The bricks were glazed with blue, yellow, and white and decorated with animals, birds, plants, and geometric designs. The center of the city of Babylon was the Processional Way, down which triumphant kings and armies would march, to the roaring cheers of the crowds. The walls of the Processional Way were decorated with lions, a symbol for their most important goddess, Ishtar. The main entrance to the city and the Processional Way was called the Ishtar Gate and was decorated in blue and yellow bricks with dragons and bulls to symbolize other gods.
After about forty years, Nebuchadnezzar was stricken with a peculiar insanity. He believed that he was a beast in the fields and began walking on all fours and eating grass.
Babylon only lasted about thirty years after Nebuchadnezzar’s death when it was captured by Persia, but that country left us a rich heritage. Babylonian mathematicians and astronomers named the constellations and the zodiac and made the first calculations of the motions of the stars and planets through the heavens. They also created a great body of literature, poetry, stories, laws, and philosophy.
