Mystery Babylon the Great sits far off in desert, a wilderness, Rev 17:3. An unpopulated place. No doubt it should be pointed out that Rome sits in a city, is a city. Another variance between Rome, ancient or modern, and Mystery Babylon?

On the other hand,

“The woman whom you saw IS the great city, which reigns over the kings of the earth.”
Rev 17:18 emphasis added

Contradictions in the same chapter? Or two different entities, one symbolic of the other?

Mystery Babylon is very rich

She is dressed and decorated with the most expensive of clothing and jewelry. She drinks from a gold cup that filled with the nasty fluids of fornication, Rev 17:4.

It does not seem that she gets rich off of kings and other merchants. Instead, she makes kings and other merchants rich. Mystery Babylon brings others great luxury and all sort of wild sex.

“For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her sexual immorality, the kings of the earth committed sexual immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from the abundance of her luxury.”
Rev 18:3 WEB

Among the immediate allies then would be the kings and merchants of the earth.

She is source of everything disgusting and stupid

She is the mother even all “of the abominations of the earth.” Rev 17:5 WEB

She sits on a scarlet “beast,” an animal.

This animal is monstrous. It is full of blasphemous names and has seven heads and ten horns, Rev 17:3.

Of course that is the way Satan/the dragon is described in Rev 12:3, 9. Then Satan is described as coming out of the sea in Rev 13:1-2. It seems as if this “dragon” spawns a human organization that also has seven heads and ten horns. The heads are clearly the heads of the organization. It appears that this is what is called “the mystery of lawlessness” which was already at work in the first century in 2Thes 2:7. This organizations and leaders are said to be,

“ … the working of Satan with all power signs and lying wonders.” 2Thes 2:9 WEB.

And the dragon and this organization has ten horns. Horns in Scripture are often symbolic of power, even particular nations or kings in passages like Dan 7:24, and Dan 8:20.

So this Satanic organization is ruled by a council of seven men, and is supported by ten kings/nations.

The beast is both an ally and a competitor

Now Mystery Babylon rides this monster to victory. “the beast that carries her,” Rev 17:7 WEB. And the beast and the horns also hate her, Rev 17:7.

Think of them as like rival mafia clans which may work together at times, but may also bitterly fight at other times. Both work to “overcome” the saints, Rev 13:7. Babylon is “drunken with the blood of the saints,” Rev 17:5 WEB.

Will Mystery Babylon ascend to the heavens?

“Though Babylon should mount up to the sky, … yet from me shall destroyers come to her, says Yahweh. ”
Jer 51:53 WEB

“and you shall say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise again because of the evil that I will bring on her; …”
Jer 51:64 WEB.

WEB is the World English Bible, a copyright free revision
of the original ASV American Standard Version 1901