Babylon

Capital: Babylon

Founded: 2300 BC

Age: About 4,320 years

Location: Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq

Area 9 km2 (3.5 sq mi)

Date dissolved: 539 BC

Cultures Akkadian, Amorite, Kassite, Assyrian, Chaldean, Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian,

Sasanian

Babylon was the capital city of the ancient Babylonian empire, which itself is a term referring to
either of two separate empires in the Mesopotamian area in antiquity. These two empires achieved
regional dominance between the 19th and 15th centuries BC, and again between the 7th and 6th
centuries BC.

Babylonia was a state in ancient Mesopotamia. The city of Babylon, whose ruins are located in
present-day Iraq, was founded more than 4,000 years ago as a small port town on the Euphrates
River. It grew into one of the largest cities of the ancient world under the rule of Hammurabi. Several
centuries later, a new line of kings established a Neo-Babylonian Empire that spanned from the
Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. During this period, Babylon became a city of beautiful and
lavish buildings. Biblical and archaeological evidence point toward the forced exile of thousands of
Jews to Babylon around this time.

“Babylon lies in a wide plain, a vast city in the form of a square with sides nearly 14 miles long and a
circuit of some 56 miles, and in addition to its enormous size it surpasses in splendour any city of the
known world,” he begins. “It is surrounded by a broad deep moat full of water, and within the moat
there is a wall 50 royal cubits wide and 200 high.”

The city, built along both banks of the Euphrates river, had steep embankments to contain the river's
seasonal floods. The earliest known mention of Babylon as a small town appears on a clay tablet
from the reign of Sargon of Akkad (2334–2279 BC) of the Akkadian Empire.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon ranked as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Brief intro –

Babylon was a city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which can be found in present-day
Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 55 miles south of Baghdad. All that remains today of the ancient
famed city of Babylon is a mound, or tell, of broken mud-brick buildings and debris in the fertile
Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq. It began as a small town that
had sprung up by the beginning of the third millennium B.C.E.. The town flourished and attained
prominence and political repute with the rise of the first Babylonian dynasty.

The city itself was built upon the Euphrates and divided in equal parts along its left and right banks,
with steep embankments to contain the river's seasonal floods. Babylon grew in extent and grandeur
over time, but gradually became subject to the rule of Assyria. It has been estimated that Babylon
was the largest city in the world from c. 1770 to 1670 B.C.E., and again between c. 612 and 320
B.C.E. It was the "holy city" of Babylonia by approximately 2300 B.C.E., and the seat of the Neo-
Babylonian Empire from 612 B.C.E. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders
of the Ancient World.

Walls of Babylon- Art and architecture flourished throughout the Babylonian Empire, especially in
the capital city of Babylon, which is also famous for its impenetrable walls.

Hammurabi first encircled the city with walls. Nebuchadnezzar II further fortified the city with three
rings of walls that were 40 feet tall.

The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the walls of Babylon were so thick that chariot races were
held on top of them. The city inside the walls occupied an area of 200 square miles, roughly the size
of Chicago today.

Nebuchadnezzar II built three major palaces, each lavishly decorated with blue and yellow glazed
tiles. He also built a number of shrines, the largest of which, called Esagil, was dedicated to Marduk.
The shrine stood 280 feet tall, nearly the size of a 26-story office building.

Population n area -It has been estimated that Babylon was the largest city in the world c. 1770 – c. 
1670 BC, and again c. 612 – c. 320 BC. It was perhaps the first city to reach a population above
200,000.[2] Estimates for the maximum extent of its area range from 890[3] to 900 hectares (2,200
acres).

Hanging Gardens of Babylon-

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon are one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Hanging
Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World listed by Hellenic culture.
They were described as a remarkable feat of engineering with an ascending series of tiered gardens
containing a wide variety of terraced trees, shrubs, flowers and manmade waterfalls, and vines,
resembling a large green mountain constructed of mud bricks.

Yet archaeologists have turned up scant evidence of the gardens. It’s unclear where they were
located or whether they ever existed at all.

Other accounts suggest that these lush, gravity-defying, terraced gardens were a gift from
Nebuchadnezzar to his wife Amyitis because she missed the green hills and valleys of her homeland.

In this palace he erected very high walls, supported by stone pillars; and by planting what was called
a pensile paradise, and replenishing it with all sorts of trees, he rendered the prospect an exact
resemblance of a mountainous country. This he did to gratify his queen, because she had been
brought up in Media, and was fond of a mountainous situation.

Ishtar Gate-

The main entrance to the inner city of Babylon was called the Ishtar Gate. The portal was decorated
with bright blue glazed bricks adorned with pictures of bulls, dragons and lions.
The Ishtar Gate gave way to the city’s great Processional Way, a half-mile decorated corridor used in
religious ritual to celebrate the New Year. In ancient Babylon, the new year started with the spring
equinox and marked the beginning of the agricultural season.

German archaeologists excavated the remains of the gate in the early twentieth century and
reconstructed it in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum using original bricks.

