BABYLONIANS

THE TOWER OF BABYLON

As long as 6,000 years ago, people living in Mesopotamia, what is now  Iraq, were the first to master a new type of technology - writing.

That meant thoughts and ideas that people could only tell each other could be documented and expanded upon. Writing gave birth to the study of mathematics and astronomy, the first calendar and contracts, stories and religious texts. It unleashed a torrent of innovation that the growth enjoyed in one ancient culture, Babylon, is still evident today. 

The writing system devised by the Sumarians who came before was called Cuneiform. Its characters were wedge-shaped impressions  made in wet clay tablets using a reed. It is poetic that the same clay the Babylonians later used to advance their intellect also comprised the bricks that built their empire. 

A traveler approaching Babylon, a great city by the 6th century BCE, would have seen an enormous, 97-meter high wall guarding the city - 24 meters thick and 90 meters long. Behind that wall, a giant manmade mountain rose 92 meters into the sky, shining bright white in the desert sun.

These structures were possible thanks to the invention of baked clay bricks that could carry a far heavier load than the mud bricks that were common at the time. The Babylonians used sun-dried clay in almost everything they built, from roads and homes to entire temple complexes, including that soaring structure, known as a ziggurat.

Their architectural feats are …