Babylon had never disappeared from artists' imaginations though and the exhibition at the British Museum from 13 November will mix archaeological artefacts with paintings inspired by the city - by the likes of Dürer, Blake, John Martin and Turner - to give a sense of both the real Babylon and the Babylon of the imagination. The period covered is that of the second half of the first millennium BC, the time of the city's pomp under Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC) and its subsequent decline. The aim of the exhibition is didactic and the interest of many of the exhibits lies in the story they tell rather than in their aesthetic qualities. The Babylonian Mappa Mundi, for example, is a small piece of broken clay partially covered with wedge-headed cuneiform writing and partially with an incised series of circles, lines and triangles. What this unprepossessing item actually shows is a schematic view of the city and its place in the world. Through the centre of the diagram flows the Euphrates with Babylon itself astride it. Surrounding it and within the band of the circular sea are further cities, the mountains from which the great river stems and the kingdom of Assyria. On the other side of the ocean are eight provinces while the writing describes part of the Babylonian foundation myth. Here then, on a piece of baked clay that would sit in the palm of your hand, is contained Babylon's geographical and cosmological world.

Other tablets show the Aramaic alphabet translated into cuneiform and were instrumental in cracking the code of cuneiform itself; and there are seals, horoscopes and royal chronicles.

The most striking of the artefacts, however, are the glazed brick reliefs of lions and dragons that ornamented the city's palaces and public buildings. A frieze of these magical creatures once stretched for 180 metres along Babylon's processional way, one of the great decorative schemes of history.