The Chaldean / Babylonian Empire

After the fall of Assyria, Babylonia enjoyed 70 years of independence. The Chaldeans, a little-known Semitic people, became the ruling class of the New Babylonian, or Chaldean, Empire. The most famous of their kings was Nebuchadnezzar II, who rebuilt Babylon. They made great progress in science–particularly astronomy and mathematics–and strongly influenced the Greeks. From the towering ziggurat temples, astrologer-priests read the stars. They could even predict eclipses.

Nebuchadnezzar II carried his conquests to the border of Egypt, though the days of his empire were numbered. Cyrus, king of Persia, advanced into Babylonia, and one city after another surrendered to him. Babylon itself, capital of the Chaldean Empire, was taken without fighting in 539 BC and became part of the mighty Persian Empire (see Persia).

The Persian Empire lasted more than two centuries, until the conquests of Alexander the Great. Then Mesopotamia was ruled in turn by the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Turks. Once part of the Ottoman Empire, it became the independent kingdom of Iraq, which is now a republic. (See also Ancient Civilization; Iraq; Mesopotamia.)

The First Kingdom of Babylon

The city of Babylon now rose to power. Its brilliant First Dynasty lasted 300 years and reached its greatest glory in about 1800 BC under King Hammurabi. He spread the rule of Babylon south into Sumer and west around the Fertile Crescent into Syria. He was most famous, however, for the code he published to unify the legal practices in his empire. Inscribed on a huge pillar, or stele, the law code was set up in a public place and copies were sent to all of Hammurabi’s governors and judges. At the top of the stele, he was pictured as receiving the laws from a god, even though most of them were old laws that had long been written down. (See also Babylon; Hammurabi.)

The code reveals much about the habits and customs of the time. The people were divided into three classes–nobles, with hereditary estates; freemen, who could own land but not leave it to their children; and slaves, who were sold in the open market. Enslavement for debt was legal, but most slaves were captives taken in war. Maximum prices and maximum (not minimum) wages were fixed by decree.

Hammurabi made his own Semitic language official throughout his kingdom and raised the god of Babylon, Marduk, to first place among the deities. Scholars rewrote old Sumerian myths and gave Marduk, rather than Enlil, credit for creating the universe. The Babylonians’ chief female deity was the ancient mother goddess Innini of Uruk, renamed Ishtar.

As goddess of fertility, Ishtar could grant her worshipers crops, lambs, or children. In the hot midsummer month named for her son Tammuz, vegetation dried up and people fasted until he rose from the dead to make the earth green again. The worship of Ishtar (also called Astarte) and Tammuz spread over southwestern Asia and reached Egypt in the myth of Isis and Osiris. Later the deities appeared in Greece as Demeter and Persephone.

BABYLON. On the Euphrates River, in the land that is now Iraq, ruins of the world’s first great city stand alone in the desert. The city bore the proud name Bab-Ilu, meaning “gate of the gods.” The Hebrews called it Babel. In the Greek and Latin languages the name took the form Babylon, and the plain on which the city stood was called Babylonia.

During the first thousand years of its known history, Babylon was a mere village. It became the capital of the kingdom of Babylon about 1894 BC and reached its first peak of glory in the reign of Hammurabi, the lawgiver. This great king beautified the city with palaces, temples, and towers and made it the religious and cultural center of western Asia. In its temples scholarly priests copied and preserved the writings of the Sumerians, from whom the Babylonians derived their civilization.

For centuries the city was controlled by various tribes, including the Kassites, the Chaldeans, the Aramaeans, and the Assyrians. Throughout much of that period, Babylon continued to be regarded as a center of learning and culture, even by its conquerors. The last of the Assyrian rulers of Babylon, Ashurbanipal, died in 627 BC.

When Assyria declined, Babylon rose once more to wealth and imperial power under Nebuchadnezzar II (604-561 BC). This king is remembered in the Old Testament for his destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity of the Jewish people. In Babylonia he was celebrated as the builder who made Babylon the most splendid city in the world.

The original city stood on the right (west) bank of the Euphrates. Nebuchadnezzar extended it to the left bank as well and built a stone bridge across the river. The city was in the shape of a square, surrounded by a massive towered wall. Palaces and temples were of vast dimensions.

