According to the Bible, Babylon was founded by the descendants of Noah,
among whom Nimrod played a major role, about 120 years after the flood.
From 1770 to 1670 BC and again in 612–320 BC. it is the largest city in the world and the first in history with
a population of over 200,000 people.
It was originally called Babel, meaning confusion.
According to the Bible, this is where God confused the languages of the nations.
It is also famous for the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
It became a center of trade between East and West, with merchants transporting goods by land and sea.
In its rise, Babylon seemed impenetrable to its enemies.
Everyone who has seen it and described it says about it that it is an unseen wonder city!
What has led to the decline of one of the most flourishing societies?
How was it that one of the most fortified cities in the world, which was said to have one of its surrounding walls
so wide that two wagons could pass, was captured without a trace of battle?
Stay with us until the end of the video to find out what led to the rise and fall
of one of the most ancient and fabled cities in the world.
CONSCIOUANESS
The name Babylon is derived from bav-il or bav-ilim.
It is translated from the Akkadian language as "Gate of God" or "Gate of the Gods",
and the name Babylon itself comes from Greece.
The source responsible for the great popularity of the city is the Bible itself.
In it, the city is mentioned many times. In Genesis, for example, we can read the story of the Tower of Babel.
The name of the city arose after confusion, as God previously caused the people to speak different languages
so that they could not understand each other,
and this was to prevent them from building the great tower to the heavens.
In Hebrew, the word "bavel" is translated as confusion.
The earliest known reference to Babylon was 3000 BC. Around 2200 BC it was known
as a temple site and belonged to the nearby city of Ur.
Our familiar history of Babylon begins during the time of the so-called Old Babylonian kingdom
during the reign of one of the most famous kings - Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC).
He ascended the throne after the abdication of his father - King Sin-Mubalit.
The new king very quickly turned Babylon into one of the most powerful and influential cities in all of Mesopotamia.
The city also became known through the Hammurabi Code of Laws, one of the first comprehensive law collections.
His laws exemplify the policy he pursues aimed at preserving peace and promoting prosperity.
Diplomacy is an integral part of his administration.
The exceptional ruler succeeded in uniting all of Mesopotamia under the rule of Babylon in 1755 BC.
It, in turn, at that time was already the largest city in the world.
Hammurabi then called the new united kingdom Babylonia.
However, when King Hammurabi passed away, the empire disintegrated and Babylonia shrank in size and power.
In 1595 B.C. Babylon was taken by the Hittites, but they only ruled for 20 years, after which the Kassites took over.
The city-state of Babylon became the capital of Babylonia and became the religious center of the kingdom.
Let us know in the comments which ancient city you've always been interested in learning more about.
And we will make a video about the city whose name is repeated the most times in the comments.
In 1234 BC Babylon became subject to Assyria, and in 1158 BC. was sacked by the Elamites.
The importance of the city grew when Nebuchadnezzar the first, chose it as his capital,
although the dynasty he created was not local.
Around the 10th century BC. waves of Aramaic migrants from northern Syria to Babylon greatly exacerbated the tension,
until the fall of Assyria towards the end of the 7th century BC.
there were continuous struggles for control of the city between the Assyrians and the Arameans.
The native Babylonians began to claim various privileges, such as exclusion from forced labor,
exemption from certain taxes, and a ban on being sent to prison.
The trade-rich Babylonians were put under pressure by the restless migrants.
This made them prefer Assyrian rule over Aramaic and Chaldean rule.
Serious engagement with Assyria, however, began during the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (744-727 BC),
who succeeded in suppressing the pressure of the Chaldean tribes on the city.
Just a few years later, the Assyrian king Sennacherib (704–681 BC) sacked and destroyed the city,
scattering its remains to demonstrate to his enemies what would await them if they dared to challenge him.
These actions of his caused a lot of negative feelings both in the population
and in those closest to him. Very soon after, his sons kill him.
His successor, his son Esarhaddon (680–669 BC) drove out the raiding tribes
and recovered the lands his father had seized from the Babylonians.
He rebuilds the city and restores its former glory.
Somewhere in the middle of the 7th century BC., the city was struck by a new misfortune - civil war broke out between
the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal and his brother, who ruled Babylonia.
Ashurbanipal besieged Babylon and starved it. In 648 BC Babylon surrenders.
Ashurbanipal is said to have cleansed the city of evil spirits believed to have brought him only trouble.
This is a time when the city is already well known as a center of knowledge and culture.
Babylon became the capital of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom ruled by the Chaldean king Nabopolassar in 605 BC.
When his son Nebuchadnezzar the second took over the kingdom it experienced its apogee
in its development and became an imperial power.
The new ruler stabilized and reformed the city, and the activities were carried out by numerous labor brigades
from different parts of the country, which contributed to the diversity of the population.
The most beautiful and impressive structures in all of Mesopotamia were created.
The ancient writers described Babylon in this period, and speak of it with awe and reverence, felt even in their very words.
