Since the ancient Babylonian kingdom, the city of Babylon has been the largest city in Western Asia and the economic and cultural center of the two river basins. www.biquge.info Although Babylon belonged to Assyria, it always had the heart of rebellion and set off many anti-Assyrian uprisings. In 626 B.C., the Chaldeans established a new dynasty in Babylon, and then united with Egypt and the Medes to defeat Assyria, and smashed Nineveh to completely dismantle the Assyrian Empire. After the fall of Assyria, the world was divided into three parts, the Median occupied Iran, Egypt resumed its original rule, and the Neo-Babylonian kingdom was the most powerful with the entire valley of the two rivers and Syria and Palestine. Although Neo-Babylon was quickly destroyed by Persia and was established less than a hundred years ago, the period of the Neo-Babylonian Kingdom (626-539 BC) was a very important stage in the ancient civilization of Western Asia. It is the final period of the culmination, the fusion of Sumerian, ancient Babylonian and Assyrian results, and passed on to Greece in the West, so that much of the Babylonian culture as we know it in the West was laid down in the Neo-Babylonian kingdom. The same is true in the arts, where the art of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom is a synthesis of the achievements of the previous eras of the two river valleys, and there is no lack of innovation.

The greatest achievement of the art of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom was the reconstruction of the city of Babylon. The city was originally the most ancient city in Western Asia, but the long history of thousands of years has also changed the foundation laid in the ancient Babylonian period: the rise of the water table and the salinization of the soil caused great disasters, and many ancient buildings were abandoned; The destruction of the war is endless, the ancient Babylonian kingdom was invaded by foreign tribes many times when it fell, and the Babylonian revolt four times during the Assyrian rule, and the Assyrian army attacked and occupied the city four times, and the damage was even more serious. Therefore, the reconstruction of the ancient city was regarded as a top priority for the state with the establishment of the new Babylonian kingdom, not to mention the fact that the new dynasty was determined to build the capital so impregnable that it could keep the enemy out of the city gates forever, and at the same time, it was necessary to build the most magnificent temples and palaces in the city of Babylon with reference to the beautiful precedent of the Assyrian royal palace, so that Babylon could truly become the most luxurious capital city in ancient times. These demands were finally fulfilled by Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BCE), the famous king of Neo-Babylon. The rebuilt city of Babylon was basically still in its original system, but it was much larger in size and especially fortified. The whole city is about rectangular, the Euphrates River passes through the city, dividing Babylon into two, the city is divided into east and west according to the river, the east city is mainly composed of the ancient Babylonian kingdom established by the city, now as a royal palace, the main temple and government offices, dignitaries and residences, the west city is a new commercial area, there is a bridge on the river to connect the east and west of the city. Due to the need of the new dynasty to stabilize the country, the city defense project was placed at the top of the reconstruction task, for which the ditch is not tired of being deep, the wall is not tired of being thick, and the wall is built outside the wall, and the strongest city defense in ancient times has been built. Its city defense project is divided into three levels, the outermost layer is called the Mede Great Wall, built outside the city to the east of the area as far as dozens of miles, this Great Wall with high walls and deep trenches to guard against the greatest threat of potential enemies - the east of the strong neighbor Mede. According to the original design, there was a large area of low-lying land between the Great Wall of the Medes and the city of Babylon, and if necessary, the sluices of the Euphrates River and the canals outside the city could be used to flood the land. The latter two levels refer to the double city walls that surround the east and west urban areas, the outer walls are made of bricks, slightly shorter than the inner walls, the outer ring of the walls is canals, which play the role of moats, and there is an open land about 10-20 meters wide between the outer walls and the inner walls, which can annihilate the enemies who cross the river and cross the walls in this unobstructed middle zone. The inner wall after the outer wall was of course the focus of the city's defense, it was made of adobe mixed with gravel, 36 meters high and 8 meters thick, which could accommodate four horse-drawn carriages to travel side by side. This double city wall is 18 kilometers long, and there are fort towers every 44 meters, and there are more than 320 castles in the city. Due to the extreme shortage of stone in the alluvial plain where Babylon is located, not only do not use stone for the inner and outer city defense projects, but it is also difficult to adopt the stone carving guardian statue system that must be found in the gate gate of the Assyrian capital in the city gate construction, and the alternative method is to use glazed bricks for the decoration of the city gate. There are 9 gates in the whole city of Babylon, among which the most magnificent and gorgeous glazed brick decoration is the central north gate - Ishtar Gate (Ishtar is the goddess of victory and Venus, and the goddess of love and beauty, similar to the goddess of Venus in the West). The gate was very important and topography was very important, as it was originally the royal palace and the temple of Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, but there was also a very important temple outside the city, the "Temple of the Festivals" and a royal palace (the North Palace), which were protected by walls along with the nearby residential areas, forming a smaller outer city. Every New Year, a solemn religious procession must be made along the avenue of the New Year's Temple, the Ishtar Gate, and the Marduk Temple, which is known as the "Ceremonial Avenue", and the Ishtar Gate is located in the center, which needs to highlight the beauty and commemorative significance of the image of the city gate. This city gate according to the heavy wall compound gate structure, the arch gate on both sides with twin towers sanitation, a total of four towers and two gates, the door, the tower wall surface is covered with colorful glazed ox, dragon pattern, the cow is the symbol of the god Ada, the dragon is the symbol of the god Marduk, the five colors are gorgeous, the wall is full of brilliance, such a beautiful city gate is really rare in the ancient world. Since the western side of the Rite Avenue within the Ishtar Gate and the Euphrates River were the site of the royal palace, the Marduk Temple, and other temples, a high wall was built in the central part of the eastern city, which was called the Inner City, or the "Imperial City". Therefore, it is a bit like the imperial city between Tiananmen and Di'anmen in Beijing, China, and the location of Ishtar Gate is like Zhengyang Gate, and the New Year Temple outside Ishtar Gate is a bit like the Temple of Prayer at the Temple of Heaven outside Zhengyang Gate. It goes without saying that in this inner city, which is equal to the imperial city, the essence of Babylonian architecture is visible everywhere you look. …,

The southern part of the inner city of Babylon is home to the two main temples dedicated to Marduk and numerous temples and monasteries. The north temple of the two temples of Marduk is called Etman Anji, and the south temple is called Esagira. At the center of the north temple is the highest tower temple in the valley of the two rivers, which is the "Tower of Babel" envied by the ancients (Babel originally means god in the Babylonian language, here it refers to both the god Marduk and the city of Babylon, because the original meaning of the word Babylon is also "the gate of God"). According to Jewish legend, the people of Babylon had the intention to build this tower until it was higher than the sky, so as to build a road to heaven for the earth. Fearing that this would be successful, God caused the people who built the tower to speak different languages, and their speech became disorganized, and the Tower of Babel was finally unable to reach the heavens.1 With the rendering of these legends, this Gilgurat of Atman Anji has become the most famous building in ancient Western Asia. According to the archaeological excavations, its bottom is about 91 meters square (the superstructure has completely collapsed), according to the convention that the height of the tower temple is equal to the width of its base at that time, the total height of this tower should be more than 90 meters, although it is shorter than the Shwedagon Pagoda in Egypt, it is the tallest skyscraper tower in West Asia. Its shape is still in the traditional Jigurat tower style, divided into 7 layers, the inside is adobe, the exterior is covered with bricks, and the temple is built on the top, and there are steps to ascend. Some scholars believe that the staircase may have been in the form of a continuous spiral of four slopes in the form of the Assyrian pagoda, but most scholars believe that it still follows the original Babylonian tradition of ascending with a long staircase. Regardless of the form, the arrangement of a grand staircase on a tower of more than 90 meters requires a high level of engineering and technical skills. To the south, the temple of Esagira has no towers and takes the usual temple form, with a tall temple and a vast courtyard, similar to the architecture of the Assyrian royal palace, except that there are no stone parapets and glazed bricks instead. Legend has it that the 22-ton gold statue of Lord Marduk enshrined in the temple of Esajira is an exaggeration, but it is an unprecedentedly tall statue that reflects the immense wealth of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom of conquest and plunder. Since the golden statue of the temple was so grand, the luxury of the palace of Babylon can also be imagined. The north palace outside the Ishtar Gate is mainly used to display the statues of gods and rare treasures brought from all over the world, so it is called a museum; The southern palace, located within the Ishtar Gate and north of the Temple of Marduk, was the residence of kings and their concubines, and was built in a shape similar to that of the Assyrian royal palace. One of the most prominent attractions is the "Hanging Garden", which is listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, located in the northwest corner of the palace, near the Ishtar Gate. The reason why it is called "Hanging Garden" is because it is planted with exotic flowers and plants with multi-layered earthen platforms, and the height of the platform can reach the sky. It may have been built by Nebuchadnezzar to please the Median princess from the plateau and mountains, and it is said that after marrying Babylon, she missed the mountains and forests of her hometown in an environment overlooking the plain river, and the Babylonian artist came up with this trick to relieve her native thoughts. In fact, it is a slight adaptation of the traditional tower temple architecture in the two river basins, and the level of the tower temple is used as a forest spring flower bed, which will achieve the effect of a hanging garden. However, there were two major technical problems in this design that had never been encountered in ancient buildings, namely, the problem of water intake