Babilonia seu Babilon

15th century view of Babylon from the Nuremberg Chronicle.

This stylized woodcut view purportedly shows the ancient city of Babylon – though in a style unlikely to have been seen in the Persian Empire. A dense urban center is surrounded by heavily fortified walls, tower, and a moat. A decorative column is topped by an image of a queen holding a sword and scepter – the ultimate imposition of European imperialist ideals on the historic Near Eastern capital.

Hartmann Schedel’s Liber Chronicarum is considered to be one of the first encyclopedias printed in Europe and was an influential text of the Renaissance era. It is often called the Nuremberg Chronicle after the city in which it was originally printed (by Anton Koberger, godfather of Albrecht Dürer). Incredibly, the volume contained nearly 2,000 woodcuts across its 336 pages, though only approximately 650 of them were unique, ensuring that some images were re-used several times within updated captions.