babylon

I was standing in line to buy a ticket when a woman came up to me and asked me in French if I was going to see the Babylon exhibit. I said I was and she handed me a ticket. She started to tell me why she had an extra, but I couldn't follow her explanation. I must have looked dubious, because she said "yes, it's a real one." And it was.

The first part of the exhibit consisted of objects from ancient Babylon -- things like cuneiform tablets and mosaics of snake-necked dragons and gape-jawed lions from the great blue gate dedicated to the goddess Ishtar.

The second part of the exhibit gathered works about ancient Babylon, created after the city had been destoyed and was envisioned less as an actual place than as a archetype of hubris or wickedness. There was a whole room ringed with paintings of the Tower of Babel, each depicting a ziggurat rising to the clouds, looming like a strangely menacing wedding cake.

But what I liked best was a woodcut by Durer (see picture below), depicting the Whore of Babylon riding sidesaddle on my favorite symbol of evil -- the beast with seven heads and ten horns. I was inordinately pleased to see that Durer's beast looked vaguely like the sketch I drew awhile back. And (because it's kind of hard to see and I know you're wondering) there were two horns on three of the heads and one on each of the others.