from high-rise buildings and the sealing of earthen platforms to prevent leakage. In addition, in order to highlight the beauty of the garden's clear and dexterous beauty, each layer of the earth platform inside and outside are built into arcades, the arch roof on the corridor is stacked with reeds, sandwiched with asphalt, and then covered with lead slabs and mud, and flower beds can also be arranged in the corridor. The structure of the lowest floor, which has been better understood through archaeological excavations, consists of a group of 14 vaulted halls in two columns, connected by a cloister, and the pump equipment is placed on the west side. The whole is rectangular, 42 meters long, 30 meters wide, according to the ratio of height and width of the tower temple, the total height is about 30 meters. Although it is not as tall as the Tower of Babel, it stands out among the royal courts, and its exquisite design and technical mastery have made it deservedly known as one of the Eight Wonders of the World. By the way, the so-called Seven Wonders of the World, which are usually called, were proposed by the Greeks in the Hellenistic era, so only two Eastern civilizations are listed, namely the Hanging Gardens and the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and the remaining 5 belong to the Greek civilization, which are the Temple of Artemis in the city of Ephesus, the Colossus of Zeus in the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, the Mausoleum of Mossolus in Asia Minor, the lighthouse in the port of Alexandria in Egypt and the Colossus of Apollo in the port of Rhodes (the latter two are not yet built), The Terracotta Warriors and Horses, known as the eighth wonder of the world, will not be completed until nearly a hundred years later. …,

The lavish palaces and temples of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom, with their rich statues and frescoes (such as the golden statue of the god Marduk), did not survive until a millennium later. However, at this time, the city of Babylon was relatively well preserved. The glazed brick products that can be seen everywhere have indeed reached an unprecedented level at this time, and the carving and painting may have been influenced by it, and it is not an exaggeration to take the glazed bricks as the representative of the plastic arts at this time. The glazed brick components are still the size of ordinary burnt bricks as before, but their combination is very free, and they can form a continuous decorative belt in the lower part of the wall like the stone carving relief belt of the parapet wall of the Assyrian royal palace, and can also be decorated with the image of the wall around the frame like the mural painting, and can also decorate the entire wall with the needs of the building, and make various patterns and image reliefs according to local conditions. Therefore, the image of glazed bricks can be large or small, only need to carve the corresponding concave and convex tortuous shape with color glaze on the outer edge of each brick according to the image requirements, and the huge picture composed of hundreds and thousands of bricks is more colorful glaze, and the relief is vivid. The kind of glazed bricks that cover the entire wall can be represented by the Ishtar gate, where the blue glazed bricks are used as the base to cover the walls of the towers and doorways from the base to the top of the wall, and even the battlements (parapets) on the top of the wall are not missing. The foot of the wall, the eaves and the arch of the city gate are all applied with rose pattern decorative bands, yellow, white, red and blue, solemn and beautiful, the rest of the walls are all arranged according to the equidistant image of the ox and the dragon, 3 by the door, 5 towers, each god is about 1 meter high and about 1.5 meters long. As a symbol of the gods, the bull is stout and sturdy, and the image is vivid and similar to Assyrian reliefs, and the color mix is similar to that of a fresco. As the symbol of the god Marduk, the dragon is very distinctive, it is not like the dragon of our country to soar through the clouds, but a four-legged beast on the ground, the head of a fish and a snake neck, the body of the beast with scale armor, the forelimbs are lion's feet, the hind limbs are eagle claws, and the tail is high like an eel. The walls and towers on both sides of the avenue are also decorated with glazed bricks, but here the walls are decorated with continuous ribbons carved with the image of a lion (the lion is the mount of the goddess Ishtar and the symbol of royal power). The glazed bricks depict the lion's body, head and feet painted with white glaze, and the mane is painted with gold glaze, and the posture is very powerful, and these steadily marching male lions are comparable to the lions in Assyrian reliefs. In some remnants of the palace building, there are also glazed bricks with similar images of lions and dragons, and the patterns of flowers and plants as lace decoration are more complete and beautiful. In short, these glazed brick works of art are unique in the ancient world. The glazed brick technique was later transmitted to Persia by Neo-Babylon, and Persia spread to all parts of Central Asia, and finally reached China, in a sense, only China's glazed bricks can be compared with the distant Babylonian prototype in terms of gorgeous majesty and majesty, such as the Nine Dragon Wall of Datong in China (made in the Ming Dynasty) and the Forbidden City in Beijing, and the Nine Dragon Wall of Beihai (made in the Qing Dynasty) are all glazed brick crafts that can be as famous as the works of Neo-Babylon in the world's art treasure house.

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1 Old Testament Genesis, chapter 11. The Jews here also think that "Babel" means "chaos", which is pure falsehood. But they called the city of Babylon "the city of chaos," but they pinned their hatred for Babylon's destruction of Judea.