Babylon

"… The region known as Mesopotamia was the home of many civilizations. … the region was invaded and conquered many times, and the successive dynasties spoke and wrote in many different languages. The convention of referring to all the mathematical texts that come from this area between 2500 and 300 BCE as ‘Babylonian’ gives undue credit to a single one of the many dynasties that that ruled over this region."

"The civilization of Babylonia was not as fruitful for humanity as Egypt’s, not as varied and profound as India’s, not as subtle and mature as China’s. And yet it was from Babylonia that those fascinating legends came which, through the literary artistry of the Jews, became an inseparable portion of Europe’s religious lore; it was from Babylonia, rather than from Egypt, that the roving Greeks brought to their city-states and thence to Rome and ourselves, the foundations of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, grammar, lexicography, archeology, history, and philosophy. The Greek names for the metals and the constellations, for weights and measures, for musical instruments and many drugs, are translations, sometimes mere transliterations, of Babylonian names."

"Colonel Vans Kennedy has long since declared that Babylonia was, from her origin, the seat of Sanscrit literature and Brahman learning. And how or why should the Brahmans have penetrated there, unless it was as the result of intestine wars and emigration from India?"

"America as a metaphor for Babylon has been a common idea both here and around the world for much of the past" American century." ... To many of those on the far right, Americans are a decadent people, deceived by a mass culture and mass media that serve up madness and mayhem as entertainment hourly in TV programs, films, and popular music."