A new, modern museum will open in the ancient city of Babylon this month. (Photo: Joao Silva, NYT)

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This week the New York Times published an intriguing article on Iraqi efforts to preserve, protect, restore and then rebuild the ancient city of Babylon and make it a draw for tourists, with U.S. taxpayer assistance. The Times reports that a modern Babylon museum will open later this month.

Times’ reporter Steven Lee Myers also posted a fascinating four minute video walking through some of the rebuilt ruins of Babylon, and explaining Iraqi efforts to protect and restore numerous Biblical sites.

What’s more, Times’ reporter Stephen Farrell posted an equally compelling three and a half minute video on the tomb of the Hebrew Prophet Ezekiel in the Iraqi town of Kifl, describing how Muslims pray at the tomb of this Jewish prophet, and how the Iraqi government wants to study the site more, preserve the it better, and draw more tourists there.

Other Biblical sites in Iraq are also given attention on the Times’ website.

“The Babylon project is Iraq’s biggest and most ambitious by far, a reflection of the ancient city’s fame and its resonance in Iraq’s modern political and cultural heritage,” the Times reports, noting that “in November, the State Department announced a new $2 million grant to begin work to preserve the site’s most impressive surviving ruins. They include the foundation of the Ishtar Gate, built in the sixth century B.C. by Nebuchadnezzar’s father, Nabopolassar, and adorned with brick reliefs of the Babylonian gods Marduk and Adad.”

“The American reconstruction team has refurbished a modern museum on the site, as well as a model of the Ishtar Gate that for decades served as a visitors’ entrance. Inside the museum is one of the site’s most valuable relics: a glazed brick relief of a lion, one of 120 that once lined the processional way into the city. The museum, with three galleries, is scheduled to open this month, receiving its first visitors since 2003. And with new security installed, talks are under way to return ancient Babylonian artifacts from the National Museum in Baghdad. The fate of Babylon is already being disputed by Iraqi leaders, with antiquities officials clashing with local authorities over when to open it to visitors and how to exploit the site for tourism that, for the most part, remains a goal more than a reality. Even now they are clashing over whether the admission fee should go to the antiquities board or the provincial government.”

Honestly, I’d love to put together a Joshua Fund “Prayer & Vision” tour to visit Babylon and Ezekiel’s tomb. Not quite ready for that yet, but please join us in Israel in May for an amazing tour of Israel and the 2011 Epicenter Conference.