A trip to Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigre and the Euphrates, corresponding more or less to present-day Iraq: this is what Alberto Angela offers us. The oldest civilization in history was born here, older than the Egyptian one. We are in the land of the Sumerians, the Akkadians, then the Assyrians and the Babylonians. There where the mythical city of Babylon stood, which featured constructions admired throughout the ancient world: the hanging gardens, the walls and above all the tower, the Tower of Babel. A city about which much has been said: the gardens were among the seven wonders of the ancient world. The Jews were deported there after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II. And it is during Babylonian slavery that the myth of the sprawling, dangerous city, the kingdom of every perversion, was born. For the Jews, Babylon is synonymous with persecution and slavery.
