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The
legendary city of Babylon is today
part of the Arab-occupied territory of Iraq. Thousands of years before the Arab
occupation, it was the capital and center of the Babylonian Empire. Today, the
descendants of the ancient Babylonians are the Iranian Christians, closely
aligned with the Assyrian Christians of Iraq, and Babylon itself is an
archaeological/historical site, part of the present-day city of Hillah, about 53 miles south of
Baghdad. Originally, the Euphrates River
bisected the city, but the course of the river has since shifted so that most
of the remains of the former western part of the city are now inundated but some
portions of the city wall remain. Other
parts of the western half have been mined by Arabs for commercial building
materials. Some of the nearby ancient settlements included Kish, Borsippa, Dilbat,
Kutha. Marad and Sippar all
of them along the Euphrates.
The building of Babylon began many
thousands of years ago. It was originally called Babel (as in, the Tower of Babel) a small Akkadian town
dating from the period of the Akkadian
Empire c. 2300 BCE. In Genesis 10:10,
Babel is described as being founded by Nimrod along
with Uruk, Akkad and
perhaps Calneh—all
of them in the land of Shinar. According to Genesis 11, there was but one human race,
speaking one language, migrating to Shinar and eventually establishing a city
and the famous tower. Soon, however, the God
of the Bible halted construction by scattering humanity across the earth
and confusing their language so that they were unable to communicate. Some scholars believe that the tower may have been
inspired by a real-life temple, or
ziggurat, built to honor Marduk, the patron god of Babylon and son of
Shamash, the sun-god of Sippar.
The
Akkadian king Šar-kali-šarri laid the foundations in Babylon of new temples for the gods Annūnı̄tum and
Ilaba. The town became part of a small independent city-state with
the rise of the First Babylonian dynasty in the 19th
century BCE. After the Amorite king Hammurabi created
a short-lived empire in the 18th century, he transformed Babylon into a major
city and declared himself its king, southern Mesopotamia became known as Babylonia and
Babylon eclipsed Nippur as its holy city. It has been estimated that
Babylon was the largest city in the world c. 1770 – c. 1670 BCE,
and again c. 612 – c. 320 BCE. It was perhaps the first city to reach
a population above 200,000.
The
empire waned under Hammurabi's son Samsu-iluna and
Babylon spent long periods under, and pillaged by, foreign empires such as
the Assyrians, Hittites, Kassites,
and Elamites.
An Akkadian south Mesopotamian dynasty then ruled for the first time. However,
Babylon remained weak and subject to domination by Assyria. Its ineffectual
native kings were unable to prevent new waves of foreign West Semitic settlers
from the deserts of the Levant, including the Arameans and Suteans in
the 11th century BCE.
Under
the Assyrian emperor Sennacherib, Babylonia was in a constant state of revolt,
led by a chieftain named Merodach-Baladan, in alliance with
the Elamites,
and suppressed only by the complete destruction of the city of Babylon. In
689 BCE, its walls, temples and palaces were razed. Destruction of the
religious center shocked many, and the subsequent murder of Sennacherib by two
of his own sons while praying to the god Nisroch was
considered an act of atonement. Consequently, his successor Esarhaddon hastened
to rebuild the old city and make it his residence during part of the year.
After his death, Babylonia was governed by his elder son, the Assyrian prince Shamash-shum-ukin,
who eventually started a civil war in 652 BCE against his own
brother, Ashurbanipal, who ruled in Nineveh.
Once again, Babylon was besieged by the Assyrians and eventually surrendered.
An Assyrian governor named Kandalanu was
then appointed as ruler of the city. After the death of Ashurbanipal, another
civil war followed. Babylon, like many other parts of the near east, took
advantage of the anarchy within Assyria to free itself from Assyrian rule. Under Nabopolassar,
a previously unknown Chaldean chieftain, Babylon escaped Assyrian rule, and in
an alliance with Cyaxares, king of the Medes and Persians together
with the Scythians and Cimmerians,
finally destroyed the Assyrian Empire between 612 BCE and 605 BCE.
With
the recovery of Babylonian independence, a new era of architectural activity
ensued, particularly during the reign of his son Nebuchadnezzar
II (604–561 BCE). Nebuchadnezzar ordered the complete
reconstruction of the imperial grounds,
including the Etemenanki ziggurat,
and the construction of the Ishtar Gate—the
most prominent of eight gates around Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar is also credited
with the construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon—one of
the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World—said
to have been built for his homesick wife Amyitis.
Nebuchandnezzar is also notoriously associated with the Babylonian
exile of the Jews from Judea, the result of an imperial
technique of pacification, used also by the Assyrians, in which ethnic groups
in conquered areas were deported en masse to
the capital.
