Babylon

Babylon (Arabic pronunciation: [BA-BEL] (listen), Akkadian: 𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠, spelled KA₂-DIG̃IR-RAKI literally "Gate of God"), one of the cities of the ancient world, and the largest capital of the Mesopotamian civilization. The capital of the Babylonian Empire, and the first city to reach a population of 200,000 people. Babylon is located on an arm of the Euphrates River, about 85 kilometers south of the capital Baghdad, near the city of Hillah, covering an area of ​​9 km2. In 2019, UNESCO listed it on the World Heritage List. The rise of Babylon as a regional power in the Near East coincided with the rise to power of King Hammurabi, the sixth king of the First Babylonian Dynasty. Babylon then became the capital of a political entity that dominated the lands of the Euphrates Valley and southern Mesopotamia, known as the Babylonian Empire. In the eighth century BC, after years of conflict, the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III was able to capture Babylon. The city remained under the shadow of the Assyrian Empire for a century until the revolt of the Babylonian king Nabopolassar, who put an end to Assyrian rule in Mesopotamia after his victory in the Battle of Nineveh. In the seventh century BC, the city reached its peak during the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II, the most powerful and severe of the Chaldean kings, who ruled an empire whose authority extended over most of the Middle East, extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arabian Gulf. In the first half of the sixth century BC, Babylon fell at the hands of the hordes of the Persian Shah “Cyrus the Great”, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire and its first emperor, when he destroyed the Babylonian armies in the Battle of Opis, making it one of the capitals of his young empire. In the second half of the fourth century BC, “Alexander the Great” entered it victoriously after dispersing the Persians in the Battle of Gaugamela. The young leader wanted to make it the eastern capital of his empire before he died on its land. After that, the city became part of the empire of one of his army leaders known as “Seleucus Al-Mansur”. In the middle of the second century BC, the Persians seized it again, this time represented by the Parthian Empire, led by the Shah “Mihrdad the Great”. At that time, Babylon began to gradually decline, and the night of time covered it, and it went into Hibernation, historians attributed this to its proximity to the Parthian capital, Ctesiphon. Three centuries later, the legions of the Roman Empire entered it under the leadership of the Roman Caesar "Trajan", and they found it a shadow of what it was.

Babylon has a special place in history, attributed first to its unique architecture, starting with its walls and huge gates that surrounded the city's hall, the best of which was represented by those that bore the name of Ishtar, and ending with the wonder of the ancient world, its hanging gardens. Secondly, as a direct result of a legend that gradually arose after its fall and the abandonment of its inhabitants at the beginning of the first centuries of the current era. This legend is often mentioned in negative light in the biblical accounts, as well as in the Greek chronicles, who described it in their records and immortalized its memory for future generations. Its never-forgotten location was not the focus of excavation until the early twentieth century, when the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey discovered its main remains. Since then, the important archaeological and epigraphic documentation discovered in the city, supplemented by information from other ancient sites related to Babylon, has made it possible to provide a more accurate representation of the ancient city beyond myth and legend. However, many sites of the city, once one of the most important cities of the ancient Near East, remain undiscovered, because the horizons of new research have long been narrowed by wars and crises.