Der Panbabylonismus

Babylon! The fascination with the cultural and political center of Mesopotamia remains unbroken to this day. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was particularly strong: a group of German Orientalists sought the common origin of cultures and found it in Babylon. An ancient worldview was for them the nucleus from which various cultures developed. The concept of Panbabylonism was born. Michael Weichenhan demonstrates how old ideas about the original religion of humanity connected with the knowledge about the age, significance, and capabilities of Babylonian astronomy that became accessible through excavations in the land between the rivers, and how the expectations of the Wilhelminian era regarding future developments in science and religion were projected onto the resulting image of the beginning of cultural history.