Babylon
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- Not to be confused with Babylonia.
Babylon was an ancient city in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), the ruins of which can be found in present-day about 80km south of Baghdad. It was the "holy city" of Babylonia from around 2300 BC. Metaphorically, the term Babylonia denotes any city of great wealth, luxury and vice, taken to an extreme by Rastafarianism which uses the term for the so-called white man's civilization.
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Confusion
In the Bible the term babel interpreted by Genesis 11:9 to mean "confusion", from the verb balal, "to confuse".
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Babylon was an important city, both politically and aesthetically. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Babylon in popular culture
Due to the importance of Babylon in its time as well as the stories in the Bible the word "Babylon" in various languages has acquired a generic meaning of a large, bustling diverse city. As such, the word "Babylon" is used for various entertainment events or buildings. For example, sci-fi series Babylon 5 tells a tale of a multi-racial future space station. Babilonas (Lithuanian name for "Babylon") is also a name for a major real estate development in Lithuania.
In Rastafarianism
In reggae music the term Babylon is often used since it is an important concept in the rastafarian belief system, denoting the profane materialistic capitalist world or 'white man's civilization'.
See also
- Akkad
- Babel (disambiguation)
- Cities of the ancient Near East
- Code of Hammurabi
- Tower of Babel
- Whore of Babylon
Namesakes
- The New Babylon, 1929, Russian film
- Hollywood Babylon, 1959, a book by Kenneth Anger
- "The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon", 1885, controversial newspaper articles on child prostitution
