Babylon and Mesopotamia: The Real History of the World’s First Empires

About 85 kilometres south of modern Baghdad, on the east bank of the Euphrates River, lie the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon. Its name has carried so much cultural weight for so long — Tower of Babel, Hanging Gardens, the Whore of Babylon, “by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down” — that the actual historical city tends to disappear behind the literary one. Babylon was, however, a real place, occupied from roughly 2300 BCE to around 1000 CE, capital of two distinct empires, the political and intellectual centre of the ancient Near East for centuries at a time, and the place where Alexander the Great died on June 11, 323 BCE. This piece is about what the documentary and archaeological record actually shows.

Sumer Before Babylon (c. 4500–2300 BCE)

Babylonian civilisation was built on the foundations of Sumer — the southern Mesopotamian alluvial plain where the world’s first cities developed in the fourth millennium BCE. Uruk, the largest of the Sumerian cities, may have reached 80,000 inhabitants by 2900 BCE. The Sumerians invented (or first attested) wheeled vehicles, irrigation agriculture at large scale, the sexagesimal mathematical system that gives us our 60-second minute and 360-degree circle, and — most consequentially for everything that followed — writing.

Cuneiform, the wedge-shaped script pressed into wet clay tablets with reed styluses, originated around 3200 BCE as a record-keeping system for temple economies. Over the following millennia it was adapted to write at least fifteen different languages, including Sumerian, Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hittite, Hurrian, Luwian, and Old Persian. Hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets — administrative records, legal contracts, letters, literary works, mathematical exercises — survive in modern museum collections, providing the most extensive documentary record of any pre-classical civilisation.

Akkad and Sargon (c. 2334–2154 BCE)

The first multi-ethnic territorial empire in human history was assembled around 2334 BCE by Sargon of Akkad, a Semitic-speaking ruler who conquered the Sumerian city-states and extended his authority across most of Mesopotamia from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. The Akkadian Empire lasted about 180 years before collapsing under the combined pressures of climate change (a major drought episode around 2200 BCE, documented in paleoclimate cores) and invasion. Sargon’s grandson Naram-Sin (r. c. 2254–2218 BCE) was the first known Mesopotamian ruler to claim divinity in his own lifetime.

Sumerian civilisation persisted under successor dynasties — most notably the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112–2004 BCE), under Ur-Nammu and Shulgi — before passing into final political eclipse around the start of the second millennium BCE. Sumerian as a spoken language died around 1800 BCE but continued as a learned scribal and liturgical language, comparable to medieval Latin, until at least the first century CE.

Hammurabi and the First Babylonian Empire (r. c. 1792–1750 BCE)

The Amorite (West Semitic) dynasty that took over the small city-state of Babylon around 1894 BCE produced, in its sixth king Hammurabi, the man who would make Babylon the capital of Mesopotamia. By the end of his 42-year reign Hammurabi had conquered all his rivals — including the city-states of Eshnunna, Mari, and Larsa — and built an empire that covered most of modern Iraq and reached into Syria.

His most lasting monument is the law code that bears his name. The stele itself, found by Jacques de Morgan’s French expedition at Susa in modern Iran in December 1901–January 1902, is a 2.25-metre column of polished black diorite (sometimes described as basalt) with a relief at the top showing Hammurabi receiving the laws from the sun-god Shamash, and 282 laws written below in vertical columns of Akkadian cuneiform. The laws cover criminal offences, civil contracts, family law, slavery, and commerce; the rhetorical preface positions Hammurabi as restoring justice to the land. The lex talionis principle — “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” law 196 — is its most famous formulation. Earlier Mesopotamian law codes exist, including the Code of Ur-Nammu (c. 2100 BCE) and the Code of Lipit-Ishtar (c. 1870 BCE), but Hammurabi’s is the most extensive and best preserved.

The Long Middle (c. 1595–626 BCE)

The Old Babylonian Empire collapsed around 1595 BCE under the impact of a Hittite raid from Anatolia and subsequent Kassite migration. The Kassite Dynasty ruled Babylon for nearly four centuries (c. 1595–1155 BCE) as the local arm of a broader Bronze Age Near Eastern system that also included the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Mitanni, and the Assyrians. The international diplomatic correspondence of this period — preserved in the Amarna Letters, found in Egypt — gives a vivid picture of Bronze Age statecraft.

