How the restoration of ancient Babylon is drawing tourists back to Iraq (theartnewspaper.com)
39 points by leoh 8 hours ago
rippeltippel 2 hours ago
Sounds more like "reconstruction" than "restoration". I appreciate many original parts may be too damaged, but it risks becoming an archeological Disneyland.
cm2187 an hour ago
I don't see the problem. If a building is damaged we should not reconstruct it? I'd much rather see the Colosseum in its original state, covered in marble, than the current state, after centuries of neglect and looting from the italians.
mulmen 38 minutes ago
The value of ancient buildings is in what we learn from whatever survives. How can we rebuild the Coliseum to its original state without first learning what that state was? The Coliseum was operational for centuries and underwent constant modification. Which period should it be restored to, and to what end?
aetherspawn 4 hours ago
There is a prophecy in the Bible that says Babylon will never successfully be rebuilt. Isa 13:19, 20.
eth0up 2 hours ago
I'll settle for what came long before it.
t0lo 3 hours ago
It's amazing we're living in a time again where we have to know the bible to predict government policy
burnt-resistor an hour ago
The Taliban and other theocratic totalitarian regimes should take notes.
verisimi 2 hours ago
'Building yesteryear's history today' for tourism, like so many "historical" sites.
eth0up 6 hours ago
Screw the tourists, bring in the archeologists, maybe start by resuming excavations at Eridu. 99% of our history is buried or looted. And the one or two Assyriologists in the world need new material to study.
roshin 5 hours ago
After several years, Iraqi Hezbollah recently released their Princeton researcher hostage (granted, she is a dual Israeli citizen). Maybe that will encourage more archeologists to visit.
eth0up 2 hours ago
Thanks for the info and please pardon my previous ignorance of it. I'm grateful for her release.
roshin an hour ago
trallnag an hour ago
breppp 4 hours ago
Lovely place to be kidnapped
nashashmi 5 hours ago
Tourism is such a wasteful tax on society. I met an Egyptologist who had been leading tours for two years so he could feed his family but he longed to go back to Egyptology and go and study the ruins even though it didn’t pay well
bcraven 4 hours ago
And after meeting that person you thought, "wow I wish this person didn't have an alternative income stream that allows them to feed their family"?
Many people in this world wish they could do something different with their lives, but to blame the activity they're currently doing is shortsighted.