Now they never reopened that worthless town,
They just placed a marble stand on the ground.
These few words you’ll find written down:
“At the bottom of this ruin lies a big, bad clown—Big Bel.”
(sung to the tune of Big John—by Jimmy Dean, 1961)
They never reopened that ancient town of Babylon—it’s close enough to the words of Isaiah 13:20:
“She will never be inhabited, Nor will she be a place to reside in throughout all generations. No Arab will pitch his tent there, And no shepherds will rest their flocks there.”
Partying away that one 539 BCE night, they were cought with their pants down. Babylon surrendered promptly to the Medes, who used the place as a regional capital city for a time. Alexander the Great later planned to make it his own capital. Instead, he died there in 323 BCE. It dwindled away thereafter. The last mentions of habitation, as a small village, are around the 10th–11th centuries CE.
So, Babylon mirrors pretty well that collapsed mine of the Jimmy Dean song. What other verses can we adapt?
Through the wine and the clamor of that gilded hall,
Strode a giant of a man well known to all.
Revelers were laughing and hearts beat fast,
And everybody thought the feast would last—
’cept Bel.
It’s not exactly the same as with Big John that the “miners knew well.” He strode through the “man-made hell” of that collapsed mine on a mission to save them all—which he did. No. Belshazzar all but peed his pants at the handwriting on the wall telling him, before all the celebrants, that he’d been weighed in the balances and found wanting—and right when he’d been toasting his own gods, no less:
“Then the king turned pale and his thoughts terrified him, and his hips shook and his knees began to knock together.” (Daniel 5:6)
Big bad Bel was in no mood to save anyone. Instead, he becomes the embodiment of hubris crushed and left at the bottom of the Babylonian mine.
The town was not forgotton. It just was never rebuilt. They “placed a marble stand on top of it,” to mark the fate of the ax that chopped down the Assyrian ax of 5:20. It’s a UNESCO site today. You can go there for music, dance, theater, and art exhibitions staged amid the ruins—a faint and more uppity echo of the raucous night. There are cultural centers and museums. But only staff and visiting artists live there. In 2025, an area slogan was "We Are All Babylonians," as though Babylon weeping for its children of long ago. The yankee equivalent would be “The Night They Drove ‘ol Dixie Down.” (The Band, 1969)
Nabuzaradan’s my name, and I served on the Babylon train,
Till Cyrus’ army came and tore up the walls again.
In the winter of five-thirty-nine,
With the river run dry and the city resigned,
By May the tenth, the kingdom was done—
You can’t raise an empire up again once it’s gone.
The night they drove old Babylon down,
And all the news was shocking,
The night they drove old Babylon down,
And all the knees were knocking—
They went, Wah, wah-wah-wah, wah-wah. Wah-wah, wah-wah, wah wah wah wah wah.”
Now I guide on the ruins here, tell the tales year after year,
Folks come from far with their cameras and cheers.
They dance where the Ishtar Gate stands rebuilt,
Sing songs in the dust where the blood was once spilt.
We light up the night with a festival fire,
But it’s only a shadow of the old empire’s pyre.
(Chorus again): The night they drove old Babylon down.
****** The bookstore
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