Some researchers have uncovered evidence that suggests the hanging gardens existed, but not in
Babylon—they may have actually been located in the city of Nineveh in upper Mesopotamia.

the temple of Marduk, the dominant feature of the city on what was then the east bank of the
Euphrates- The temple is a square building, two furlongs in each way, with bronze gates, and was
still in existence in my time; it has a solid central tower, one furlong square, with a second erected
on top of it and then a third, and so on up to eight. All eight towers can be climbed by a spiral way
running round the outside, and about half-way up there are seats and a shelter for those who make
the ascent to rest on. On the summit of the topmost tower stands a great temple …”

planning –

The Euphrates River divided the city in two between an 'old' and a 'new' city with the Temple of
Marduk and the great towering ziggurat in the center where, most likely, the gardens were also
located. Streets and avenues were widened to better accommodate the yearly processional of the
statue of the great god Marduk in the journey from his home temple in the city to the New Year
Festival Temple outside the Ishtar Gate.

In the center of Babylon stood a massive seven-story (91 meters) ziggurat, which was a unique
pyramid-like temple. The ancient Babylonians named this particular ziggurat, Etemenanki. (That’s
Sumerian for “temple of the foundation of heaven and earth.”) This towering temple was dedicated
to Marduk, the ancient Mesopotamian god. The structure was greatly revered by the citizens of
Babylon, who believed it to carry deep astro-theological meaning.

There were a number of smaller temples in this eastern, older section of the city, together with
quays for merchant ships, an indicator of Babylon’s rise to fabulous prosperity through conquest and
trade. Within a neat grid of streets the central and most important artery was the Processional Way,
a paved road running north through the Ishtar Gate, embellished with bulls and dragons in relief, to
the Bit Akitu temple, the “House of the New Year’s Festival”. Two great palace complexes rambled
across 40 acres of land to the west of the Ishtar Gate, one of Babylon’s eight fortified defences.

King Nebuchadnezzar led numerous pro-trade civil planning projects including the construction of
roads leading to and from Babylon. The city eventually became the economic heartbeat of the
Babylonian Empire.

In addition to Babylon once being a major center for commerce, it was also a place of grandeur and
beauty. King Nebuchadnezzar insulated this special city with 85 foot thick walls that surrounded the
entire 200 square mile city.

Palaces-

Nebuchadnezzar II's city would have no less than three major palaces. The southern palace was
1,065 feet (325 m) by 720 feet (220 m) in size. It included a throne room with a glazed brick panel
showing palmettes, floral reliefs and lions. The tiles were glazed in blue and yellow, something
common among the most important structures in Nebuchadnezzar II's Babylon.

The king also had a northern palace (which hasn't been fully excavated) and a summer palace, on the
northern tip of the outer wall. It was "for use in summer when the city air was stifling and its smells
at their worst," writes George.

The ziggurat- was a step-pyramid, whose shape was the culmination of the Mesopotamian practice
of building new temples on top of the foundations of earlier ones .The base of the ziggurat
measured around 90 by 90 meters and modern calculations have estimated its finished height at 90
meters (Marzahn 1992: 38). The temple at the top of the ziggurat was said to have been clad in blue
tiles . Herodotus described the ziggurat as having 8 layers with the temple on the very top, and a
staircase winding around the outside of the platforms. This structure most likely served as the
inspiration for the biblical ‘Tower of Babel,’ which has been the subject of many modern artistic
endeavors .Alexander the Great was in the process of restoring it when he died at Babylon in 323
BCE. The ziggurat is not well preserved in the archaeological record as its baked bricks were pillaged
by later peoples for use as building materials.

Materials -I laid their foundations of mortar and bricks and with shining blue glaze tiles with pictures
of bulls and awful dragons I adorned the interior; mighty cedars to roof them over I caused to be
stretched out, the wings of the gates of cedar wood coated with bronze, the lintels and the door
knobs of brass I fastened into the openings of the gates; massive bulls of bronze and dreadful, awe-
inspiring serpents I set up at their thresholds, the two gates I ornamented with great splendour to
the amazement of all men. In order that the onslaught of battle might not draw nigh to Imgur-Bel,
the wall of Babylon.”

Greatest achievement - The state of Babylonia lasted over 1500 years, from 1895-539 BC. One of the
major achievements of the Babylonian Empire was the establishment of the world's first written
code of law, the Code of Hammurabi. An architectural achievement of the Babylonian Empire was, of
course, the Ziggurat of Babylon.

Queen -The Queen of Babylon ... La cortigiana di Babilonia (English title: The Queen of Babylon) is a
1954 Italian film set in the Neo-Babylonian Empire in the year 600 BC. The only woman ever to have
ruled the mighty Assyrian Empire, Semiramis titillated writers and painters from the Roman period
to the 19th century. Queen Semiramis surveys the building of Babylon, of which she is the legendary
founder.

Religion- Babylonian religion is the religious practice of Babylonia. Babylonian mythology was greatly
influenced by their Sumerian counterparts and was written on clay tablets inscribed with the
cuneiform script derived from Sumerian cuneiform. The myths were usually either written in
Sumerian or Akkadian.

Occupation -While many people still worked as farmers in the country, in the city a person could
grow up to work in a number of different jobs such as priest, scribe, merchant, craftsman, soldier,
civil servant, or laborer.