At the height of its aura in the seventh and 6th centuries B.C.E. , the ancient city of Babylon was the largest and moneyed in the humanity .
Under the ruthless and ambitious King Nebuchadnezzar II , the sprawl resolution in modern - daylight Iraq grew into a major city as large as Chicago , and boasted towering temples , ornately tiled castle and imposing city wall thick enough fortwo chariots to slide by each otherside by side .
allot to legend , it may also have been home to theHanging Gardens of Babylon , one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World ( see sidebar ) , and a hubristic sky - scraping temple that some historian believe inspire the biblical Tower of Babel .
But the glory 24-hour interval of Babylon were short - lived . As foretold by Old Testament oracle , the fantastic ancient metropolis fell to the Persians in 539 B.C.E. and slowly crumbled over one C of foreign invasion and occupations .
Although Babylon was designated aUNESCO World Heritage Sitein 2019 , there is n’t much unexpended to see of the once - unstoppable imperium that dazzle Greek historians and enslaved its rivals , most splendidly the scriptural Kingdom of Judah . If you took a trip to Babylon today , locate 55 miles ( 85 kilometer ) in the south of Baghdad , you ’d seea tacky recreationbuilt by Saddam Hussein in the seventies that ’s been partially destroyed by decades of war . It ’s a lamentable conclusion to such a fabled city .
Hammurabi and His Code
Nebachadnezzar was the most famed of Babylon ’s ruler , but he was n’t the first . Several empires rise and fell and rose again over the millennia on the same coveted soil between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers .
The early king to join warring Mesopotamian tribes into a individual sinewy metropolis - Department of State was the remarkableHammurabiin the 18th century B.C.E. Not only did this famous king successfully conquer or smithy alliance with Babylon ’s tearing enemies during his 43 - year reign , but he also construct Babylon ( which comprise southerly Mesopotamia and part of Assyria , now northern Iraq ) into a showplace for innovations in engineering and criminal justice .
Hammurabi ordered the construction of intricate canals to provide Babylon ’s citizens with fresh body of water , and fortified the metropolis ’s walls against invaders . He bear on himself with food distribution and public rubber in a city that represented something altogether new — the intermingling of hordes of people from wildly unlike culture .
In ordination to keep the public security among hoi polloi without association of blood or religion , Hammurabi createdhis famous Legal Code , essentially a detailed list of crimes and their consociate punishment :
This early system of retributive justice — cypher on an8 - foot ( 2.4 - meter ) diorite obeliskthat is housed in the Louvre in Paris — is believe to have been the basis of the ancient Hebrews ' code of jurisprudence put out in Exodus , known as " an heart for an eye , a tooth for a tooth . "
Hammurabi ’s singular brilliance as a military and domestic leader was n’t lapse on to his successor . Just day after Hammurabi ’s death , Babylon ’s old enemy declared their independence and readied their armies for invasion . The Babylonian realm vanish to pieces and the city would n’t return to glory for more than 1,000 years .
“By the Rivers of Babylon”
It was great and awful Nebuchadnezzar II who rebuild Babylon as a magnificentpaean to the creator god Marduk . rule from 605 to 562 B.C.E. , Nebuchadnezzar extended the Babylonian empire across Egypt , Syria and the Kingdom of Judah , where he confiscate Jerusalem in 597 B.C.E. , capturing tenner of thousands of Israelites and dragging them off to Babylon as drive laborers where the Bible tells usthey " cry " in exileby its river .
Because of Nebuchadnezzar ’s imperialist inhuman treatment and taste for golden shrine to pagan gods , Babylon appears as shorthand for everything ungodly in the Judeo - Christian tradition . In the New Testament Book of Revelation , the " Whore of Babylon " makes an appearance " adorned with atomic number 79 and gem and bead , holding in her handwriting a aureate cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual iniquity . "
According to historians , Nechuchadnezzar relocate conquered people around the empire to keep them from organizing rebellions against him — under his leaders , Babylon became the self-aggrandising and most modern metropolis in the ancient world .
In addition to building Babylon ’s colossal city walls , he was responsible for the stunning Processional Way , a wide thoroughfare draw with ornately tile walls depicting lions and firedrake in shining blueing and yellows . The Processional Way led to the Ishtar Gate , the city ’s grand northern ingress .
One of Nebuchadnezzar ’s best - known mental synthesis projects was the synagogue of Marduk , which sat atop a 300 - understructure ( 91 - cadence ) ziggurat accessible by a ramp that curve around its outside . The Grecian historian Herodotus , writing centuries after Babylon ’s peak , describedeight column stacked on top of one another . It ’s not severe to believe that Old Testament writer may have modeled their Tower of Babel after the Marduk temple , known as the " home of the frontier between heaven and Earth . "
How Babylon Fell
Just a few inadequate tenner after Nebuchadnezzar ’s death , Babylon was taken by the Iranian vanquisher Cyrus II , who reduce the city to just another outstation in his huge , Iran - based empire . Two C later , Alexander the Great planned to make Babylon the jewel of his Asiatic empire , but ended up dying in the city in 323 B.C.E. After a solid sack by the Parthians in the second century C.E. , Babylon never made a comeback .
Two millennia of robbery and warfare cut Babylon to the bare of ruin . In the other twentieth century , German archeologists recovered remnants of the Processional Way and reconstructed its blue - glazed roofing tile murals at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin .
It was Saddam Hussein who conduct up Nebuchadnezzar ’s mantle and tried to redo some of Babylon ’s former glory , but end up with what graphics historians decried as " Disney for a despot . " Much to the consternation of archaeologist , Saddam farm city walls of 38 human foot ( 11.5 meters ) and built a papist - style arena on the ruins of previous Babylon . He even stamped his own name on the brick , just as Nebuchadnezzar had done . Although some of the recreation were damaged during the draw out line of the Iraq War ( 2003 - 11 ) , many of the gaudily painted buildings continue and are opened to the public , includingSaddam ’s Babylonian castle .
What else can you see in Babylon ? " Visitors can stroll through the remnant of the brick and remains structures which stretch out across 10 square km [ 3.8 square miles ] , and see the famed Lion of Babylon statue , as well as large portions of the original Ishtar Gate,“reported Reutersin 2019 . While Babylon itself is primarily a ruination , it ’s located just a few mi from the modernistic urban center of Hilla ( or al - Hillah ) which has a universe of about 500,000 people .
Babylon FAQ
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