Herodotus in Babylon Research Paper by Shaad

This paper refutes the claim that Herodotus did not visit Babylon despite the apparent first hand accounts of the city found in the Histories. It first presents the premise to the claim, describing how Herodotus' accounts conflict with the findings of modern scholarship and then goes on to examine each of these conflicts and offers possible explanations. Where Herodotus seems to be grossly exaggerating the measurement of the city walls, the paper shows how these could have arisen through errors of transcription. Regarding Herodotus' failure to mention the famed Hanging Gardens, the paper argues that the fame of this structure is recent, and that in the context of the Histories it is negligible. Herodotus tells the story of Queen Nitocris, which modern scholarship completely ignores, and the essay shows that there is truth in the story, and that the author could only have learnt it by visiting Babylon. Finally, the paper examines how the author describes Babylonian customs, and concludes that they are indeed first-hand accounts.