary interest was in new finds of cuneiform tablets, and Koldewey convinced them he should dig the ruins of Babylon.<\/p>\n
By 1914 Koldewey was able to report, \u201cPart of this [north] wall still exists and is recognisable at the present time in the guise of a low ridge about four to five kilometres in length. Up to the present we have only excavated a small part, so\u2026only possible to give a detailed description of the most noteworthy features of these fortifications, that were rendered so famous by Greek authors. There was a massive wall of crude brick seven metres thick, in front of which [\u2026about 12 metres] stood another wall of burnt brick 7\u20138 metres thick\u2026\u201d1 His studies in classical history enabled Koldewey to lean heavily on the Greek historian Herodotus and others to guide him as to what to look for as he plotted the strategy of the dig.<\/p>\n
The total circumference of the walls was found to be about 10.6 mi, less than the approximately 53 mi given by Herodotus or the 40 mi of Ctesias, but Koldewey\u2019s estimate of 360 towers in all is a larger one than theirs. The famous Code of Hammurabi had been plundered by raiders and carried to Susa (Persia), where it was discovered in 1901. But there were other impressive finds. Clay tablets and fragments by the thousands, Nebuchadnezzar\u2019s gigantic palaces, the Ishtar Gate and the Street of Processions, along with the Euphrates bridge, all made the project worth the effort.<\/p>\n
What captured the most attention, however, was the supposed remains of the Bible\u2019s Tower of Babel. Ziggurats (huge mountain like towers constructed to support shrines) existed at a number of cities in Mesopotamia, so no one can say that the Tower of Babel has been discovered. But Robert Koldewey also spent years exposing the tower of the Ishtar Gate, consisting as it did of two connecting gate houses. Even he was amazed to find that he had to go down 80 feet to reach its base. Over 200 workers were employed in digging out Babylon.<\/p>\n
Robert Koldewey\u2019s dedication to the forbidding task of revealing the ancient wonders of Babylon and thus verifying the historicity of what is described in both the Bible and classical literature was in itself remarkable. During two decades of continuous excavation from March 1899 till the advance of the British army in 1917, he took only the briefest of home leaves, wherever he faced a need to recover from the rigors of the climate. In fact, by the time he did withdraw, to spend his last eight years back in Germany, his only route of exit via Baghdad was under heavy bombardment by British artillery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Robert Koldewey and one of the hundreds of well-preserved animal reliefs found on the gateways and walls of Babylon. Look at a photograph or drawing of the vast area and the huge structures exposed to view by the excavations at ancient Babylon directed by Robert Koldewey and his assistant, Walter Andrae, and you will be … Continue reading “ROBERT
\nKOLDEWEY [1855-1925]”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15076\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}