The Bronze Age collapse around 1200 BCE disrupted but did not destroy Babylon. From around 1100 to 626 BCE the city was usually a vassal or contested possession of the rising Assyrian Empire to the north. The Assyrian kings — Tukulti-Ninurta I, Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib (who in 689 BCE conducted the most thorough sacking of Babylon in its history, diverting the Euphrates over its ruins), Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal — variously fought, ruled, rebuilt, and ruled Babylon for nearly five centuries. Ashurbanipal’s famous library at Nineveh, excavated in the nineteenth century and now in the British Museum, includes most of our surviving Akkadian literature, including the Standard Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Nebuchadnezzar II and the Neo-Babylonian Empire (626–539 BCE)

The Chaldean general Nabopolassar took Babylon from the Assyrians in 626 BCE and founded a new dynasty. His son Nebuchadnezzar II, who came to the throne in 605 BCE and ruled for 43 years, built the empire and the city that the Bible and classical historians remember. His armies destroyed the Kingdom of Judah in 597–586 BCE, captured Jerusalem, destroyed Solomon’s First Temple in 587/586 BCE, and deported large parts of the Judahite political and priestly class to Babylon — the “Babylonian Captivity” that runs from 586 to 539 BCE.

The city of Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar reached perhaps 200,000 inhabitants, making it the largest city in the world at the time. Its principal monuments included the Ishtar Gate, a 12-metre-tall gateway faced in blue glazed bricks with reliefs of bulls and dragons (the city’s symbol creatures), commissioned around 575 BCE; the Processional Way leading from the gate to the temple complex; the Etemenanki ziggurat, a stepped pyramid temple roughly 90 metres on a side and probably 90 metres tall, dedicated to Marduk and very likely the source of the biblical Tower of Babel; and possibly — the question is genuinely disputed — the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon, listed by classical Greek and Roman authors as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Oxford Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley has argued, in The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon (2013), that the gardens were actually built at Nineveh under the Assyrian king Sennacherib and were misattributed to Babylon by Greek authors. The Babylon site itself has not produced the kind of irrigation infrastructure the gardens would have required.

Nebuchadnezzar II died in 562 BCE. His successors were less competent. In October 539 BCE the city fell, apparently without major fighting, to the Persian king Cyrus the Great. The Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Ezra and the so-called Cyrus Cylinder (now in the British Museum), records Cyrus’s authorisation of the exiled Judahites to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple — the foundation of the Second Temple era of Jewish history.

After the Persians

Babylon remained a major regional capital under the Achaemenid Persian Empire (539–331 BCE), under Alexander the Great after his victory at Gaugamela in 331 BCE, and under Alexander’s Macedonian successor empire the Seleucids (until about 141 BCE). Alexander, who had planned to make Babylon his imperial capital, died in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace there on June 11, 323 BCE, aged 32. The city’s slow decline began under the Seleucids, who founded a new regional capital at Seleucia-on-the-Tigris around 305 BCE and gradually transferred administrative functions there. By the Parthian period (after 141 BCE) Babylon was a religious and cultural centre rather than a political one, by late antiquity a small town, and by 1000 CE essentially abandoned. The site was first scientifically excavated by the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey between 1899 and 1917.

What Most Accounts Get Wrong

Three points worth correcting. The first is the conflation of Babylon with Mesopotamia generally. Babylon was a single city; Mesopotamian civilisation as a whole runs from the Sumerian fourth millennium through the Sasanian seventh century CE — about 4,500 years — and “Babylonian” specifically refers to two historically distinct empires separated by roughly a thousand years. Akkadians, Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians were related but distinct.

The second is the assumption that the Hanging Gardens definitely existed at Babylon. The classical Greek sources (Berossus, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Quintus Curtius Rufus, Philo of Byzantium) describe them; surviving Babylonian sources do not. The Oxford Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley has argued persuasively that the gardens were actually Sennacherib’s at Nineveh. The question remains open.

