BABYLON, one of the most famous cities of antiquity, is situ ated on the Hilla branch of the Euphrates just north of the mod ern town of Hilla. The rise of Babylon to importance seems to have taken place comparatively late in Sumerian history. Up to the present no mention of the town has been discovered in tablets of the pre-Sargonic period, but Sargon is said to have built sanctu aries there. Little is known of the history of Babylonia before the fall of the kingdom of Agade and Babylon itself first appears as the head of an independent kingdom under Sumu-abu at the end of the third millennium B.C. In the struggle which followed be tween various small cities Babylon was successful and under Ham murabi she became the capital of "Babylonia," ultimately attaining the position of the most important city in western Asia. Her geographical surroundings no doubt contributed considerably to this result. In earlier times the Euphrates flowed past Kish and so long as this city was the centre of a well watered district it pos sessed a singularly favoured site ; but during the third millennium B.C. the Euphrates deserted Kish, and Babylon, only a few miles to the west but beside the new course of the stream, succeeded the. old city.
Such minor changes in the river explain the position of the actual city of Babylon but do not account for the very wide in fluence which she afterwards attained. In this region there is only a narrow strip of land between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Under primitive conditions Mesopotamia was naturally divided into three parts, the upper Tigris fertile belt, which later developed into the kingdom of Assyria, the middle land to which Kish and, later, Babylon held the key and the lower region at the head of the Persian gulf. By the time that Babylon had succeeded to Kish, growth of organization had led the way to empires of wider extent than the comparatively small city-states of earlier times and Babylon, as queen of the central region, succeeded to suzerainty over the whole of Mesopotamia, holding as she did the narrow way between the north and south ; for then, as now, the only practical road through Mesopotamia lies along the river valleys.
Advantageous as is Babylon's geographical position, other fac tors helped to make her a dominant city for a long period. Throughout the whole history of Mesopotamia, ancient as well as modern, religion has played an important part in giving prestige and power to a city. In Mesopotamia from the time of Ham murabi onwards the worship of Marduk was specially associated with Babylon. The priesthood acquired considerable power, and even the kings of Assyria found it politic to receive what was practically a coronation rite in Babylon. The priests did not fail to take advantage of the murder of Sennacherib and to proclaim that this misfortune was due to the failure of that prince to submit to Marduk; further it is not without significance that, as Langdon has shown, there was "consistent reference to the great temple of Marduk on the very bricks employed in the reconstruction of older and far more famous sanctuaries throughout Babylonia." Although this is ascribed by Langdon to local Babylonian pride, it is possible that behind this pride there lay the definite policy of a priesthood anxious under all circumstances to glorify the temples under its own control.
We have then in Babylon three factors at work, first geographi cal, second political and third spiritual. Geographically, owing to the circumstance of a change in the water supply Babylon suc ceeded to her previously powerful neighbour Kish. Secondly, while the neck of land between the rivers holds the key to power in Mesopotamia, political happenings at a very critical period enabled Babylon to obtain the first place amongst the other cities in the same region. Thirdly even after political power had passed from Babylon the spiritual power which her priesthood had ob tained in the time of her political greatness continued to uphold the prestige of the city.
Although the history of Babylon is practically the history of Mesopotamia yet certain details are necessary to understand the topography of the city as described by classical writers and re vealed by modern excavators. There are well defined periods. Old Babylon, the capital of Hammurabi and his successors, was almost entirely destroyed by Sennacherib who levelled the city to the ground in 689 B.C. Esarhaddon built a new town on the same site but his elder son, who succeeded to Babylonia, revolted against Assyria. Babylon suffered the horrors of a siege and was eventu ally captured by Assur-bani-pal. The fall of the Assyrian empire which followed was considered, at least by the pious upholders of Babylon's spiritual supremacy, as an act of divine vengeance on the king who like his predecessor Sennacherib did not offer royal homage to Marduk. In the period which followed Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadrezzar built the city whose remains have sur vived until to-day; and it was at this time that Babylon, like Bagh dad under the Caliphs and Peking under Kublai Khan, attained its greatest fame. But the end was not far off. The walls were destroyed by sieges, and Xerxes, after his capture of the city, still further continued the reduction of such defensive works as re mained; but the murder of Alexander in the palace of Nebuchad rezzar, and even cuneiform texts under the Seleucids, show that much of the old town remained. In 275 B.C. the inhabitants were removed to the new city of Seleucia and with that event the his tory of Babylon ends. Although the rivalry of Persian religion had done much to destroy the prestige of the old temples, and al though the place was depopulated, sacrifices were still performed there in the second century B.c.