In
539 BCE, the Neo-Babylonian Empire fell to Cyrus the
Great, king of Persia, who conquered Babylon. According to 2 Chronicles 36 of the Hebrew Bible,
Cyrus later issued a decree permitting captive people, including the Jews, to return to their
own lands. Under Cyrus and the subsequent Persian king Darius I,
Babylon became the capital city of the 9th Satrapy,
as well as a center of learning and scientific advancement. In Achaemenid Persia,
the ancient Babylonian arts of astronomy and mathematics
were revitalized, and Babylonian scholars completed maps of constellations.
The
early Persian kings had attempted to maintain the religious ceremonies of Marduk,
but by the reign of Darius III, over-taxation and the strain of
numerous wars led to a deterioration of Babylon's main shrines and canals, and
the destabilization of the surrounding region. There were numerous attempts at
rebellion and in 522 BCE (Nebuchadnezzar III), 521 BCE (Nebuchadnezzar
IV) and 482 BCE (Bel-shimani and Shamash-eriba) native
Babylonian kings briefly regained independence. However these revolts were
quickly repressed and Babylon remained under Persian rule until Alexander the Great's entry in 331 BCE.
Under
Alexander, Babylon again flourished as a center of learning and commerce.
However, following his death in 323 BCE in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, a period of chaos and
anarchy ensued which virtually emptied the city; most of the inhabitants were
transported to Seleucia, where a palace and a temple (Esagila)
were built. With this deportation, Babylon became insignificant as a city,
although more than a century later, sacrifices were still performed in its old
sanctuary.
In the first century,
after the death of Jesus Christ, Christians in Syria and Judea faced severe
persecution by the Romans and many of them moved east where they joined the
ancient Jewish community in Babylon. Of those who moved east was Saint Thomas,
a disciple of Jesus. He succeeded in converting the local inhabitants, from the
Euphrates to Persia, to Christianity and established their own church which
eventually became the seat of the Bishop of the Church of the East for many
centuries afterwards. A new Christian culture was developed and the people
would speak various forms of Aramaic. This was maintained even when the city
came under the rule of the Parthian and Sassanid Empires and Babylon was
designated as a province.
In
the mid-7th century, Mesopotamia was invaded and settled by the expanding Arab
Muslim Empire,
and a period of Islamization and Arabization followed.
Babylon was dissolved as a province and Aramaic and members
of the Church of the East eventually became
marginalized. Soon, the last of the inhabitants left and the city fell into
ruins. Babylon is mentioned in medieval Arabic writings as a source of
bricks, said to have been used in cities from Baghdad to Basra.
In
the centuries that followed, travelers and archaeologists from Europe have
visited Babylon. This included such people as Pietro della Valle in the 17th
century and Pierre-Joseph de Beauchamp in the 18th whose memoir,
published in English translation in 1792, provoked the British East India Company to direct
its agents in Baghdad and Basra to acquire Mesopotamian relics for shipment to
London.
The
site of Babylon has been a cultural asset to Iraq since the
creation of the modern Arab Iraqi state in 1921. In a bid to cultural
appropriation, Iraq officially “protected” and “excavated” the site and Babylonian
images periodically appeared on Arab Iraqi postcards and stamps. In the 1960s,
a replica of the Ishtar Gate and a reconstruction of Ninmakh Temple were built on site. On February
14, 1978, the Ba'athist government under Saddam
Hussein began the "Archaeological Restoration of Babylon
Project": reconstructing features of the ancient city atop its ruins.
These features included the Southern Palace of Nebuchandnezzar, the Processional Way, the Lion of Babylon, and an amphitheater constructed in the city's
Hellenistic era. In 1982 the government minted a set of seven coins displaying
iconic features of Babylon. A Babylon
International Festival was held in September 1987, and annually
thereafter until 2002 (excepting 1990 and 1991), to showcase this work.
Proposed reconstruction of the Hanging Gardens and the great ziggurat never
took place. Hussein installed a portrait of himself and Nebuchadnezzar at the
entrance to the ruins and inscribed his name on many of the bricks, in
imitation of Nebuchadnezzar. When the 1991 Gulf War ended,
Hussein wanted to build a modern palace called Saddam Hill over some of the old
ruins. In 2003, he intended the construction of a cable car line
over Babylon, but plans were halted by the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Following the
invasion, the area around Babylon came under the control of US troops, before
being handed over to Polish forces in
September. In 2005 the site was handed over to the Iraqi Ministry of
Culture.
Known
remains include:
·
Palace or Castle, it is the location
of the Neo-Babylonian ziggurat Etemenanki and lies in the center of the site.
·
the highest of the mounds at 82 feet located in the southern part of
the site is the site of Esagila,
a temple of Marduk which
also contained shrines to Ea and Nabu.
·
Babil – a mound
about 72 feet high at the northern end of the site. It held a palace built by
Nebuchadnezzar.
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