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BABYLON

(Sum. KÁ.DINGIR.RA;
Akk. bāb-ilim; Heb. bāḇel; Gk. Babylṓn)

Western towers of the Ishtar gate with reliefs of animals. Constructed by Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 b.c.e.), the gate led to the sacred processional street (Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago)

An enormously important city in antiquity (“gate of the god”), situated on the Euphrates River SW of Baghdad.

Babylon’s earliest history is obscure because of the lack of written sources and the virtual obliteration of the earliest archaeological levels, but during the Ur III period (ca. 21st century b.c.e.) it was the capital of a province and the seat of a local governor. It became the preeminent political and cultural center in southern Mesopotamia during the 19th and 18th centuries under the Amorite rulers of its First Dynasty, the most illustrious of whom was Hammurabi (1792-1750). During the last quarter of his reign, Hammurabi transformed the city into the center of what may guardedly be called an extraterritorial state which controlled most of southern Mesopotamia (Akkad in the north and Sumer in the south) and, however briefly, territory in the middle Euphrates region (Mari) and Assyria. The kings of Hammurabi’s dynasty lavished extensive resources on fortifying and beautifying the city, and its cultural and religious preeminence waxed. Thereafter, Babylon remained the psychological if not always the actual center of political and religious life in southern Mesopotamia. Babylon’s extraterritorial influence under the First Dynasty was short-lived.

Already during the reign of Samsu-iluna, Hammurabi’s successor, the southern region adjacent to the Persian Gulf, the Sea-Land, asserted its independence; subsequently, the territory under Babylon’s control quickly diminished. The rising Hittite state under Mursilis I sacked Babylon just after 1600, ending the First Dynasty. For the next five and a half centuries, the non-native Kassites ruled Babylon. The period is relatively unknown because of the paucity of sources. From the end of the Kassite period until the ascendance of the northern Mesopotamian Assyrian state in the 1st millennium, a series of unremarkable dynasties ruled Babylon. The most notable monarch in the series was perhaps Nebuchadnezzar I (1125-1104), during whose reign the cult statue of the god Marduk was recovered from exile in Elam, and the great epic poem Enuma Elish, which celebrates Marduk’s rise to preeminence in the pantheon, was codified. Marduk had become the supreme deity in the pantheon, patron of the city and of its kings. The erudite topographical text known as TINTIR=Babylon, which celebrates the theological and cosmological preeminence of the city may also date to this period.

During much of Assyria’s dominance of the Near East in the 1st millennium, Babylon remained a thorn in the side of its northern neighbor. For the most part, the Assyrians respected the cultural and religious prominence of the city, even when they ruled it, although there were exceptions, as when Sennacherib completely destroyed the city in 689 because of its persistent recalcitrance. Babylon’s greatest period of prosperity and power came under the Neo-Babylonian dynasty founded by Nabopolassar. The city became the capital of an imperial state that spanned much of the Near East under the rule of his son, Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562). The Neo-Babylonian kings undertook massive building projects, and Nebuchadnezzar, partly to mimic the accomplishments of Hammurabi, sought to make Babylon the economic and administrative center of the world, a project in which he achieved some measure of success.

Excavations at Babylon were conducted between 1899 and 1917 by the Deutsche Orientgesellschaft under the direction of Robert Koldewey. Partly because the high water table obliterated earlier remains, and partly because of the sheer extent of Neo-Babylonian building projects, most of the excavation results illuminate the city in its imperial phase during the mid-6th century and later. The city was approximately rectangular in shape, bisected by the Euphrates. Two massive defensive walls and a moat surrounded it. Along with two enormous palace complexes, Babylon was home to a host of temples large and small. Undoubtedly the most important was the Esagil (“House whose head is high”), Marduk’s temple complex. Just to the north of the temple was the ziggurat of Marduk, Etemenanki (“House, foundation platform of heaven and underworld”), a seven-level staged tower with a small chapel on top. Another prominent feature of the city was the Processional Street that paralleled the river in the eastern half of the city: it led to the monumental Ishtar Gate which was decorated with glazed bricks depicting lions and dragons.

Babylon figures prominently in the OT, especially in historical and prophetic texts from the imperial era, and Nebuchadnezzar, who was responsible for the final sack of Jerusalem in 587, understandably was an object of scorn. One of the most famous narratives concerning Babylon, however, is the Tower of Babel story in Gen. 11:1-9. All humanity, sharing one language, settles in the Plain of Shinar (a name for southern Mesopotamia) and determines to build a monumental tower to secure lasting repute. God confuses (bālal) their language to frustrate the plan, and the site is subsequently named Babel (bāḇel). Scholars have long thought that the tower may be a reflex of the Etemenanki, the ziggurat of Marduk. Some have protested that the description of “the tower whose head is in the heavens” (Gen. 11:4) better reflects the ceremonial name of the Esagil temple, but note Nebuchadnezzar’s claim: “I determined to raise the head of Etemenanki to rival the heavens” (Weissbach, 46, no. 3:22-26). Babylon’s reputation as a magnificent if decadent imperial city outlasted the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, as can be seen in the court tales of Daniel (e.g., Dan. 4:30); much later, the early Christians assigned the opprobrious name of Babylon to imperial Rome (Rev. 14:8; 18:1-24).

Bibliography. A. R. George, Babylonian Topographical Texts. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 40 (Leuven, 1992); J. Oates, Babylon, rev ed. (London, 1986); F. H. Weissbach, Das Hauptheiligum des Marduk in Babylon, Esagila und Etemenanki. WVDOG 59 (1938, repr. Osnabrück, 1967).

David Vanderhooft

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

BABYLON

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)