Das wieder erstehende Babylon

Robert Koldewey's Das wieder erstehende Babylon, published by J. C. Hinrichs in 1913, is the primary excavation report of the German Oriental Society's dig at Babylon, which Koldewey directed from 1899 to 1917, uncovering the Ishtar Gate, the processional way and much of the city's Neo-Babylonian layout that still frames modern understanding of the site. Its strength is that it is a primary report by the excavation's own director, written while the work was fresh, and it remains a foundational reference for Babylon's archaeology more than a century later. Its limit is its age and the standards of its period: early twentieth century excavation and recording methods were cruder than modern archaeological practice, and some of Koldewey's dating and interpretive conclusions have since been revised by later fieldwork, so a specific claim should be checked against more recent Babylon scholarship as well as against this founding report.