War inna Babylon

If you know as little about Babylon as I did before I went to this exhibition you might wanna check out it's wikipedia entry. It's pretty cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon

So I told you a couple days ago that I went to an exhibition about Babylon. This update is about that.
The exhibition was called, roughly, Babylon: Truth and Myth. A neat idea to be sure, it was divided into two areas; one historical the other more focused on the Babel myth and legend. This was held in the famous (?) Pergamon, an antiquities museum on museuminsel (museum island) in the heart of Berlin.In case you haven't yet figured this out, this update will use the word 'museum' a lot.

Now this is the first real museum I had been to at this point in my time in Germany and actually the first real museum I've been to in quiet a while. Like, any time in recent memory. So maybe I was easily impressed or something, from lack of museum exposure.

My general rule is to never use the same word twice in two sentences but I guess my goal for this blog entry is to say 'museum' in absolutely every line.
Anyway, it was a really cool museum, having one section for ancient artifacts (think greek and roman statues) and another for Islamic art in addition to the two Babylon areas. I checked out the history first, which featured a lot of actual babylonian relics. It was fascinating at first but eventually became a little bit borring somewhere around the 'farming and agriculture' section (isn't that always where a thing becomes borring?). Lotsa statues, lotsa drawings of Marduk, lotsa tablets with inscriptions by Babylonian kings. Very cool overall.
(ex. The land that does not bow to Marduk I defeat him with my strong weapon -Some King, Babylon, A Really Long Time Ago)

The myth section was the real standout for me, it features a bunch of artistic interpretations of sections of the Babylon story. This is where it becomes interesting, really. Where did the idea of Babylon as the city of sinners come from? Who was this whore of Babylon and can I meet her?
What's the deal with the Tower of Babel? The fall of Babylon? Etc. Etc.
While it was totally awesome to see my favorite Bruegel paintings in their original form, the modern artistic interpretations were easily the most interesting.
Take a look at this modern tower of Babel, for instance.
Now picture that things are being shouted at you in different languages from all around the room and you'll get an idea of what it was like.

However, that was not my favorite- this was.
So some of you may know that Babylon was in modern day Iraq, and some of the people who knew that might know that Saddam Hussein attempted to create historical ties between himself and ancient Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar. This piece was created from US magazine covers detailed Sadam's fall from power, glitter, and semen. Yes, semen.

All I can say is I love Berlin and art.

So overall, Pergamon Museum, big recommend. Everyone should go and see it.
I also took a buncha pictures of important old statues or something. Go check out this photo gallery for EVEN MORE CONTENT.
Pergamon Museum

Love you guys,

<3

Jesse