Dynastic History|Southern Palace, Babylon — Rebuilt from 1978, Garrisoned in 2003

Nebuchadnezzar II's Southern Palace occupied the Kasr mound: a block of courtyards and throne rooms whose lower walls Robert Koldewey traced between 1899 and 1917. In February 1978 the Iraqi state began raising new walls directly on those courses. The Revival of Babylon project rebuilt the palace to heights and outlines that had to be guessed at, and UNESCO's inscription documents state plainly that the 1980s reconstructions rest on conjecture rather than evidence and have harmed the property's integrity. Bricks in the new walls were stamped in the manner of the ancient ones. Some record that the work was built by Saddam Hussein, son of Nebuchadnezzar, to glorify Iraq.

In April 2003 American forces established Camp Alpha on the site, taking in about 150 hectares of it. Polish forces assumed command that September and left on 15 January 2005. John Curtis of the British Museum inspected the site in December 2004 and reported anti-tank trenches driven through archaeological deposits, one of them 170 metres long; roughly 300,000 square metres treated with gravel; sandbags filled with local earth that carried potsherds and bone; fuel leakage at six container sites; and damage to ten of the moulded dragons on the Ishtar Gate foundation, which he attributed to attempts to prise the bricks loose. The site passed to Iraq's Ministry of Culture in 2005.

Babylon was inscribed on the World Heritage List in July 2019. Around 85 per cent of the city has never been excavated, and the palace that visitors walk through today is largely 1980s brick standing on ancient footings.

📸 Cover: a stamped brick in a modern wall of the reconstructed Southern Palace bearing Saddam Hussein's name, dated 1988, Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons