A very brief history of Babylon
by Odette Boivin
Until the discovery and decipherment of Akkadian and Sumerian cuneiform texts and inscriptions in the 19th century, Babylon was known to the Western World mainly through Greek sources and the Bible. They shrouded the Ancient Near Eastern city in an ambivalent mixture of antiquity, greatness, and moral depravity, from a legendary foundation by the mysterious queen Semiramis, according to Ctesias, to its downfall at the hands of the Persians, as recorded in the Book of Daniel.
Although the early levels were not excavated, surface finds suggest that the site of Babylon was occupied in the Early Dynastic period (ca. 2900–2350 BCE). It may have been called Babbir (BAR.KI.BAR), depending on how one interprets an Early Dynastic dedicatory inscription probably referring to one of its early rulers. Textual attestations of Babylon appear in Sargonic sources in the more familiar writing of the toponym KÁ.DINGIRki, presumably a Sumerian version of the vernacular Akkadian place name Babil(u/i) that reinterpreted it as bāb-ili/ilī “gate of the god(s)” (KÁ = gate, DINGIR = deity, KI = determinative for place names).
At the time, Babylon was still a modest settlement under the control and patronage of the Old Akkadian kings; we know for instance that Šar-kali-šarri built temples there. It became a provincial capital of the Ur III kingdom (2112–2004 BCE), ruled by local governors with Akkadian names. Textual sources show that, like other core provinces, it was integrated in the state-controlled redistributive system of resources.
Babylon became a royal capital in the Old Babylonian period, under the rule of Amorite kings in the 19th century BCE. At first a very small kingdom, it soon embarked on an expansionist path. By the end of Sumu-la-el’s reign, the probable founder of the Amorite dynasty of Babylon, it controlled an area stretching from Sippar down to Marad. The kingdom reached its maximal extent with Hammurapi’s conquest of the kingdom of Larsa in 1763 BCE. Arguably, this marked the beginning of Babylon as hegemonic centre and capital of Sumer and Akkad, which remained by and large the core land of later kingdoms ruled from Babylon. Because they lie for the most part under the groundwater table, Old Babylonian levels are the oldest ones that were excavated at Babylon, and this only in a very limited area. The slow disintegration of the Old Babylonian kingdom of Babylon reached a head with the sack of the capital by a coalition of forces, apparently under the lead of the Hittite king Muršili I (1595 BCE).
The Kassite kings of Babylon built another royal residence in northern Babylonia, Dūr-Kurigalzu. Although Dūr-Kurigalzu functioned as an important administrative centre, the city of Babylon remained at least ideologically the capital of Sumer and Akkad. This is reflected in the royal titulary of the successive dynasties of kings, even after the area fell under outside rule in the first millennium. It is also clear from the elevation of Marduk, the city-god of Babylon, to the head of the national pantheon in the late second millennium. A number of dynasties succeeded one another on the Babylonian throne against a complex geopolitical backdrop. This included the resurgence of a strong power in Iran, the rise of Assyria, and Aramean and Chaldean migrations reaching deep into Babylonian territory.
Babylon entered the age of large empires that dominated the 1st millennium BCE in the unstable position of semi-vassal of Assyria. After rebelling against its overlords, the city was destroyed by Assyrian forces, who also rebuilt the city soon thereafter (7th century BCE). Babylon reached its political apex in the late 7th and 6th centuries when it became itself an imperial capital, the seat of power of the kings of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty. They lavished the city with numerous architectural and infrastructural projects, creating the Babylon that found echo in the Bible and Greek sources. The city remained a royal residence after the Persian (539 BCE), and later the Macedonian (331 BCE) conquest. The foundation of Seleucia by Seleucus (late 4th century) brought an end to Babylon as a locus of political power, but the city, and in particular the Esagil, the temple of Marduk in Babylon, remained a religious and intellectual centre even after this point. It kept cuneiform culture alive for a few more generations.