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Hymn to Babylon, missing for a millennium, has been discovered
- An international team from Ludwig Maximilian University and the University of Baghdad deciphered the lost Hymn to Babylon, publishing findings in the journal Iraq in 2025.
- The hymn, lost for more than a millennium and inscribed using the ancient cuneiform script on clay artifacts from Sippar, was reconstructed by digitally aligning pieces from over 30 separate tablets through the use of AI technology.
- The 250-line hymn praises Babylon as a cultural capital and largest city, describes its landscape, the Euphrates flood, and acknowledges women’s roles as priestesses and their devotion.
- Professor Enrique Jiménez noted that it is surprising such a widely known hymn in antiquity had remained undiscovered until recently, emphasizing its importance and shedding light on previously unrecognized female roles in religious life.
- The hymn’s rediscovery enriches the global Electronic Babylonian Library and provides rare insights into Babylonian society, foreign relations, and natural phenomena described sparingly in Mesopotamian literature.
32 Articles
32 Articles
In collaboration with the University of Baghdad, Enrique Jiménez, professor of Literatures of the Old Middle East at the Institute of Asyriology of Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, has succeeded in rewriting and translating the text of a hymn of Babylon lost for a thousand years, which offers an exceptional vision of what the life of the ancient Mesopotamian metropolis was like. The Babylonian texts were written in cuneiform writing on c…
"A fascinating Hindu that describes Babylon throughout its majesty and gives a vision of the life of its inhabitants, men and women," says researcher from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Researchers have reconstructed a long praise to the capital of Mesopotamia and its priests. Among the 20 sources are writing boards of students. What about the oldest schools in the world?
3000-year-old hymn to Babylon discovered
The previously unknown hymn of praise comes from the period around 1000 BCE. LMU Professor Enrique Jiménez used AI to find 30 other related manuscripts. In the course of a collaboration with the University of Baghdad, LMU's Enrique Jiménez has rediscovered a text that had been lost for a thousand years. "It's a fascinating hymn that describes Babylon in all its majesty and gives insights into the lives of its inhabitants, male and female." Babyl…
Lost Babylonian Hymn Reconstructed After 2,000 Years Using AI
Researchers have pieced together a lost Babylonian hymn using AI. Credit: Enrique Jiménez / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 A hymn that had been lost for almost two thousand years has been reconstructed by researchers with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), shedding new light on ancient Babylonian life. The Babylonian hymn, pieced together from over 30 clay tablets, was identified through a digital platform developed by scholars at Ludwig Maximilian Univ…
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UpstractBabylonian text missing for 1,000 years deciphered with AI
A team of ancient literature experts have deciphered a Mesopotamain text that was missing for over 1,000 years. Etched on clay tablets, the Hymn to Babylon describes the ancient megacity in “all of its majesty,” and gives new insights into the everyday lives of those who resided there. The text is detailed in a study published in the journal Iraq. The cuneiform tablet with the newly discovered hymn. CREDIT: LMU/Anmar A. Fadhil, Department of Arc…
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