Summary

For roughly two thousand years, Babylon was the most important city in southern Mesopotamia. First securely attested in the late 3rd millennium bce, it rose to prominence as capital of a territorial state under king Hammurabi, who unified Babylonia. Babylon became an imperial capital in the first millennium bce with the rise of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and subsequently it was an important regional centre of the Achaemenid and Seleucid empires. It was also the home of the national god Marduk whose temple and ziggurat dominated the centre of the city. The excavated archaeological remains primarily represent the city layout in the time of Nebuchadnezzar II. Although Babylon is amply documented through archaeological evidence and cuneiform sources, the prominence afforded to the Classical and biblical accounts of the city often makes it difficult to separate fact from fiction.