Babylon... The empire engraved in the memory of history

Babylon is the most famous city of ancient Mesopotamia whose ruins lie in modern Iraq 59 miles (94 km) southwest of Baghdad. The name derives from "Bab-El" or "Bab-Elim", which in Akkadian means "door of God" (or "door of the gods"), and was called "Babylon" in Greek. At that time, Babylon was a great cultural and religious center.

The Greeks' vision of the city of Babylon

The city of Babylon had great sanctity in the books of Greek historians, as Babylon was referred to with awe by ancient Greek writers and Babylon was the site of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Babylon in the Torah and the Bible

Many negative references to Babylon came in the Bible starting with Genesis 11:1-9 and the story of the Tower of Babel associated with the ziggurat of Babylon, Babylon also appears negatively in the books of Daniel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, and the most famous is what is mentioned about Babylon in the Book of Revelation. Researcher Paul Krywachik points out that Babylon earned its evil reputation because of the Bible." Although none of these accounts speak well of Babylon, they were ultimately responsible for their modern-day fame, leading to their rediscovery by German archaeologist Robert Coldeway in 1899.

Babylon in the Holy Quran

Babylon is mentioned once in the Qur'an when it comes to talking about demons teaching the people of Babylon the ways of magic that they learned from the descending kings from heaven Harut and Marut. Therefore, we see that the heavenly books agreed in some way on the specificity of the historical events in Babylon, regardless of the critical view of those events.

Babylon the Great .... The Beginning

Babylon was founded sometime before the reign of Sargon the Great of Akkadian (2334–2279 BC) and seems to have been a small coastal city on the Euphrates until the rise of Hammurabi (1792–1750 BC), which made it the capital of his Babylonian Empire. After Hammurabi's death, his empire soon collapsed. Babylon was captured by the Hittites in 1595 BC and then captured by the Kasids (or Kassites) who renamed it Karandoniash.

Chaldean and Assyrian rule of Babylon

In the early ninth century BC the Chaldeans briefly ruled Babylon, then their name became synonymous with the Babylonians of later Greek writers (notably Herodotus) and biblical scribes, and then controlled by the Neo-Assyrian Empire (912-612 BC) before being taken by Nebuchadnezzar (626-605 BC), who founded the Neo-Babylonian Empire.

Persian control of Babylon

Babylon fell to the Persians under Cyrus II the Great (550-530 BC) and was the capital of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BC) until it fell to Alexander the Great in 331 BC. Babylon continued as a trading center under the later Seleucid Empire (312–63 BC), the Parthian Empire (247 BC to 224 AD), and the Sassanid Empire (224–651 CE) but never reached the glory it knew during the reign of Hammurabi or the new Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (605/604–562 BC). The Arab-Islamic conquest of Babylon began in the seventh century AD with the fall of the Persian kingdom at the hands of the Muslim Arab conquerors.

The oldest written trace of Babylon

The first mention of the city of Babylon comes in an inscription from the time of Sargon of Akkadian. Babylon seems to have been a small coastal city on the river but abundant trade by this time. Under the later Akkadian king Char Kali Shari (2223-2198 BC), two temples were recorded to have been built in Babylon, and later fell under the control of the city of Casallo until it was liberated by the Amorite king Sumo Abom (1895 BC), one of the first founders of the first dynasty of kings in Babylon. The city was still a small port at the time, overshadowed by neighboring countries.

Babylon's attack on Larsa

In 1812 BC, the Lutte of Babylon intensified and attacked the most powerful neighboring city, the city of Larsa, but was defeated. The Babylonian king Sin-Mobalt was forced to abdicate in favor of his son Hammurabi, who quietly submitted to the king of Larsa and was busy strengthening the walls of Babylon, beautifying the city, building an army and training it in secret. Ordered by the king of Larsa, Hourabi gathered soldiers for him to repel the attack of the Elamites and Hammurabi complied with his orders, but once the area was secured, he captured the cities of Isin and Uruk from Larsa, formed alliances with Lagash and Nippur, and conquered Larsa completely. He then continued his campaigns, enacted laws, conquered Mesopotamia, and established his empire.

Babylon and the Code of Hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi was well known among neighboring countries, but it is just one example of the policies he implemented to maintain peace and encourage prosperity. He widened and raised the city walls, engaged in large public works, which included temples and lavish canals, and made diplomacy an integral part of his administration.

Hammurabi was so successful in both diplomacy and war that by 1755 BC, he had united all of Mesopotamia under the rule of Babylon which was, by this time, a major city and the largest city in the world with a population of over 100,000. The city was so powerful and famous after the invasions of Hammurabi that all of southern Mesopotamia came to be called Babylon.

The collapse of Babylon and the rise of the Assyrians

After Hammurabi's death, his empire collapsed and Babylon's size and scope diminished until Babylon was easily captured by the Hittites in 1595 BC. The Cassis followed the Hittites and renamed the city Karandoniash. Sometime between the fourteenth and ninth centuries BC, the Great Ziggurat of Babylon was built which later became associated with the Tower of Babel. It is believed that this association was misinterpretedThe word "pav-el" from the Akkadian language, which means "gate of the gods" was interpreted in Hebrew as "bavel" which means confusion and confusion.

Description of Babylon the Great in the books of historians

Ancient writers (except the biblical scribes) glorified the city of Babylon and referred to it with awe in describing the great ziggurat symbolizing the "foundation of heaven and earth," the enormous walls, the Ishtar Gate, and the hanging gardens of Babylon. Herodotus comments on the size of the city of Babylon:

"Babylon is located in a wide plain, which is square in shape, with a length of one hundred and twenty playgrounds in each direction, so that the whole arena is four hundred and eighty playgrounds. Besides its huge size, it is not even close to any other city. It is surrounded by a wide and deep moat, full of water, behind which rises a wall fifty cubits wide and two hundred high."

Rediscovering the Great Babylon

Babylon was known only through biblical accounts and classical Greek writers until it was rediscovered in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as European travelers began to explore the region and returned home with various artifacts of interest. In the nineteenth century, European museums and institutes of higher learning, hoping to find archaeological evidence of biblical narratives, sponsored numerous expeditions to the region that discovered many of the greatest monuments of Mesopotamia; among them Babylon, the once-great gate of God. In the eighties, restoration attempts were made under President Saddam Hussein, including the reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate (the actual gate currently housed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Germany). In 2019, the ruins of the great city were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The great symbolism of Babylon in the Torah and the Bible

Many commentators of the Torah and the Bible point out that the great Babylon symbolizes an unjust world power and that its destruction by biblical description has not yet happened, but it will come as an end to its injustice to other nations, and many commentators have linked many unfulfilled prophecies that that world power is the United States and that there are some references to something like nuclear strikes that will be directed at it by another nation that was its ally at first and then angry at it.

These commentators cite that Babylon was often referred to as the great city, which ancient commentators assumed was ancient Babylon. Regardless of how accurate these interpretations are, Babylon remains in the memory of history even thousands of years after its end and demise, which shows how great the impact it left on the souls of other nations and even on the souls of its enemies in the past.