An outline, era by era

Neo-Babylonian Empire

Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylonian exile of the Jews

Iron Age · ~1200 – ~500 BCE

The Neo-Babylonian Empire, also called the Chaldean Empire, was the last native dynasty to rule Mesopotamia. It began in 626 BCE, when Nabopolassar made himself king of Babylon during the collapse of Assyrian power. With help from the Medes he destroyed Nineveh in 612 BCE and took over most of the old Assyrian lands. The empire lasted until 539 BCE, when Babylon fell to the Persian king Cyrus the Great.

Its greatest ruler was Nebuchadnezzar II, who reigned from about 605 to 562 BCE. He campaigned in Syria and the Levant, and rebuilt Babylon with monumental walls, gates, palaces and temples. After Judah's rebellions, his armies took Jerusalem in 597 BCE and again in 587 or 586 BCE, destroying the city and the Temple and deporting many of its people to Babylonia. This Babylonian exile shaped Jewish religion and the writing of the Hebrew Bible. Babylon's astronomers and scribes also left records that are still used today.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon

    Folk tale

    The legend

    Nebuchadnezzar builds a vast garden of terraces planted with trees and flowers for his wife, who is homesick for the green mountains of her homeland. Water is raised to the high terraces so the plants flourish in the dry plain. The gardens become one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

    The rest is history

    The gardens are described only by Greek and Roman writers, such as Berossus, Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, who wrote centuries after Nebuchadnezzar. No Babylonian text mentions them, not even his own long building inscriptions, and excavators led by Robert Koldewey found no certain trace of them at Babylon. Some scholars think the story is a memory of gardens at Babylon that were later embellished. Stephanie Dalley has argued that the gardens were really at Nineveh, built by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, but this view is debated. Their existence at Babylon remains unproven.

    Sources

    1. BookDalley, Stephanie. The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.Argues the gardens were at Nineveh and surveys the ancient sources.
    2. BookFinkel, Irving, ed. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. London: British Museum Press, 1988.
    3. BookKoldewey, Robert. Das wieder erstehende Babylon. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1913.Excavator's account of Babylon.

  2. Nebuchadnezzar the madman

    Folk tale

    The legend

    Proud of his great city, Nebuchadnezzar is struck down by God. He is driven out from among people, eats grass like an ox, and lives in the fields until his hair grows like eagle's feathers. After seven years his reason returns and he praises the God of heaven.

    The rest is history

    The story is told in the Book of Daniel, written in the 2nd century BCE, and no Babylonian source records any madness of Nebuchadnezzar. A fragment found at Qumran, the Prayer of Nabonidus, tells a similar tale of the last Babylonian king, Nabonidus, who spent years away from Babylon at the oasis of Tayma in Arabia. Many scholars think the Daniel story transferred this memory to the better-known Nebuchadnezzar. Babylonian chronicles show that Nebuchadnezzar governed actively to the end of his reign in 562 BCE.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryBook of Daniel, chapter 4. Hebrew and Aramaic text, composed c. 165 BCE.
    2. PrimaryPrayer of Nabonidus (4Q242). Aramaic fragment from Qumran, 1st century BCE.
    3. BookCollins, John J. Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.

  3. By the rivers of Babylon

    Origin story

    The legend

    After Jerusalem falls, the whole people of Judah is marched to Babylon in chains. They sit by the rivers, weep for Zion and hang their harps on the willows. Captors ask for songs, but they cannot sing in a foreign land. In exile they keep their faith alive and later return home.

    The rest is history

    The words come from Psalm 137. The Babylonian Chronicle records the capture of Jerusalem in 597 BCE, and the Bible reports a further fall in 587 or 586 BCE. Those taken were mainly the elite, such as the royal family, officials and craftsmen, not the whole population, and many people stayed in Judah. Tablets from Al-Yahudu, a town in Babylonia, show Judeans living there in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, farming and trading. Exile helped shape Judaism, and many scholars think much of the Hebrew Bible was gathered and edited in this period. Cyrus allowed exiles to return after 539 BCE, though many chose to stay.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryBabylonian Chronicle (ABC 5, Chronicle of the Early Years of Nebuchadnezzar II). Akkadian tablet, British Museum BM 21946. In Grayson, A. K., Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, 1975.
    2. BookPearce, Laurie E., and Cornelia Wunsch. Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia in the Collection of David Sofer. Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 28. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2014.Tablets from Al-Yahudu showing Judean life in Babylonia.
    3. BookLipschits, Oded. The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah under Babylonian Rule. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005.

  4. The Tower of Babel

    Origin story

    The legend

    After the flood, people settle in a plain and decide to build a city with a tower reaching the heavens, to make a name for themselves. God sees their pride, confuses their language and scatters them across the earth. The city is called Babel.

    The rest is history

    The story is told in Genesis 11 and was probably shaped by Judean contact with Babylon, whose Hebrew name is Babel. Babylon had a great stepped temple tower, the ziggurat Etemenanki, which Nebuchadnezzar II rebuilt and described in his inscriptions. The Esagila Tablet, a Babylonian text copied in Uruk in 229 BCE, gives its dimensions. The Hebrew writer likely drew on the sight of such towers, and the name wordplay links Babel to the verb for confusion. Excavations by Koldewey found the massive foundation of Etemenanki, but nothing links it to a confusion of languages.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryGenesis 11:1-9. Hebrew Bible, Priestly and Yahwist traditions, composed c. 6th to 5th centuries BCE.
    2. PrimaryEsagila Tablet. Akkadian text copied at Uruk, 229 BCE, now in the Louvre (AO 6555).
    3. BookGeorge, Andrew R. Babylonian Topographical Texts. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 40. Leuven: Peeters, 1992.

  5. The writing on the wall

    Folk tale

    The legend

    King Belshazzar of Babylon holds a great feast and drinks from the gold cups taken from the Temple in Jerusalem. A hand appears and writes on the wall. Only Daniel can read it: the days of the kingdom are numbered, and it will be given to the Medes and Persians. That same night Belshazzar is killed.

    The rest is history

    The tale is in Daniel 5, written centuries later. Belshazzar was real, but he was crown prince, not king, and son of the last king Nabonidus, who left him in charge in Babylon while he stayed in Arabia. Nebuchadnezzar was not his father. The Nabonidus Chronicle reports that Cyrus's army took Babylon in October 539 BCE with little fighting. The Cyrus Cylinder presents Cyrus as a liberator welcomed by the city. The expression writing on the wall comes from this story.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryNabonidus Chronicle (ABC 7). Akkadian tablet, Neo-Babylonian or Persian period, British Museum BM 35382.
    2. PrimaryCyrus Cylinder. Akkadian clay cylinder from Babylon, c. 539-530 BCE, British Museum.
    3. BookBeaulieu, Paul-Alain. The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon, 556-539 B.C. Yale Near Eastern Researches 10. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.

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