The third is the modern condition of the site. The ruins of Babylon were extensively and inaccurately “reconstructed” under Saddam Hussein between 1983 and 1988, with new bricks stamped with the regime’s slogans laid over the original Neo-Babylonian foundations. During the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the site was used as a military base by US and Polish forces, causing additional documented damage. UNESCO listed the site as a World Heritage site in 2019. Conservation work continues.

Why It Still Matters

The cuneiform record from Mesopotamia is the longest continuous written archive of any ancient civilisation, and the institutions it documents — writing itself, codified law, organised astronomy, advanced mathematics, urbanism, multi-ethnic empire — are the foundations of most of the literate cultures that followed in western Eurasia. Babylon was the principal node of the southern Mesopotamian tradition for nearly two thousand years. The biblical and Greek images of the city are accurate enough at their best to be recognisable. The historical city behind them is, however, more documented than they are, and the documentation is still being read.

For more on the ancient world, see our pieces on ancient Egypt and Alexander the Great.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where was Babylon?

Babylon’s ruins are located on the east bank of the Euphrates River, about 85 kilometres south of modern Baghdad in central Iraq, in Babil Governorate. The site has been excavated since 1899 and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019.

What was the Code of Hammurabi?

The Code of Hammurabi is a set of 282 laws inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform on a 2.25-metre basalt stele around 1754 BCE during the reign of the Babylonian king Hammurabi (c. 1792–1750 BCE). The laws cover criminal offences, family law, contracts, and commerce, and include the “an eye for an eye” principle (lex talionis). The stele was carried off to Susa by Elamite raiders around 1158 BCE and rediscovered there by French archaeologists in 1901. It is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Did the Hanging Gardens of Babylon really exist?

The Hanging Gardens were listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World by classical Greek and Roman authors, but no contemporary Babylonian source mentions them, and no archaeological evidence of irrigation infrastructure compatible with the gardens has been found at Babylon itself. The Oxford Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley has argued, in The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon (2013), that the gardens were actually built at Nineveh by the Assyrian king Sennacherib and misattributed to Babylon by later Greek authors. The question remains open in the scholarly literature.

Who was Nebuchadnezzar II?

Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605–562 BCE) was the most powerful king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. He destroyed the Kingdom of Judah in 597–586 BCE, sacked Jerusalem, destroyed Solomon’s First Temple in 587/586 BCE, and deported large parts of the Judahite elite to Babylon (the Babylonian Captivity, 586–539 BCE). He rebuilt Babylon as the largest city in the world at the time, including the Ishtar Gate, the Etemenanki ziggurat, and the Processional Way.

What is the Epic of Gilgamesh?

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest surviving substantial work of literature in any language. The Standard Babylonian version, compiled around 1200 BCE on twelve clay tablets in Akkadian, was found in the seventh-century BCE royal library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh and is now mostly in the British Museum. It tells the story of the historical king Gilgamesh of Uruk (c. 2700 BCE), his friendship with the wild man Enkidu, and his unsuccessful quest for immortality after Enkidu’s death. It includes a flood narrative closely paralleling the Genesis flood story.

What happened to Babylon?

Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great of Persia in October 539 BCE. It served as a major regional capital under the Achaemenid Persians, briefly under Alexander the Great (who died there on June 11, 323 BCE), and the Macedonian Seleucid Empire. The Seleucids founded a new regional capital at Seleucia-on-the-Tigris around 305 BCE, and Babylon slowly declined. By 1000 CE it was essentially abandoned. The site was scientifically excavated by the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey between 1899 and 1917 and rebuilt inaccurately under Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.

Sources

1. British Museum — Babylonian collections
2. Louvre Museum — The Code of Hammurabi
3. Pergamon Museum, Berlin — Ishtar Gate reconstruction
4. UNESCO — Babylon World Heritage Site
5. Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000–323 BC, 3rd ed. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015)
6. Paul Kriwaczek, Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization (Atlantic Books, 2010)
7. Stephanie Dalley, The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon (Oxford University Press, 2013)
8. Andrew George (trans.), The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian (Penguin Classics, 1999)
9. Robert Koldewey, Das wieder erstehende Babylon (J. C. Hinrichs, 1925)