Of all of the kings who reigned in Mesopotamia the name which probably comes to mind most readily is Nebuchadnezzer II (reign 605 – 562 BC) of Chaldean Babylon.
Oh sure there is a lot of be said for Sargon of Akkad (reign 2334-2279 BC ) and legal minds will lean toward Hammurabi (reign 1792-1750 BC) of Amorite Babylon, but the widest recognition comes in no small part due to the good work of generations of Sunday School teachers and Nebuchadnezzer's conquest of Judah, Daniel in the lion’s den, the fiery furnace temporarily occupied by Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and then of course eating grass for a few years.
What you might not know is that Nebuchadnezzer built probably the first history museum. Babylon was just re-emerging after years of Assyrian domination and needed an extreme makeover. The new king got right to work – new temple to Marduk the hometown deity, really nice hanging gardens, and a museum among other things.
The museum was dedicated to the history of previous cultures in Mesopotamia of which many had come and gone since the Sumerians basically invented writing around 3,500 BC. It had statuary, cuneiform tablets, pottery, but oddly no gift shop as far as we know.
This is probably a good time to take a quick look at your sundial or calendar. Where are we on the timeline of familiar world history? Fall of Troy about 1,200ish BC, Romulus founds Rome around 715 BC but the city does not rid itself of Etruscan kings until around 509, the Peloponnesian War runs 431-404 BC, the Zhou Dynasty is running things in China during the reign of Nebuchadnezzer, the Olmecs are winding down in Mesoamerica, and the Buddha aka Siddartha Gautama in born in 563 in Nepal. Got it? Okay.
What happened before 3,500 BC? A lot but we don’t know as much because pre-history is generally defined as the time before written language. There were surely permanent settlements, agricultural and trade economic systems, spoken languages, etc but the documentation of this come more from archeologists than anthropologists.
NOTA BENE: Just because people lived in cultures without written language doesn’t mean they weren’t intelligent. Are you smarter than a 5th grader? I hope so. Are you smarter than someone who lived in 1927, 1834, 1061, 235, or 321 BC? You undoubtedly have a great deal more knowledge of all sorts of things, but are you wiser, more complex emotionally, better at using available resources, a better problem solver, or more content? Not necessarily.
But back to the museum. If we talk about history from 3,500 BC (or BCE, we can discuss that another time) to the midpoint of Nebuchadnezzer’s reign, say 584, that is 2,916 years. The range from 584 to 2023 is only 1,439 years. True, with steam powering the industrial revolution, the transatlantic cable connecting Europe and American via telegraph and then telephone, the electric light bulb, radio & television, air flight then space slight, and the internet, the rate of change of the past 250 years alone is staggering. Even so we are all products of our time.
Our time, perhaps a bit more than three score and ten now with modern medicine, is still a blip in a 5,523 timeline (add several more thousand for pre-history living if you really want to feel itty bitty tiny in the grand scheme).
So bravo Nebuchadnezzer and all the subsequent history and natural history museum curators and supporters down through the ages. It is important to be present and live in the moment, but there is so very much to be learned from the past.
