Western History 23: What was the fate of Babylon?

Babylon was the greatest of all the Mespotamian cities and features prominently in the both the bible and the historical records of the Ancient Greeks. It is thought to be the location of the Tower of Babel and has a name origin Bavil which means the city of God. Located less than 100 kilometers from modern day Baghdad the city was believed to have been founded by Sargon of Akkad in the 23^rd century BC. One of its greatest earlier rulers was Hammuabi (already mentioned in Entry 9).  Hammurabi (a prince of Amorite origin) was the Old Kingdom’s greatest rulers. He unified all of Mesopotamia and built the foundation for the Old Babylonian Kingdom in the 18^th century BC.

Babylon under Hammurabi was the largest city in the world but fell apart soon after his death with each of the Hittites, Kassites and Assyrians growing to dominate the region. Assyrian overlordship inspired revolt and in 734 BC the City (now well known as a center of learning and culture) was taken over by the Chaldeans. The Assyrians reclaimed the city in 729 BC before the full wait of the Babylonians and Medes (forerunners of the Persians) brought an end to the Assyrian Empire when they sacked and burnt Nineveh.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire’s greatest ruler was Nebuchadnezzar II, who expanded the territory of the city, increased the size of its walled defence and built the famous Hanging Gardens and Ishtar Gates. Nebuchadnezzar II is the same monarch associated with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the fall of Judea and the Babylonian exile of the Hebrews. He expanded the city’s aqueduct system but could not stop what was to be the inevitable, the defeat of the Babylon and its absorption into the Persian Empire and event that would occur in 538 BC, a mere twenty plus year’s after Nebuchadnezzar’s death.

Arguably the greatest contribution of the Babylonians occurred in the realm of mathematics. They developed a base 60 numerical system which defines the breakdown of the hour into 60 minutes and the minute into 60 seconds. They had elaborate systems for squaring and cubing a number and developed methodologies around long division, quadratic equations, exponential growth as well as approximations for the square root of 2 and pi. Babylonian geometricians were also aware of the Pythagorean theorem and extended their knowledge to astronomical applications involving eclipses and positions on the celestial sphere.

On a religious level it is believed that many of the notions of Angels, Archangels and hierarchies of supernatural entities, so prevalent in Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought may have entered the religion during the Babylonian exodus of the  Jews that followed the destruction of the First Temple in 587 BC.