About the Project

Given that Wikipedia is not always a reliable source of information, the open-access Babylonian Temples and Monumental Architecture online (BTMAo) site aims to make information about the most important Babylonian temples, palaces, and city walls of the 1st millennium BC freely and easily accessible to students, non-specialist scholars, and interested members of the general public. Its general structure is modelled on the Oracc-based, high-impact website Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, to which it serves as a companion. During the initial first phase of BTMAo's development (September 2019–October 2023), the project contributors have been generally focusing on adding information about Babylonian temples and monumental architecture found in royal inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (625–539 BC), with some supplementary information from inscriptions of rulers of Babylonia from the Second Dynasty of Isin to the end of Assyrian domination (1157–612 BC).

Living Among Ruins

Ruins of the city of Babylon and the abandoned palace of Saddam Hussein.
Photo credit: Karen Radner (November, 2018).

Timing and Sponsors

BTMAo is part of the four-year, LMU-Munich-based project Living Among Ruins: The Experience of Urban Abandonment in Babylonia, which is funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung as part of the program "Lost Cities. Wahrnehmung von und Leben mit verlassenen Städten in den Kulturen der Welt," coordinated by Prof. Dr. Martin Zimmermann (Historisches Seminar; LMU Munich) and Prof. Dr. Andreas Beyer (University of Basel). BTMAo is funded from September 2019 to October 2023.

Henkel logo

During the initial first phase of BTMAo's development, the principal project contributors have written so far 107 informational pages on palaces, temples, and walls at Agade, Babylon, Borsippa, Cutha, Harran, Kish, Sippar, and Uruk. The most important pages are devoted to key structures at Babylon: Marduk's temple Esagil and its temple-tower Etemenanki, the city walls Imgur-Enlil and Nēmetti-Enlil, and Nebuchadnezzar's so-called South Palace; as well as important religious structures in other major cult centers, including Eanna (the goddess of love and war's temple at Uruk), Ebabbar (the sun-god's temple at Sippar), Ehulhul (the moon-god's temple at Harran) and Ezida (the scribe-god's temple at Borsippa).

Project Team

The Living Among Ruins team is based at the Historisches Seminar, LMU Munich and comprises Karen Radner (Chair for the Ancient History of the Near and Middle East), Jamie Novotny, Frauke Weiershäuser, and Giulia Lentini (PhD research student under the supervision of Radner and Novotny).

From left to right, Frauke Weiershäuser, Jamie Novotny, and Giulia Lentini working on various Neo-Babylonian cylinders in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin and the British Museum in London.

Primary BTMAo Contributors

BTMAo Student Assistants

Over the course of the development of BTMAo, several BA students have contributed to the creation of this open-access website in a variety of ways, including the compilation of data used in the informational pages. The following BA students have assisted the project:

Meynell's and Weir's work on BTMAo was carried out as part of the Cambridge–LMU Strategic Partnership, in connection with the project "Teaching and Researching the Assyrian Empire: Benchmarking Best Practice at Cambridge and Munich."

Credits and Copyright

The contents of this website, except where noted below, are the copyright of the BTMAo Project. They are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.

This means that you are free to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt our work without permission, under the following conditions:

Any of these conditions may be waived in the right circumstances, if you explicitly ask us for permission.

Read our hints and suggestions for reusing material from Oracc. For information on how to cite Oracc URLs online and in print, click here.

Images taken from third-party websites are all credited and linked to those websites, where information about copyright may be found.

Homepage picture credit

Satellite image of the Ka-dingirra and New City districts of Babylon, with the reconstructed remains of the South Palace, Ištar Gate, four temples, two private houses, and the Greek theater.

Novotny Jamie

Novotny Jamie, 'About the Project', Babylonian Temples and Monumental Architecture online (BTMAo), The BTMAo Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2024 [http://oracc.org/btmao/AbouttheProject/]

 
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BTMAo 2019-. BTMAo is based at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Historisches Seminar (LMU Munich, History Department) - Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East. BTMAo is part of the four-year project Living Among Ruins: The Experience of Urban Abandonment in Babylonia (September 2019 to October 2023), which is funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung as part of the program "Lost Cities. Wahrnehmung von und Leben mit verlassenen Städten in den Kulturen der Welt," coordinated by Martin Zimmermann and Andreas Beyer. Content released under a CC BY-SA 3.0 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/] license, 2007-.
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