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Babylonia

Babylonia lies diagonally from northwest to southeast, between present city of Baghdad to the Persian Gulf, from the Arabian Desert on the west, and is substantially contained between the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Babylonia rests on a flat plain with the two large rivers flowing through it, the Tigris and Euphrates. Their course runs from Anatolia and Syria to the Persian Gulf. Mountains surround the East and North sides of the plain, the Zagros chain and Kurdistan, and the Syrian and Arabian deserts guard the west and south.

In the summertime the climate is hot and dry, and the winter is cold and wet. In the spring the Tigris and Euphrates rivers overflow their banks, flooding great portions of the plain. Lots of water and proper control enabled man in ancient times to produce abundant crops, mostly barley and sesame, with abundant grazing land in the lush meadows for the cattle, sheep and goats. As the hot dry south wind came faithfully the date palm was cultivated and its fruit was ripened. The abundant clay was formed into bricks to build houses and monumental structures, and also provided clay tablets for writing purposes.

The Babylonian’s were a race of people from northwest of Mesopotamia, known as the Amorites, who settled in present-day Syria, Iraq and slightly in Iran in 1800 B.C.E. They made their capital city Babylon, or “Gate of the Gods,” which was built on raised platforms of land to protect from invasion. From the platforms towered palaces and ziggurats, pyramid shaped temples that acted as schools and places of worship. Private houses were made of bricks covered in stucco with no windows, but with an interior courtyard, and often fountains and private chapels within the house.

The Babylonians spoke a Semitic language, similar to that of the previous civilization, the Akkadians. Their society was broken into three major categories. At the top were the kings (who ruled the monarchy), politicians, army officers, priests, merchants, manufacturers and owners of estates. The second class consisted of laborers, farmers and craftsmen (who largely produced bricks for housing because of the absence of stone). The third class consisted of domestic slaves.

Who became slaves, along with other important factors of society, were determined by a famous group of laws by the king Hammurabi (1700s B.C.E.), and are known as Hammurabi’s code. The code dealt with many aspects of life, from the military, business practices, and civil rights to marriage, divorce and children’s rights. There were no prisons in ancient Babylon, so those who broke Hammurabi’s code were punished with fines, losing body parts, and death. Often the punishment consisted of what the lawbreaker had done to the person who suffered. If it was a simple monetary issue, money would be paid. However, if it was life or health taken, the lawbreaker would have done to him what was done to that person, hence the expression “an eye for an eye.”

The code unified the ancient Babylonian empire. Hammurabi also standardized the religion of the empire. All people were expected to worship local Gods and the God of Babylon, Marduk. People believed that they should lead a happy life in this world because the afterlife was always bad. Priests told the future in entrails and using astrology, creating the first zodiac.

Hammurabi’s empire ended about two hundred years after his death when Hittites from central Asia, along with other groups, invaded the empire. The Hittites conquered Babylon’s foot soldiers easily with a new invention, the horse drawn chariot, with which archers could fire volleys of arrows without fear. They also brought iron weapons, which were cheaper and stronger that the ones used by the Babylonians. A group following them, the Kassites, ruled for another 400 years, until another group arose in the area.

Section Review:

1. How were lawbreakers punished in ancient Babylonia?

2. Why did Babylon eventually fall?

3. What did the absence of stone mean for ancient Babylonia?

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