Nebuchadnezzar’s own great palace achieved a touch of fairyland from its famous Hanging Gardens, which the Greeks counted as one of the Seven Wonders of the World (see Seven Wonders of the World). The beautiful Gate of Ishtar spanned Procession Street, which led to the Temple of Marduk, chief god of Babylon. Near it stood a great terraced tower (ziggurat), built in seven receding stories with a sloping ramp spiraling around it to the top. This may have been the original Tower of Babel described in the Bible (Gen. xi); but it was only one of many artificial “holy mountains” in and around Babylon.

Babylon lost its independence forever when it fell to Cyrus the Great of Persia in 539 BC, but it continued to be a center of trade and culture. It was still fairly prosperous when Alexander the Great took up his residence in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, where he died in 323 BC. His successor, Seleucus, built a new city, Seleucia, nearby on the Tigris, because it had a deeper channel for navigation. From this time Babylon rapidly decayed. Its structures, which were faced with glazed brick, were torn down to provide brick for building elsewhere, and the once proud capital was reduced to a vast ruin. The ruins are near the town of al Hillah in Iraq. (See also Babylonia and Assyria; Mesopotamia.)

Babylonia

Bab-y-lo-nia - invaded by Arameans in 11th and 10th cents. B.C. ; devastated by wars with Assyria (q.v.) which ruled Babylon 722-626 B.C. ; ruled 625-538 B.C. by Chaldea (q.v.); under Chaldean (Neo-Babylonian) Empire controlled Mesopotamia and Syria, captured Jerusalem c. 588 B.C. thus initiating the Babylonian captivity of the Jews; empire broke up at fall of Babylon c. 538 B.C. ; ruled by Persia 538-331 B.C. when Macedonian King

Alexander the Great captured Babylon, by Seleucids 312-171 B.C.

Babylonia

Babylonia, it refers to the empires centered on the city of Babylon. The first great empire was that of Hammurabi (c1830-1530 BC), which saw the issuance of the Code of Hammurabi and the appearance of the Babylonian ziggurat, or step-towered temple. Babylonia was then dominated by the Kassites (c1530-1150 BC), the Aramaeans (c1100-1000 BC), and, from the 10th cent., by the Empire of Assyria (q.v.). A Babylonian ruler, Nabopolassar, ended Assyrian rule (625 BC) and joined the Medes in the capture of Assyria’s capital, Nineveh (612 BC). His son Nebuchadnezzar defeated the Egyptians at the great Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC, and a new Babylonian Empire, sometimes called the Chaldaean Empire, was formed. It included Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and Cilicia. These were the days of legendary Babylonian glory when the Hanging Gardens were built. It was during this period that the Jews were deported from Judah to Babylon (the Babylonian Captivity). Cyrus the Great of Persia began his attacks on Babylonia around 547 BC and Babylon fell to the Persian Empire in 538 BC.

Nebuchadnezzar

Nebuchadnezzar, c630-562 BC. King of Babylon (605-562 BC), successor to his father, Nabopolassar. In 586 BC, he destroyed Jerusalem while putting down a revolt there and exiled most of its inhabitants to Babylon (Babylonian captivity, q.v.). He rebuilt most of the temples in his land and made Babylon, with its Hanging Gardens(q.v.), one of the most beautiful cities in the ancient world.

Babylonian Captivity

Babylonian Captivity, (~ Exile) (Captivity) Name of important periods in the history of Israel and the Roman Catholic church.1. In the history of Israel, the mass deportation of prominent Jews to Babylon, following Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple (586 BC) [2 Kings 24-25]. When Cyrus the Great overthrew the Babylonian Empire (c538 BC), he allowed the Jews to return. Many thousands, but not all of them, did so. The end of the 70-year captivity prophesied in the Bible was marked by completion of the new temple (516 BC). [2 Chron 36; Ezra 1; Isaiah 40-48; Daniel 6]

Strongs Definition: Confusion By Mixture

OT:894KJV - Babel, Babylon, OT:1101 balal (baw-lal’); a primitive root; to overflow (specifically with oil.); by implication, to mix; also (denominatively from OT:1098) to fodder:

KJV - anoint, confound, X fade, mingle, mix (self), give provender, temper.