45 Fun Facts About Babylon

The song 'Rivers of Babylon' takes most of its lyrics from which book of the Bible?

Psalms: in Psalm 137, exiles weep by the rivers of Babylon and hang their harps on the willows rather than sing for their captors.

Which Flemish painter's 'Tower of Babel', dated 1563, hangs in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum?

Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted the unfinished tower of Genesis, whose builders God scattered across the face of the earth.

What does the Akkadian name Babilim, from which 'Babylon' derives, traditionally mean?

Bab-ilim is traditionally read as 'Gate of the gods', though many Assyriologists treat this as a folk etymology for an older, non-Semitic name such as Babilla.

In the Book of Genesis, the name Babel is interpreted to mean what?

Confusion: Genesis 11:9 puns on the Hebrew verb balal, 'to confuse', because there God confounded the language of all the earth.

Which three men did Nebuchadnezzar throw into a fiery furnace for refusing to bow to his golden image?

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego walked out unharmed, and the king saw a fourth figure walking with them in the flames.

On what kind of stone is the primary copy of the famous Old Babylonian law code inscribed?

Basalt: at its top the king stands before Shamash, sun god and god of justice, a scene that lent the laws below divine authority.

Which Babylonian creation epic opens with the words 'When on high'?

The Enuma Elish tells how Babylon's patron god defeats Tiamat, goddess of chaos and the salt sea, and goes on to create the heavens and the earth.

Which museum received the Babylonian law-code stele after its 1901 discovery at Susa?

The Louvre has shown it since French excavators found it at Susa, in Iran, where it had been carried off as plunder, probably by an Elamite king.

Which people sacked Babylon around 1595 BC, ending the dynasty of Hammurabi?

The Hittites, led by King Mursili I, came from far-off Anatolia on a raid rather than a conquest, and did not stay to rule the city.

Which people ruled Babylon for some four centuries, calling it Karduniash?

The Kassites' kings wrote to Egypt's pharaohs, and some of their letters survive among the Amarna letters.

Which Assyrian king razed Babylon in 689 BC and dumped the rubble in the water?

Sennacherib was murdered by his own sons in 681 BC, and his successor Esarhaddon set about rebuilding Babylon.

Which Assyrian king besieged Babylon until 648 BC to crush a revolt by his own brother?

Ashurbanipal besieged the city until famine forced its surrender, and his brother, Babylon's sub-king, died when it fell.

Which king freed Babylon from Assyria and founded the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 626 BC?

Nabopolassar, possibly of Chaldean origin, allied with the Medes to bring down the Assyrian Empire, and his son Nebuchadnezzar II succeeded him.

The Babylonian clay tablet Plimpton 322 lists sets of numbers linked to which theorem?

Pythagoras's theorem: its rows of whole-number triples show that Babylonians knew the rule more than 1,000 years before Pythagoras was born.

Which 1916 D. W. Griffith film built vast sets of ancient Babylon for one of its four stories?

Intolerance was partly Griffith's answer to the charges of racism against The Birth of a Nation, and it crosscut the fall of Babylon with three other stories.

What colour glaze covered the bricks of the Ishtar Gate?

Blue: the glaze is thought to imitate the deep-blue stone lapis lazuli.

Which three animals appear in relief on the Ishtar Gate?

Dragons, bulls and lions march along the gate and Processional Way: the mushussu dragon for the city god, the aurochs for the storm god Adad, the lion for Ishtar.

In which city was the Ishtar Gate reconstructed from excavated bricks after 1918?

Berlin: excavated brick material was used to rebuild the gate in the Pergamon Museum, which had room for only its smaller front section.

What was the name of the great ziggurat of Babylon, thought to lie behind the story of the Tower of Babel?

Etemenanki's old ruins were cleared away to make way for a rebuilding, but the tower never rose again.

To which god were Babylon's great ziggurat and the neighbouring temple Esagila dedicated?

Marduk, Babylon's patron god, rose with the city to head the Mesopotamian pantheon; his name may mean 'calf of the sun god', and Esagila housed his cult statue.

Legend says Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens for whom?

His wife Amytis missed the green hills of her Median homeland, the Babylonian priest Berossus wrote, in the earliest known mention of the gardens.

Which scholar has argued that the Hanging Gardens were really near the Assyrian capital, Nineveh?

Oxford Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley argued in 2013 that the gardens were built by Sennacherib at Nineveh; they are the only Wonder whose site has never been established.

Besides the Hanging Gardens, which Babylonian landmark appeared on some early lists of the Seven Wonders?

