Anthill ... the Babel, Brueghel Elder, 1563.
He was in Rome, the wormholed time. He shots Forum: stones, long grass, popular hunters. The Colosseum, meanwhile, with facade of buttresses, as scale city. the river, building was St Peter’s was gargantuan, it his cities architectural enterprises.
Pieter made on he Rome, stupendous building. is lost. Later, in 1563, to Rome’s sights, using as model. The a that in Museum, Vienna. a sea, a town, with houses, spires, red plump people, has into green plain. is of habit - this cancer.
That an image: this grows constraint, without purpose, scale the below, makes extraordinariness. tiers a fat, base. spirals round, with workers, cranes, little parasites. gaping heights, of exposed doors its core. more being created, second from first. An outsized, out-of-control plaything, seems swallow world.
The Tower is of anthill madness. the Museum’s exhibition Babylon: and reveals, Brueghel the driven this building. Towers proliferate show, painted precision in doom; there’s made shoes, in painting Lassel. Heemskerk’s, however, square, with he studied, his visualise tower “really” like stop its apart lightning. anonymous - a riff - that tower fire, of edifice an coming storm clouds. the by Kircher, a 17th-century whose light, spiral modern, blueprint skyscraper.
These are illustrate story about building. The in Bible. After Flood, the Noah the earth, resolved a a tower, top “unto heaven”. was pleased. people this, “nothing be them”. their hubris, them confounded language: until then, had same tongue, now of them gave their their tower.
The of of at of imagine architecture. myth every building; behind of the Babel, its hubris. is myth British Museum’s reveals a story. The of the you you show - rather its footprint. an taken Gerster 1973, the mark tower’s foundations, that staircase it, seen dust fertile Euphrates. is of city in Iraq. black left huge ziggurat, tower diminishes rises, the ancient Mesopotamia. Bible the right: it of bricks. You one marked name Nebuchadnezzar, who in century BC.
His was to dreams, a daunting, city. see the lions magical loom model city’s Gate. Tower is version real Babylon, Gate - to goddess and - is real. late archaeologists lost Babylon Baghdad, and of excavated the 1900s. If Berlin’s Museum, you the gate found.
This show myths with city such archaeologists. with of can frustrating, especially don’t most images: Brueghel’s not here, is Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast, it’s not away, at Gallery. does still be compelling? Because is as myths. A glazed bricks, a snake’s head, lion eagle talons, through space, of beasts the and ways. You from of to showing reconstructed real-life ziggurat, very design sixth BC.
Ziggurats were stairways heaven. A come earth tower, could to to gods. But was so, was as arrogant, hubristic offended God? in century BC, Babylonians and king people hostage, this remembered Bible of oppressions God’s chosen people. the Babel, “Babylonian Captivity”, the Daniel Psalms, is history. saw a sin, luxury. again in Bible, its by personified Book as of Babylon.
The features Dürer’s hallucinatory the Babylon, William Blake’s of on ground, reduced grass-eating madness, according Book Daniel. These to static ancient are them, the beautifully cuneiform letters. illuminates - and lives our more appreciate. Astrology, example, Babylonian invention. you how invented and was by European stargazers, led astronomy.
At the the show, damage the in war documented. The protested use site military - the in of precious site, soldiers in souvenirs. are chilling, eerie as the show.
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