4,000 years ago there was a powerful, progressive, and incredibly wealthy city. It developed into one of the greatest cities in the world. The streets were paved, numerous gates led into the walled city that had over 250 towers that were at least 100 meters high. Babylon was founded in 1894 BC and abandoned in 1000 AD.
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.
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 site of the ancient city lies just south of present-day Baghdad. The last known record of habitation of the town dates from the 10th century AD, when it was referred to as the "small village of Babel".
The town became part of a small independent city-state with the rise of the First Babylonian dynasty in the 19th century BC. The Amorite king Hammurabi founded the short-lived Old Babylonian Empire in the 18th century BC. He built Babylon into a major city and declared himself its king. Southern Mesopotamia became known as Babylonia, and Babylon eclipsed Nippur as the region's holy city. The empire waned under Hammurabi's son Samsu-iluna, and Babylon spent long periods under Assyrian, Kassite and Elamite domination.
After the Assyrians had destroyed and then rebuilt it, Babylon became the capital of the short-lived Neo-Babylonian Empire, a neo-Assyrian successor state, from 609 to 539 BC. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon ranked as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. After the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the city came under the rule of the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Roman, and Sassanid empires.
It has been estimated that Babylon was the largest city in the world (1770BC – 1670 BC) and again (612BC – 320 BC).
It was perhaps the first city to reach a population above 200,000. Estimates for the maximum extent of its area range from 890 to 900 hectares (2,200 acres).
The remains of the city are in present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometres (53 mi) south of Baghdad, and its boundaries have been based on the perimeter of the ancient outer city walls, an area of about 1,054.3 hectares (2,605 acres). They comprise a large tell of broken mud-brick buildings and debris. The main sources of information about Babylon—excavation of the site itself, references in cuneiform texts found elsewhere in Mesopotamia, references in the Bible, descriptions in other classical writing (especially by Herodotus), and second-hand descriptions (citing the work of Ctesias and Berossus), present an incomplete and sometimes contradictory picture of the ancient city, even at its peak in the sixth century BC.
UNESCO inscribed Babylon as a World Heritage Site in 2019. The site receives thousands of visitors each year, almost all of whom are Iraqis. Construction is rapidly increasing, which has caused encroachments on the ruins.
Babylon, where modern writing and mathematics were invented. Ferries, roads, and drawbridges ensured efficient transport, and the mythical Hanging Gardens were a feat of engineering and were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The city's wealth was unimaginable. The people created impressive works of art out of gold, there was a golden image of Baal, a beautiful table that was supposedly made of 22,000 kilos of pure gold, with a golden lion and a golden statue of Man. The majestic Royal Palace was the largest ever built in world history.
Babylon used to exist in what is now modern-day Iraq. Everyone has heard of Babylon, or at least of the tallest tower in the world at that time, known as the Tower of Babel.
But how did the incredible rise and dramatic fall of Babylon and the Babylonian Empire come about?