In spite of the statements of classical writers and the work of the German excavators the topography of Babylon is still far from clear. The earliest Greek writer on the city is Herodotus, whose account, somewhat confused in places, is probably that of an eye-witness, though Sayce thinks he never visited Babylon. He rodotus describes the town as standing on a broad plain and form ing an exact square, each side measuring 120 stades, which, if the length of a stade be estimated at 200 yards, is equal to 14 miles. Other classical writers give lesser estimates, Ctesias for instance suggests that the total periphery of the walls was 36o stades, 42 miles. Various attempts have been made to correlate these state ments with the remains which can be observed. Some writers have preferred to ignore the literary evidence and to suppose that they represent an exaggeration of the truth, excavations having shown that the actual walls of the city have an extent of only about 24 miles. Other explanations have been offered. First it is suggested that Herodotus included in his wall the neighbouring town of Borsippa, which lay on the east bank of the river. Lang don on the other hand relying both on a cuneiform text and on personal observation of the site concludes that the great line of walls which run from Kish to the Euphrates north of Babylon are part of the defences of the city erected by Nebuchadrezzar and are therefore rightly included by Herodotus in his estimate of the length of the wall. When the plain is viewed from the top of the great mound of Babil, these ancient defences even now form a conspicuous feature in the landscape on a clear day and might easily be confused with the true city walls by one who wrote afterwards largely from memory. While it is possible to trace the actual extent of the walls from their ruins and to compare them with the measurements given by ancient writers the actual height cannot of course be restored and here it is clear that the statements of ancient authorities which give them a height of 300 ft. or over are impossible and that no exact estimate can be made on the basis of existent data.
Herodotus appears to have been guilty of a further confusion or possibly an omission. He states that there was an outer and inner Ivall. If the outer wall is correctly identified with Nebuchadrezzar's defences, the inner wall may possibly be the equivalent of the wall called by the excavators the outer wall, of which the ruins stand to-day a few hundred yards west of the canal outside the city. Inside these walls are yet other walls, which were either ignored by Herodotus or are his inner walls, in which case he has made an entirely wrong estimate of the outer walls. The actual plan of the city is equally difficult to reconcile with Herodotus' account. There appear to be three different series of mounds. To t he north lies the mound of Babil, which has been considered by Nome writers as being the site of a palace of Nebuchadrezzar and possibly of the hanging gardens. No mention is made of these gardens by Herodotus and the identification rests on the presence of ancient irrigation works only.
About I z m. south of Babil lies the mound of Al Qasr. Exca vations have shown that this mound contained the palace of Nebuchadrezzar, which was built next to the former palace of Nabopolassar and to the east of the "Gate of Ishtar" from which a raised processional way led southwards. The east side of the mound also contained another small temple. To the south of the Qasr mound lie a series of ruins which include what appears to have been the most densely populated part of the city in ancient times, a great stage tower, and—though the identification has been questioned—the remains of E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk. This is said to have been in the centre of Babylon and to have been destroyed by Xerxes. Unfortunately here our de scription by Herodotus does not give any assistance as if Xerxes did destroy it Herodotus could not have seen it and he may therefore have confused the temple with some other temple of Marduk, possibly that at Borsippa.
In spite, then, of considerable excavations and of the frequent mention of Babylon both in classical writers and in cuneiform texts the actual topography of the city is still not clearly known, and many points still await investigation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-R. Koldewey , The Excavations at Babylon (trans. Bibliography.-R. Koldewey , The Excavations at Babylon (trans. by Agnes Johns, 1914) ; the Cambridge Ancient History, vol. i ; S. Langdon, Excavations at Kish (1924).