Babylon

The Greek word 'Babylon' is a rendering of Babillu, a very old word in an unknown language. When Mesopotamia was infiltrated by people who spoke a Semitic language (Akkadians or Amorites), they recognized their own words Bâb ("gate") and ili ("gods") and concluded that this place was 'the gate of the gods'. (A similar etymology was invented for Arbela.)

The oldest building phase of Babylon can not be recovered. The city was (and the ruins are) situated on the banks of the river Euphrates, and the remains of the oldest city are below groundwater level. From written sources, however, we know that the city became important after the fall of the empire of the Third dynasty of Ur, when the Amorites had invaded the area.

In the first half of the second millennium, especially during the reign of king Hammurabi (1792-1750?), Babylon became the capital of Mesopotamia, and even though the political power of Babylonia had its ups and downs in the next millennium or so, Babylon remained the cultural capital of the ancient Near East.

The famous temple of Marduk, Esagila, and its ziggurat, Etemenanki, were considered to be the foundation of heaven on earth. In the creation epic Enûma êliš, Babylon is the center of the universe, an idea that is also implied (or parodied?) in the Biblical account of the "tower of Babel", in which the confusion of languages is followed by people spreading all over the world out of Babylon.

As cultural capital of the ancient Near East, even a politically powerless Babylon was an important city, which created a problem to the Assyrian kings, who conquered Babylonia in the eighth century. From Tiglath-pileser III (744-727) on, they had themselves enthroned as kings of both Assyria and Babylon: by uniting the city in a personal union with their empire, they wanted to express their respect for the Babylonian civilization, institutions, and science. However, the Babylonians revolted under Marduk-apla-iddin (703; the Biblical Merodach Baladan), and king Sennacherib sacked the city in 689 - an act of terrible impiety, because he broke the "axis" between heaven and earth. Babylon's population was deported to Nineveh and the site was left alone for some time.

A new model of ruling the city and its environs was found by Aššurbanipal (668-631), who appointed his brother Šamaš-šuma-ukin as king, but he revolted too (ABC 15), and again, Babylon was captured. Another brother served as king of Babylon, and in 627, the Assyrian king sent two of his relatives as governors. They were expelled by a Babylonian soldier named Nabopolassar, who had once fought in the Assyrian army but now started a kingdom for himself..

The son of Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar, ruled from 605 to 562 (more...) and is credited with rebuilding his capital as the most splendid city in the Near East. The famous blue Ištar Gate is an example. Elsewhere, the royal palace was improved, the Etemenanki reconstructed, and somewhere in the city, a beautiful park seems to have been created, that has become famous as the "Hanging Gardens". Archaeologists have been unable to identify this monument, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, but perhaps this will change. For the time being, scholars believe that this park was either in Nineveh, or is nothing but a fairy tale.

In 331, the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, who was fighting a war against the Persians, captured Babylon (text). Later, he intended to make the city his residence, and he ordered several building projects, like a large river port, a theater, and a reconstruction of the Etemenanki. Building activity related to the Esagila is mentioned in several cuneiform sources and continued as late as the early 280's, when the Seleucid crown prince Antiochus used his elephants to remove the debris (text).

Meanwhile, however, the founder of the Seleucid dynasty, Seleucus I Nicator, had ordered the building of a new city, Seleucia. This was meant as a Greek city, and crown prince Antiochus resettled Europeans that had been left in Babylon in Seleucia (text). For more than a century, Babylon remained a primarily Babylonian city. It was only Antiochus IV Epiphaness (175-164) who again started a Greek colonizing policy in Babylon (text).

In this period, which is well-known from the Astronomical diaries, we can discern at least five different population groups in the city, who had their own administrative institutions:

1. The original Babylonian citizens, who were represented by the official named šatammu , i.e., the president of the council (kiništu) of the Esagila, the temple of Marduk.
2. The Greek citizens (politai), under the authority of a "governor of Babylon" or epistatês. They met in the theater.
3. The royal slaves, led by "the prefect of the king".
4. "The people of the land", who are mentioned in our sources, and are probably the indigenous population on the countryside.
5. The temple slaves.

Babylon was excavated between 1899 and 1917 by Robert Koldewey, a pupil of the great Heinrich Schliemann. Unfortunately, Koldewey still had to identify many structures by using ancient Greek sources like the Histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus and the Persian History of Ctesias of Cnidus. After all, cuneiform studies were, by then, still in their infancy. We now know that these authors were not very reliable, but still, Koldewey's Das wieder ertstehende Babylon is a fascinating must-read.

In the 1980's, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered repair works at Babylon, which, however, were not executed by archaeologists and restoration professionals. The result was disastrous, but even worse was to come: after the fall of the dictator in 2003, Polish soldiers used the archaeological site as military base. These two calamities have forced Unesco, the UN cultural organization, to remove Babylon from the World Heritage List.

A satellite photo of Babylon can be found here.