Herodotus shares the following:
"The city is laid out on a wide plain. It is shaped in an absolutely exact square.
There is no other city on earth that comes close to its magnificence.
The whole is surrounded by a wide moat full of water, and behind it rises a wall 26 meters wide and 105 meters high".
Other writers also described the city at the time.
They again speak of the magnificence of Babylon, and all are particularly impressed by its walls,
which have often been called a wonder of the world.
According to Diodorus Siculus, under the reign of Nebuchadnezzar the second,
the Hanging Gardens were also built, which today are considered perhaps the greatest miracle of antiquity.
The Hanging Gardens are described very well by Diodorus in his "Bibliotheca Historica":
"There were also the so-called Hanging Gardens, which were built not by the Assyrian queen Semiramis,
but by the later Syrian king so that he could please one of his mistresses.
It is said that she was of the Persian race, and because she was suffering for her fields and mountains,
she asked the king to green the court and make it look like a Persian landscape…”
However, to this day these gardens are known to history as the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis.
They were hand-made terraces of flora and fauna, irrigated by a mechanism that was itself considered a world wonder.
Let us know in a comment if you have heard of them.
Would you like us to make an in-depth video about hanging gardens, looking at their history and setup?
We come to 556 – 539 BC when the new ruler Nabonidus is living away from Babylon.
This is necessary due to the fact that he conducted military operations in Arabia,
which lasted about ten years. His regent in Babylon was Belshazzar.
The city was attacked by the Persians then ruled by Cyrus II in 539 BC.
The strangest thing is that one of the most well-fortified cities in the world at that time offered almost no resistance.
Legend has it that Cyrus diverted the Euphrates River, which passes through the city.
Thus the level of the river dropped, and he and his army suddenly invaded the river and captured the city from the inside.
However, this legend has not been historically confirmed.
This remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries related to ancient Babylon to this day.
The expansion of the Persian Empire by the Achaemenids in 539 BC. absorbed Babylonia,
along with the Median kingdom, Syria, Palestine, and Lydia. Babylon became the capital of the richest satrapy.
Before long, however, a rebellion broke out against Xerxes I,
and his beautiful fortifications and temples were destroyed,
and the golden statue of Marduk was melted down.
In 331 BC Alexander the Great conquered the city after the battle of Gaugamela
and was accepted as a liberator by the Persians.
Macedonian immediately issued an order to restore the temples.
He very quickly understood the commercial importance of Babylon
and told its satrap to mint coins and start building a port.
In 323, at the age of 34, Alexander died in Nebuchadnezzar's palace.
His dream of making Babylon the capital of his own empire never materialized.
Instead, Babylon entered the sphere of influence of ancient Greek culture
and became a center for the development of Hellenistic science, especially astronomy.
It is in the future that many writings from this period will be revealed that will prove fundamental
to the knowledge of the world and the cosmos.
After the division of Alexander's empire between the Diadochi, Babylon passed to the Seleucid dynasty in 312 BC.
The new kings, however, had a different vision for their empire and built their capital at Seleucia,
moving part of Babylon's population there in 275 BC.
Babylon remained under Persian rule for nine centuries until about 650 AD.
It preserves its culture and inhabitants who speak a variation of Aramaic.
Traces of their culture are left in the Jewish Tanakh Bible, the Gnostic religion of Mandaeanism,
the Eastern Christian Churches, and Manichaeism.
Christianity entered Mesopotamia in the 1st and 2nd centuries, and Babylon was the seat of the bishop
of the Church of the East until the arrival of the Muslims.
Minted coins from Parthian, Persian, and Arab times prove that it was a continuously inhabited settlement.
The Islamization of the area is detrimental to the city.
Its importance waned, and the Aramaic and Eastern Christian churches were marginalized.
In the 10th century, Ibn Hauqal and in the 13th century, the Arab scholar, al-Kazuini described Babylon as a small village.
The latter describes a well, is known as "Daniel's dungeon", an object of worship by Christians and Jews during the holidays.
Muslims venerated the tomb of Amran ibn Ali.
Writings about the fall of one of the most flourishing civilizations and the city becoming
a cultural beehive can be found in medieval Arabic written sources.
There, Babylon is mentioned as a quarry for bricks used in constructions from Baghdad to Basra.
European travelers in most cases cannot find it or confuse it with Fallujah.
Benjamin of Tudel, a 12th-century traveler, mentions Babylon, but it is unclear whether he was there.
Others refer to Baghdad as Babylon or New Babylon and describe
a number of structures in the area as remnants of the Tower of Babel.
For almost two thousand years, the site of Babylon was forgotten.
Today, a few kilometers from Baghdad - Iraq, there is the largest open-air museum in the world.
The only building preserved from that time is the theater of Babylon.
Archaeologists, however, do not stop to this day to discover legacies left by our ancestors who inhabited these latitudes.
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