The Rise and Fall of Babylon: Jewel of the Ancient World
Babylon, the once-mighty city on the Euphrates River, has captivated the imagination of historians, archaeologists, and the general public for centuries. This resilient metropolis, which rose from the ashes time and again, stood at the center of power in the ancient Mesopotamian world, commanding respect and fear from its neighbors.
The site of Babylon was first identified in the 1800s in what is now Iraq. Later excavations undertaken by the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey in the late 19th and early 20th centuries established that the city had been built and rebuilt several times, most notably on a lavish scale by its king Nebuchadrezzar II (reigned 605–561 BCE). Koldewey’s finds revealed an ancient locus of culture and political power, including the dazzling blue Ishtar Gate, now reconstructed and on display at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.
Babylon first rose to prominence in the late Bronze Age around the beginning of the second millennium BCE, when it was occupied by people known as the Amorites. A series of strong Amorite kings, including the famous King Hammurabi, enabled Babylon to eclipse the Sumerian capital Ur as the region’s most powerful city. Although Babylon declined after Hammurabi’s death, its importance as the capital of southern Mesopotamia, now known as Babylonia, would linger for millennia.
Cycles of Conquest and Resilience
For the rest of the second millennium BCE, constant struggles popped up over control of Babylon. It was successively occupied by Hittites and Kassites, later Chaldean tribesmen fought for dominance with another tribe, the Aramaeans from Syria, a tribe that had also sparred with Israel. By 1000 BCE, the Assyrians who had established a powerful empire in northern Mesopotamia gained the upper hand. But despite periods of stable rule, Babylon would always fall to someone else.
Given this pattern of constant conquest—Cyrus the Great in the sixth century BCE and Alexander the Great two hundred years later—it is perhaps more helpful to see the city not as one Babylon but as several Babylons, the product of traditions built over thousands of years. The Babylonians themselves were keenly aware of the great antiquity of their civilization, with one of Nebuchadrezzar’s successors, Nabonidus, known as “the archaeologist king” for his efforts to restore the region’s ancient architectural and cultural traditions.
Babylon’s Golden Age
Babylon enjoyed its heyday during the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, when it was believed to be the largest city in the world. A new dynasty founded by a tribe known as the Chaldeans had wrested control from the Assyrians in the early 600s BCE. The second ruler of the Chaldean line, Nebuchadrezzar II, became notorious for both cruelty and opulence.
A successful military man, Nebuchadrezzar used the wealth he garnered from other lands to rebuild and glorify Babylon. He completed and strengthened the city’s defenses, including digging a moat and building new city walls. Beautification projects were also on the agenda, with the grand Processional Way paved with limestone, temples renovated and rebuilt, and the glorious Ishtar Gate erected. Constructed of glazed cobalt blue bricks and embellished with bulls and dragons, the city gate features an inscription attributed to Nebuchadrezzar that says “I placed wild bulls and ferocious dragons in the gateways and thus adorned them with luxurious splendor so that people might gaze on them in wonder.”
Babylonian citizens saw their city as a paradise—the center of the world and a symbol of cosmic harmony that had come into existence when its supreme divinity, the god Marduk, defeated the forces of chaos. The spread of the cult of Marduk across Mesopotamia was proof of Babylon’s prestige. No ancient city was so desired and feared, so admired and denigrated.
The Fall of Babylon
However, in the Hebrew tradition, Nebuchadrezzar was a tyrant, and Babylon a torment. The king had conquered Jerusalem in the early sixth century BCE and exiled the Hebrews to Babylon. The Bible says that he also stole sacred objects from the Jewish temple and took them back to Babylon to place in the temple of Marduk.
To punish his disrespect, the Bible recounts in the Book of Daniel how Nebuchadrezzar’s line will fall. In the story, Belshazzar, the successor to the throne, holds a feast served on the sacred vessels looted from Jerusalem. During the festivities, a ghostly hand appears, and strange writing appears on the wall, forming the mysterious words “Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin.” The exile Daniel is brought in by the terrified king to interpret the writing on the wall, and he reads it as “God has numbered the days of your kingdom; it is given to the Medes and Persians.”
Daniel’s prediction did come to pass. In 539 BCE, Babylon fell to the Persian king Cyrus the Great, and the Jews returned home from exile. The city would be conquered two centuries later by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE. Although Alexander had planned to make Babylon the capital of his empire, he died before that came to pass. The great city would eventually be abandoned by his successors, and the splendors of Babylon would pass into the realm of legend.
Confusion and Truths
One of the most famous stories about Babylon is that of the Tower of Babel, a story that some biblical scholars believe may be based on a mistranslation or ingenious pun. The Book of Genesis tells how the survivors of the Great Flood wanted to build a tower that would reach the heavens, but God smites the builders for their arrogance and disperses them over the Earth, where they are forced to speak many different languages.
Another colorful story to come out of the ancient city is that of the fabulous Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. There are many theories surrounding the gardens, from their exact location to the identities of their builders. Some suggest the gardens formed a part of the royal palace in Babylon itself, while others believe they were built in another city altogether. One origin story claims that Nebuchadrezzar had them built for his wife Amytis.
So where in the city could those famous gardens have been? Perhaps nowhere at all. There is no text from Nebuchadrezzar II’s time that refers to the building of any such gardens, and the Greek historian Herodotus did not mention them either. The only written references come much later from scholars such as Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius, Strabo, and Flavius Josephus, all writing at a time after Babylon had been abandoned.
This confusion may be due in part to the fact that some kings of Assyria, such as Sennacherib (reigned 704–681 BCE), held the title of king of Babylon. More intriguingly still, a depiction of that Assyrian king found on a bas-relief in Nineveh shows leafy gardens watered by an aqueduct. Could it be then that the famous gardens were in Nineveh all along?
Reshaping the Past
Inconvenient historical realities have never discouraged rulers from reshaping the history of Babylon in their own image and generating new myths in the process. One of the most brazen examples is not from antiquity but from the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein, then dictator of Iraq, set out to create a reconstruction of its royal palace. Like his predecessors, he left behind inscriptions on his building projects, with some of the bricks having the inscription “Built by Saddam son of Nebuchadrezzar to glorify Iraq” in Arabic.
Through the ages, Babylon has remained a powerful symbol, captivating the imagination of people around the world. While some of the stories and legends surrounding the ancient city may be more fiction than fact, the grandeur and resilience of this remarkable metropolis continue to fascinate and inspire us. As we uncover more of Babylon’s secrets, we may gain a deeper understanding of the complex and ever-evolving history of this jewel of the ancient world.
