The Babylonian Labyrinth
Hans Lyngsgård
Some months after I constructed the SOLBO labyrinth I visited the Vorderasiatische Museum in Berlin, Germany, and by chance stopped at a little exhibition case and looked at a little piece of clay from Babylon - upon it were  a lot of small labyrinths.
The museum had labelled it as a 'clay tablet with drawings of different liver conditions used for the purpose of prophecy'. It is dated to the 12th or 11th century BC.
In my eyes the 'liver conditions' are very clear labyrinths with one path. But in contradiction to the classical labyrinth there is no centre and separate entrances and exits. These small labyrinths could have been models for the SOLBO labyrinth.
I know that piety, cult and magic played an important role in ancient Babylon, and the priests would also have used the entrails of animals for their predictions. But in this work with oracles I guess that labyrinths had a certain rôle. But which?
Another indication points in the same direction. Studying labyrinth names we are familiar with the names of Troy Town and Trojaborg. But as Henning Eichberg has pointed out, there are other groups of names, the Jungfrudans type, and the Babylon type. The Babylon-type is to be found in Northern Europe as well as in Germany, and includes names like Babylon, Babylonie, Jerusalem, Niniveh, Jericho and others.
Could this be an accidental coincidence? I think that the entrail labyrinths fit together with the labyrinth names, and that they form a special group of labyrinths.
Hans Lyngsgård, Skanderborg, Denmark.

 Clay tablet from Babylon, 12th-11th centuries BC. Drawing by Hans Lyngsgård.
 Mask of Humbaba, the entrail demon; terracotta, Babylonian, early 2nd millennium BC. From the Mystic Spiral, by Jill Purce, Thames & Hudson 1974.
 Entrail labyrinth, Mesopotamia. From the Mystic Spiral, by Jill Purce, Thames & Hudson 1974.