Babylon was an
Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in
present-day Al Hillah, Babylon Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometres (55 mi)
south of Baghdad. All that remains of the original ancient famed city of
Babylon today is a mound, or tell, of broken mud-brick buildings and debris in
the fertile Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The
city itself was built upon the Euphrates, and divided in equal parts along its
left and right banks, with steep embankments to contain the river's seasonal
floods.
Available historical resources suggest that Babylon was at
first a small town which had sprung up by the beginning of the 3rd millennium
BC. The town flourished and attained independence with the rise of the First
Amorite Babylonian Dynasty in 1894 BC. Claiming to be the successor of the
ancient Eridu, Babylon eclipsed Nippur as the "holy city" of
Mesopotamia around the time an Amorite king named Hammurabi first created the
short lived Babylonian Empire; this quickly dissolved upon his death and
Babylon spent long periods under Assyrian, Kassite and Elamite domination.
Babylon again became the seat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 612 to 539 BC
which was founded by Chaldeans and whose last king was an Assyrian. The Hanging
Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. After
the fall of Babylon it came under the rules of the Achaemenid, Seleucid,
Parthian, Roman and Sassanid empires
