Belus (Babylon)

Belus is the legendary founder of Babylon , like Ninos of the Assyrian Nineveh . However, he was worshiped as a sun god in Babylonian-Assyrian times . In the late Babylonian period he was merged with Ba'al or Marduk . The Greeks regarded the ruins of Etemenanki in Babylon as the tomb of Belus. Strabon (Geographika 16, 1.5) describes it as a square pyramid made of brick with one stage side length and one stage height. It was supposedly destroyed by Xerxes . Alexander the Greatwanted to rebuild what his early death prevented him from doing. Strabo states that just clearing the rubble would have taken 10,000 men two months.

literature

• Helmut Freydank u. a .: Lexicon of the Old Orient. Egypt * India * China * Western Asia. VMA-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 3-928127-40-3 .
• Brigitte Groneberg : The gods of the Mesopotamia. Cults, myths, epics. Artemis & Winkler, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-7608-2306-8 .

Web links

Commons : Baal  - collection of images, videos and audio files