Babylon was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about 85 kilometres (55 miles) south of modern day Baghdad.

A fragmentary inscription dating to the Early Dynastic Period, likely in the Akkadian language, refers to an unknown lord who was the governor (ENSI) of BAR.KI.BAR and constructed the temple for Marduk, indicating that the city could very well be Babylon.

It would be likely that it was later read as Babbir, and then Babbil by swapping the consonant r with l.[21] The earliest unambiguous mention to the city Babylon came from one of Shar-Kali-Sharri's year names, spelled as KA.DINGIR.KI,[15] indicating that the folk etymology was already widely known in the Sargonic period.

[26] The modern English verb, to babble ("to speak foolish, excited, or confusing talk"), is popularly thought to derive from this name but there is no direct connection.

Less, because I could have formed no conception of the prodigious extent of the whole ruins, or of the size, solidity, and perfect state, of some of the parts of them; and more, because I thought that I should have distinguished some traces, however imperfect, of many of the principal structures of Babylon.

within the several kilometer (mile) long city walls, containing a number of mounds, the most prominent of which are Kasr, Merkes (13 meters; 43' above the plain), Homera, Ishin-Aswad, Sahn, Amran, and Babil.

A major problem for Koldewey was the large scale mining of baked bricks, which began in the 19th century and which were mainly sourced from the time of Nebuchadnezzar II.

[53][54][55][56][57][58] Artifacts, including pieces of the Ishtar Gate and hundreds of recovered tablets, were sent back to Germany, where Koldewey's colleague Walter Andrae reconstructed them into displays at the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin.

[75] During the restoration efforts in Babylon, the Iraqi State Organization for Antiquities and Heritage conducted extensive research, excavation and clearing, but wider publication of these archaeological activities has been limited.

[9] Babylon was described, perhaps even visited, by a number of classical historians including Ctesias, Herodotus, Quintus Curtius Rufus, Strabo, and Cleitarchus.

[30] Ctesias, quoted by Diodorus Siculus and in George Syncellus's Chronographia, claimed to have access to manuscripts from Babylonian archives, which date the founding of Babylon to 2286 BC, under the reign of its first king, Belus.

[80] A similar figure is found in the writings of Berossus, who, according to Pliny,[81] stated that astronomical observations commenced at Babylon 490 years before the Greek era of Phoroneus, indicating 2243 BC.

[83] According to a Babylonian king list, Amorite rule in Babylon began (c. 19th or 18th century BC) with a chieftain named Sumu-abum, who declared independence from the neighboring city-state of Kazallu.

[86] Originally it was thought that cult statues of Babylon, including Marduk, were carried off to the Kingdom of Khana but the source Agum-Kakrime Inscription is now generally considered a much later forgery.

[88] Kassite Babylon eventually became subject to the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1053 BC) to the north, and Elam to the east, with both powers vying for control of the city.

During the reign of Sennacherib of Assyria, Babylonia was in a constant state of revolt, led by a chieftain named Merodach-Baladan, in alliance with the Elamites, and suppressed only by the complete destruction of the city of Babylon.

After his death, Babylonia was governed by his elder son, the Assyrian prince Shamash-shum-ukin, who eventually started a civil war in 652 BC against his own brother, Ashurbanipal, who ruled in Nineveh.

[93] Nebuchadnezzar is also notoriously associated with the Babylonian exile of the Jews, the result of an imperial technique of pacification, used also by the Assyrians, in which ethnic groups in conquered areas were deported en masse to the capital.

Under Cyrus and the subsequent Persian king Darius I, Babylon became the capital city of the 9th Satrapy (Babylonia in the south and Athura in the north), as well as a center of learning and scientific advancement.

[101][102] The early Persian kings had attempted to maintain the religious ceremonies of Marduk, who was the most important god, but by the reign of Darius III, over-taxation and the strain of numerous wars led to a deterioration of Babylon's main shrines and canals, and the destabilization of the surrounding region.

In October of 331 BC, Darius III, the last Achaemenid king of the Persian Empire, was defeated by the forces of the Ancient Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great at the Battle of Gaugamela, occupying Babylon.

[citation needed] Although it was captured briefly by Trajan in AD 116 to be part of the newly conquered province of Mesopotamia, his successor Hadrian relinquished his conquests east of the Euphrates river, which became again the Roman Empire's eastern boundary.

[110] Beauchamp's memoir, published in English translation in 1792, provoked the British East India Company to direct its agents in Baghdad and Basra to acquire Mesopotamian relics for shipment to London.

[112] In February 1978, the Ba'athist government of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, began the "Archaeological Restoration of Babylon Project": reconstructing features of the ancient city atop its ruins.

In a report of the British Museum's Near East department, John Curtis described how parts of the archaeological site were levelled to create a landing area for helicopters, and parking lots for heavy vehicles.

[120] The head of the Iraqi State Board for Heritage and Antiquities, Donny George, said that the "mess will take decades to sort out" and criticised Polish troops for causing "terrible damage" to the site.

[118] In April 2006, Colonel John Coleman, former Chief of Staff for the I Marine Expeditionary Force, offered to issue an apology for the damage done by military personnel under his command.

[11] Thousands of people reside in Babylon within the perimeter of the ancient outer city walls, and communities in and around them are "rapidly developing from compact, dense settlements to sprawling suburbia despite laws restricting constructions".

Before modern archaeological excavations in Mesopotamia, the appearance of Babylon was largely a mystery, and typically envisioned by Western artists as a hybrid between ancient Egyptian, classical Greek, and contemporary Ottoman culture.

Examples include: In the Book of Genesis,[132] Babel (Babylon) is described as founded by Nimrod along with Uruk, Akkad and perhaps Calneh—all of them in Shinar ("Calneh" is now sometimes translated not as a proper name but as the phrase "all of them").