AI brings Babylon’s lost hymn back to life
Poem describes morals, midwives and majestic rivers of Babylon.
A hymn to the ancient city of Babylon has been reconstructed after 2,100 years using AI to piece together 30 clay tablet fragments. Once lost after Alexander the Great’s conquest, the song praises the city’s grandeur, morals and daily life in exceptional poetic detail.
The hymn, sung to the god Marduk, depicts Babylon as a flourishing paradise filled with jewelled gates, verdant pastures and flowing rivers. AI tools helped researchers quickly assemble and translate the fragments, revealing a third of the original 250-line text.
The poem sheds rare light on Babylonian values, highlighting kindness to foreigners, the release of prisoners and the sanctity of orphans. It also gives a surprising glimpse into the role of women, including cloistered priestesses who acted as midwives.
Parts of the hymn were copied out by schoolchildren up to 1,400 years after it was composed, showing its cultural importance. Scholars now place it alongside the Epic of Gilgamesh as one of the most treasured literary works from ancient Mesopotamia.
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