City walls: Antipater of Sidon listed them as a Wonder, but the standard list names the Pharos lighthouse in their place.

Which Jewish text has a 'Babylonian' version compiled in Mesopotamia's academies?

The Talmud: a disputation over its contents in Paris ended with copies of it being burned in the city.

According to the traditional account, how did the Persians get into Babylon in 539 BC?

Herodotus says the Persians diverted the river and waded in while the city feasted, but no record from the time confirms the tale.

Which artefact is cited as evidence the Persian conqueror let exiled peoples, including Jews, go home?

The Cyrus Cylinder was made after Cyrus took Babylon in 539 BC, as propaganda to show his right to rule the land.

Who was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire when Babylon fell in 539 BC?

Nabonidus, who spent about ten years at the Arabian oasis of Tayma leaving his son as regent, was captured after Babylon fell to Cyrus in October 539 BC.

According to Herodotus, in what did the Babylonians bury their dead?

Honey: Herodotus also claimed three Babylonian tribes ate nothing but fish, though he may never have visited Babylon himself.

Which conqueror died in the royal palace at Babylon in 323 BC?

Alexander the Great died in Nebuchadnezzar II's palace, and after a power struggle among his generals, Babylon passed to Seleucus.

Which Roman emperor briefly captured Babylon in AD 116?

Trajan found only mounds and ruins at Babylon, and there he learned that the lands he had just conquered had revolted.

The papacy's 'Babylonian captivity' refers to the decades when popes lived in which city instead of Rome?

Avignon: seven French popes resided there until the court returned to Rome in 1377, and soon a rival pope took up the Avignon seat.

Which German archaeologist led the excavation of Babylon that began in 1899?

Robert Koldewey's excavated material was later used to rebuild both the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way in a museum.

Babylonian astronomers knew that eclipses repeat after about 18 years, a cycle now called what?

The saros: Edmond Halley later gave the cycle that name, borrowing a Babylonian word that probably stood for 3,600.

Which Hebrew prophet, exiled 'in the land of the Chaldeans', saw a vision of a valley of dry bones?

Ezekiel lived among the exiles by the river Chebar, and in his vision the dry bones came together and were covered with flesh again.

Which Iraqi leader had his name inscribed on bricks of the palace rebuilt at Babylon?

Saddam Hussein stamped the bricks of his 1980s rebuilding, work that UNESCO later said had harmed the integrity of the ancient site.

In the Book of Daniel, whose banquet was interrupted by a hand writing on the wall?

Daniel 5 tells how Belshazzar's feast, using vessels looted from the Jerusalem Temple, was interrupted by the writing 'mene, mene, tekel, upharsin'; he was killed that night.

According to Genesis 10, who founded Babel along with Uruk and Akkad?

Nimrod is a 'mighty hunter' in Genesis, yet his name became US slang for a fool, perhaps thanks to Bugs Bunny cartoons.

In Rastafari belief and reggae lyrics, what does 'Babylon' stand for?

In Rastafari, 'Babylon' is the oppressive materialist system of Western society and its police, contrasted with Zion; reggae artists such as Bob Marley sang against it.

Which number base did Babylonian scribes use for their arithmetic and astronomy?

Babylonian scribes inherited the Sumerian sexagesimal system, counting in base 60; its legacy survives in the 60-minute hour and the 360-degree circle.

Which composer's 1842 opera Nabucco is based on the biblical Nebuchadnezzar?

Giuseppe Verdi turned to Nabucco after his previous opera, Un giorno di regno, had failed, and its success made his name.

Which English artist made the colour print 'Nebuchadnezzar', showing the Babylonian king driven mad?

William Blake followed the Book of Daniel, where the proud king is driven from men and made to eat grass.

Which Victorian painter made 'The Babylonian Marriage Market', a scene of brides sold at auction?

Edwin Long followed Herodotus, who says the high bids for the prettiest brides paid dowries for the plainest ones.

At which 331 BC battle did the Macedonians defeat Darius III before taking Babylon?

Gaugamela, near Arbela, decided the war: Darius fled, and victory put Babylon, Susa and Persepolis within the Macedonians' reach.

Which Persian king crushed Babylonian revolts in the 480s BC?

Xerxes I put down the revolts, but whether he really destroyed Babylon's temples, as later reports claimed, is debated.

Which legendary queen did ancient Greek writers credit with great building works at Babylon?

Semiramis is legendary, yet the Greeks' tale may echo a real 9th-century BC Assyrian queen.