Theater of Babylon

The Greek theater in Babylon is one of the easternmost buildings of this type and evidence of purely Hellenistic architecture in the Seleucid Empire .

The founding date of the theater is not known, perhaps it was built under Alexander the Great . This ruler stayed in Babylon for a long time and wanted to develop the city into one of his capital cities.

The building is located in the northeastern part of the city, within the inner city wall. The building was built into the rubble heaps of old temples and consists mainly of adobe bricks. Decorative elements consisted of terracotta and plaster, whereby the craftsmanship of these elements often does not meet the highest standards. The orchestra of the building is 11 meters wide. Nine stairs lead to the semicircle of the spectator tiers, the middle one being wider than the others. A palaestra was built behind the theater , which was 60 meters long. The palaestra was once adorned with pillars, but little of them was left during the excavations.

The theater was renovated several times after it was built. The original construction was certainly rather simple and only in a second phase a skene was erected, which was decorated with Doric columns . Since no roof tiles were found, the Skene probably once had a flat roof, while such buildings in Greece usually had a gable roof. A Greek inscription was found near the theater, reporting on renovation work and stylistically dated to the second century AD. So the building was still in operation in Parthian times .

The theater has recently been renovated and used again.

literature

• Friedrich Wetzel, Erich Friedrich Schmidt , Alfred Mallwitz : Das Babylon der Spätzeit (Scientific publications of the German Orient Society ; Bd. 62). Mann Verlag, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-7861-2001-3 , pp. 3-22 (unchanged reprint of the Berlin 1957 edition).

Coordinates: 32 ° 32 ′ 30 "  N , 44 ° 25 ′ 46.8"  E