BABYLONIA: PART OF MESOPOTAMIABabylonia can be defined geographically as the southern half of Mesopotamia, beginning
where the rivers Tigris and Euphrates approach each other, forming a strip of land
like a pinched waist. At the very south lie the marshes and, beyond, the waters of
the Persian Gulf. The northern half of Mesopotamia was known as Assyria. Most of
the Assyrian cities were situated along the Tigris, those of Babylonia along the
Euphrates, a major trade route in itself, or on the intermediary canals. The Zagros
mountains form a natural border to the east, as does the great Arabian desert to the
west. The climate is hotter and drier in southern Mesopotamia; agriculture is only
possible through irrigation and the landscape is marked by a dense network of canals,
levees and dams. The date palm flourishes only south of Baghdad and their graceful
fronds marked the Babylonian skyline for millennia.
Babylonian history is embedded within the longue duréeof Mesopotamian history
but closely associated with the eponymous city of Babylon. Lying on the Euphrates,
some ninety kilometres south of Baghdad, the city was founded sometime in the
third millennium: the Akkadian king Shar-kali-sharri provides the first historical
mention, a reference to its temples. Babylon was thus perhaps always a holy city; the
etymology of a possibly non-Semitic original name was interpreted by cuneiform
scholars as bab-il, ‘gate of the god’. During the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur,
around 2000 BC, it was a provincial capital and some hundred years later, after the
disintegration of the Ur empire, it became the seat of a small kingdom founded by
the Amorite chief, Sumu-abum. His grandson Hammurabi managed to unite all of
southern Mesopotamia, as well as much of the middle Euphrates region. Although
this First Dynasty of Babylon could not hold all these lands together for long, its
rulers brought a degree of cultural and administrative uniformity to Babylonia which
is documented by abundant textual sources. The city of Babylon, as the seat of king-
ship, was lavishly endowed with temples and palaces. So splendid did the city become
that it attracted the cupidity of a far distant ruler, the Hittite king Mursili, who
swept down the Euphrates to attack the city and plunder its riches.
The Amorite chiefs who had founded the First Dynasty were part of a Semitic
people who had migrated into Mesopotamia from the west in search of pasture and
new strategies for survival. Those who adopted the settled and urban way of life
became acculturated to the ‘Babylonian’ ways, which can be seen clearly in personal
names which reflect an acceptance of the established religious practices. Their language
(‘Old Babylonian’) replaced the previously spoken Sumerian, and only the most learned
of scholars were familiar with written Sumerian.
The assimilative powers of Babylonian culture became again apparent when another
group of immigrants, this time arriving from the east, and known as the Kassites,
took political control. Their first kings still bore outlandish Kassite names, the later
ones adopted ‘good Babylonian’ names and titles. They continued to exercise their
duties towards Babylonian gods and their temples and though they built a new capital,
Babylon remained the ceremonial and religious centre of the country which came to
be known as ‘Karduniash’. The Kassite kings established the first properly unified
state system in Babylonia and during their long reign (almost 500 years) Babylonian
civilization crystallized: it was a relatively stable period in which much wealth was
generated through trade in luxury goods and a strong rural agricultural base. In the
— Gwendolyn Leick —