In light of the other thread about traveling back to 1900–
When reading about the Book of Daniel, Balshazzar’s feast and all, I wonder: How about travelling back to ancient Babylon? I’m referring to Chaldea, 6c. B.C. Perhaps the court of Nabopollazar.
Would it be possible for the time traveler to fit in? To learn the babylonian language beforehand (are there sufficient records of it?)? Would Aramaic suit you instead?
And what would it be like to walk the streets of the ancient world–five centuries before Caesar and Christ? Would the people just sense you were different, even if you had the dress down pat and kept your mouth shut?
Or would people be essentially the same, no matter what time or place: Greedy, loving, tempermental, &c
Depending on what you look like and how old you are, things could be wildly different.
I’m a 46 year old white male, very celto-germanic looking. I’d be a Barbarian, period. Unable to speak the language and lacking any useful skills for the era, I’d probably end up pretty quickly being taken for a slave, or just outright killed.
Maybe – but i’m sure babylon was the biggest and richest city in the world, and had merchants from all over the old world, from the orient to least as far west as the Greek city states in asia minor.
As a merchant power, babylon had to have a code of laws – killing people for looking different would be bad for business.
Was Chaldean Babylon sufficiently cosmopolitan that strangers were given the protection of the law? Or did they follow the ancient rule that anyone not deemed a citizen could be summarily enslaved?
My guess is that guests, especially merchants, would be protected – if you enslave every stranger, you have no trade. And babylon was the trading post of its time.
But even so, the question is, could someone train themselves to fit in? Aramaic lessons, etc.? And walk the streets?