Tell about Babylonian ?

The regular attacks from Kassites followed closely by the Hittites resulted in the decline of Ancient Babylonia.

Babylon was one of the splendid cities in the ancient world.

As one of the greatest Babylonian inventions, the Code of Hammurabi even today is used as the foundation of several laws and regulations across the world.

After the Babylonian conquest of the Kingdom of Judah in the sixth century B.C., Nebuchadnezzar II took thousands of Jews from the city of Jerusalem and held them captive in Babylon for more than half a century.

The Sumerian language is regarded as a language isolate in linguistics as it belongs to no known language family. In 3rd millennium BC, there was a close cultural symbiosis between Sumerians and Akkadians in Mesopotamia which included widespread bilingualism.

The literal meaning of the word Babylon is ‘Confusion.’ It was the last name given to Babel, which was the capital city of Babylonia in Mesopotamia.

The Babylonians were the first people to bring in the concept of sales contract. They also introduced the idea of sealing in a contract.

Many Judeans returned to Jerusalem after the Neo-Babylonian Empire fell to Cyrus the Great’s Persian forces.

Magic was integral to the religion of ancient Babylonia. All the deities (the most prominent ones being Ea, Anu, and Enlil, the elder Bel) retained, even in the last centuries of Babylonian development, traces of their early demonic character.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were amongst the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Those spectacular gardens were actually created for a homesick king’s wife.

The languages thus deeply influenced each other. Initially a part of the Akkadian Empire, Babylonia retained the written Akkadian language for official use while the Sumerian language was used for religious purposes.

Some stayed, and a Jewish community flourished there for more than 2,000 years. Many relocated to the newly created Jewish State of Israel in the 1950s.

After the death of Hammurabi, the First Dynasty of Babylon began to disintegrate rapidly. First Babylon lost control of the southern city-states and then its closer cities. Ultimately Babylonia shrunk to the small and relatively weak nation it was at the time of its foundation but the city of Babylon remained large and influential. Samsu-Ditana was the last Amorite ruler of Babylon.

The Babylonian art was one of its kind in the ancient times. The ancient Babylonians introduced jewelries into the world. They made use of precious gems and metals to design the jewelries. Needless to say, they were extra-ordinary jewelry makers.

Unfortunately, the gardens were all ruined right after the earthquakes in 2nd century BC.

The city of Babylon appears in both Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Christian scriptures portray Babylon as a wicked city.

However by the time Babylonia was founded, Sumerian had been totally replaced by Akkadian as the spoken language.

The destruction of the city enabled their allies, the Kassites, to take control of the region. This was the end of the Old Babylonian Empire. It lasted from around 1894 BC to 1595 BC. Reasons for its downfall include no natural, defensible boundaries of southern Mesopotamia making it prone to invasions; internal decay; lack of powerful leaders; and pressure of foreign invaders.

The epics like EnunaElish and Gilgamesh were the important pieces of Babylonian writing that made their literature much better.

The widely known Hammurabi code comprises of 282 written laws and regulations about agriculture, marriage, industries, governance, land, properties and others.

Hebrew scriptures tell the story of the Babylonian exile, portraying Nebuchadnezzar as a captor.

The Code was printed on a large stone tablet at the middle of the town. It was open for everyone to look at.This significant code of value was actually the people’s guidebook for their day to day actions and undertakings.

Famous accounts of Babylon in the Bible include the story of the Tower of Babel.

The Kassites, like the Amorites, were not originally native to Mesopotamia. Instead they first appeared in the Zagros Mountains of what is today northwestern Iran. They established a dynasty that ruled in Babylon from around 1595 BC to 1158 BC.

The major motto of Hammurabi’s Code was “a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye.