Babylon

At 2,100 acres, Babylon was the largest and most important urban center in ancient Mesopotamia for over 2,500 years. The ancient city is located on the east bank of the Euphrates River, about 60 miles southwest of Baghdad in modern Iraq. Boasting monumental palaces, temples, and ziggurats, as well as ordinary houses and shops, Babylon was an important political and religious center for several ancient Near Eastern societies, including the Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, and Greeks. Examination of their texts and architecture reveal that the Babylonians' dedication to religion, philosophy, and astronomy is misrepresented in our modern popular imagination, which considers Babylon a city of decadent and immoral inhabitants.

[Page 327]Scholars have pieced together the city's history through archaeological excavations, cuneiform records, and classical sources. While a high-water table has flooded the city's first architectural levels, early sources mention that Akkadian King Sargon destroyed the city around 2340 BCE. The city's importance was elevated in 1894 BCE, when a dynasty of Amorites, formerly nomadic kings, took control of the city. When Hammurabi ascended the throne in1792 BCE, he expanded the city's control to dominate the entire Mesopotamian region. As the capital of the Old Babylonian empire,Babylon laid claim to several large temples dedicated to important deities such as Marduk and Ishtar and surrounded by monumental city walls and gates. The Old Babylonian empire would not last; Hittites from Anatolia sacked the city in 1595 BCE. For the next 400 years, a nonindigenous group called the Kassites ruled Babylon, a period that scholars are only now beginning to examine. Babylon gained its independence after the death of the last Kassite king, beginning a period of independent but politically unstable rule.

In northern Mesopotamia, the increasingly powerful neo-Assyrian empire conquered Babylon in 729 BCE. Although the Assyrians looked on the city as an important religious center, Babylon did not escape the wrath of Assyria's strongest king, Sennacherib, who destroyed the city's important temples to suppress a revolt. The reconstruction of the city's holy centers in the subsequent decades signifies Babylon's religious importance to the Assyrians.

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Starting in 626 BCE, Babylon grew in size and wealth when the city became the capital of the neo-Babylonian empire for the next century, replacing the Assyrians as the dominant force in the Near East. The city's temples were rebuilt, the city was substantially refortified, and new palaces were erected during this period. Like the Assyrians before them, the Babylonian empire declined under King Nabonidus's rule, and it was not long before the Persians under Cyrus would take control of Babylon in 539 BCE. Although not the capital of the Persian Empire,Babylon continued to thrive as a royal seasonal residence for the ruling dynasts.

Babylon remained an important political and religious center in the ancient Near East despite the city's inhabitants' attempted revolts against their Persian superiors. The city's significance in the ancient world continued upon Alexander the Great's conquest in 331 BCE. Alexander wished to make Babylon the capital of his world empire and made resources available to repair the city's important temples and construct a Greek theater.

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