"The World Heritage Committee inscribed five new sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List this afternoon. Among them are two natural sites, one in France and one in Iceland, a mixed, i.e. natural and cultural, site in Brazil and two cultural sites in Burkina Faso and Iraq", the release said.
The natural sites, the release noted, include the French Southern Lands and Seas, rare land masses in the southern Indian Ocean with one of the largest populations of birds and marine mammals in the world, as well as Iceland's Vatnajokull National Park with 10 volcanoes, eight of which are subglacial.
The new cultural sites inscribed by UNESCO are the Ancient Ferrous Metallurgy Sites of Burkina Faso representing the oldest evidence of the development of iron production and the ruins of the city of Babylon in Iraq, dating to between 626 and 539 BCE.
Brazil’s coastal town of Paraty and the island of Ilha Grande with their notable diversity of species - including the jaguar, the white-lipped peccary and the woolly spider monkey - and biospheres like tropical forest, mountains and waterfalls have now been added to the newly-inscribed UNESCO mixed sites.
The release added that the Committee extended the transboundary natural and cultural heritage site of the Ohrid region in North Macedonia, which encompasses the Albanian part of Lake Ohrid, the Lin Peninsula, and a strip of land connecting the peninsula to the Macedonian border.
The ruins of the ancient city of Babylon, located in Iraq, were included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, the organization said on Friday in a statement.
“Situated 85 km [some 53 miles] south of Baghdad, the property includes the ruins of the city which, between 626 and 539 BCE, was the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. It includes villages and agricultural areas surrounding the ancient city. Its remains, outer and inner-city walls, gates, palaces and temples, are a unique testimony to one of the most influential empires of the ancient world. Seat of successive empires, under rulers such as Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon represents the expression of the creativity of the Neo-Babylonian Empire at its height”, the statement said.
Babylon is associated with two of the seven wonders of the world mentioned by Antipater of Sidon: the Hanging Gardens and the walls of Babylon. The latter was later replaced in the list by the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
The Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered in 593 BC by Persian King Cyrus the Great after the Battle of Opis. The city lost its importance as a capital of a big empire until its conquest by Macedonian King Alexander the Great in 331 BC, after which Babylon became a key economic center of the young Macedonian Empire. Babylon was also the site of Alexander's death in 323 BC. After the dissolution of the Macedonian Empire, the city fell into decline.
The ruins of Babylon were significantly damaged during the 2003 US invasion in Iraq as allied troops deployed a military base with a helipad inside the ruins of the city.