Babylon Trivia
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45 free Babylon trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Babylon trivia quiz follows the 'gate of the gods' from a small Akkadian town on the Euphrates to the largest city on Earth and back to a village of brick-robbers. It covers Hammurabi and his law code, the Hittite sack of 1595 BC, the Kassites, Sennacherib's demolition of the city in 689 BC, Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II, the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way, the Etemenanki ziggurat behind the Tower of Babel story, and the Hanging Gardens that may never have existed in Babylon at all. It then covers the fall: Cyrus diverting the Euphrates in 539 BC, the Cyrus Cylinder, Alexander the Great dying in Nebuchadnezzar's palace, the Seleucids, Parthians and Trajan, the Biblical Babylon of Daniel and Revelation, and the modern story: Koldewey's German dig, the Pergamon Museum reconstruction, Saddam Hussein's inscribed bricks, Camp Alpha and the 2019 UNESCO listing. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on Babylon, its monuments and its kings, and each explanation adds one further fact. Good for ancient history students, Bible study groups and quiz nights.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The song 'Rivers of Babylon' takes most of its lyrics from which book of the Bible?
Psalms
Psalms: in Psalm 137, exiles weep by the rivers of Babylon and hang their harps on the willows rather than sing for their captors.
Q 02Which Flemish painter's 'Tower of Babel', dated 1563, hangs in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum?
Pieter Bruegel
Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted the unfinished tower of Genesis, whose builders God scattered across the face of the earth.
Q 03What does the Akkadian name Babilim, from which 'Babylon' derives, traditionally mean?
Gate of the gods
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.
Q 04In the Book of Genesis, the name Babel is interpreted to mean what?
Confusion
Confusion: Genesis 11:9 puns on the Hebrew verb balal, 'to confuse', because there God confounded the language of all the earth.
Q 05Which three men did Nebuchadnezzar throw into a fiery furnace for refusing to bow to his golden image?
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego walked out unharmed, and the king saw a fourth figure walking with them in the flames.
Q 06On what kind of stone is the primary copy of the famous Old Babylonian law code inscribed?
Basalt
Basalt: at its top the king stands before Shamash, sun god and god of justice, a scene that lent the laws below divine authority.
Q 07Which Babylonian creation epic opens with the words 'When on high'?
Enuma Elish
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.
Q 08Which museum received the Babylonian law-code stele after its 1901 discovery at Susa?
The Louvre
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.
Q 09Which people sacked Babylon around 1595 BC, ending the dynasty of Hammurabi?
The Hittites
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.
Q 10Which people ruled Babylon for some four centuries, calling it Karduniash?
The Kassites
The Kassites' kings wrote to Egypt's pharaohs, and some of their letters survive among the Amarna letters.
Q 11Which Assyrian king razed Babylon in 689 BC and dumped the rubble in the water?
Sennacherib
Sennacherib was murdered by his own sons in 681 BC, and his successor Esarhaddon set about rebuilding Babylon.
Q 12Which Assyrian king besieged Babylon until 648 BC to crush a revolt by his own brother?
Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal besieged the city until famine forced its surrender, and his brother, Babylon's sub-king, died when it fell.
Q 13Which king freed Babylon from Assyria and founded the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 626 BC?
Nabopolassar
Nabopolassar, possibly of Chaldean origin, allied with the Medes to bring down the Assyrian Empire, and his son Nebuchadnezzar II succeeded him.
Q 21Legend says Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens for whom?
His wife
His wife Amytis missed the green hills of her Median homeland, the Babylonian priest Berossus wrote, in the earliest known mention of the gardens.
Q 22Which scholar has argued that the Hanging Gardens were really near the Assyrian capital, Nineveh?
Stephanie Dalley
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.
Q 23Besides the Hanging Gardens, which Babylonian landmark appeared on some early lists of the Seven Wonders?
City walls
Q 14The Babylonian clay tablet Plimpton 322 lists sets of numbers linked to which theorem?
Pythagoras's 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.
Q 15Which 1916 D. W. Griffith film built vast sets of ancient Babylon for one of its four stories?
Intolerance
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.
Q 16What colour glaze covered the bricks of the Ishtar Gate?
Blue
Blue: the glaze is thought to imitate the deep-blue stone lapis lazuli.
Q 17Which three animals appear in relief on the Ishtar Gate?
Dragons, bulls and lions
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.
Q 18In which city was the Ishtar Gate reconstructed from excavated bricks after 1918?
Berlin
Berlin: excavated brick material was used to rebuild the gate in the Pergamon Museum, which had room for only its smaller front section.
Q 19What was the name of the great ziggurat of Babylon, thought to lie behind the story of the Tower of Babel?
Etemenanki
Etemenanki's old ruins were cleared away to make way for a rebuilding, but the tower never rose again.
Q 20To which god were Babylon's great ziggurat and the neighbouring temple Esagila dedicated?
Marduk
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.
City walls: Antipater of Sidon listed them as a Wonder, but the standard list names the Pharos lighthouse in their place.
Q 24Which Jewish text has a 'Babylonian' version compiled in Mesopotamia's academies?
The Talmud
The Talmud: a disputation over its contents in Paris ended with copies of it being burned in the city.
Q 25According to the traditional account, how did the Persians get into Babylon in 539 BC?
Diverted the river and waded in
Herodotus says the Persians diverted the river and waded in while the city feasted, but no record from the time confirms the tale.
Q 26Which artefact is cited as evidence the Persian conqueror let exiled peoples, including Jews, go home?
The Cyrus Cylinder
The Cyrus Cylinder was made after Cyrus took Babylon in 539 BC, as propaganda to show his right to rule the land.
Q 27Who was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire when Babylon fell in 539 BC?
Nabonidus
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.
Q 28According to Herodotus, in what did the Babylonians bury their dead?
Honey
Honey: Herodotus also claimed three Babylonian tribes ate nothing but fish, though he may never have visited Babylon himself.
Q 29Which conqueror died in the royal palace at Babylon in 323 BC?
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great died in Nebuchadnezzar II's palace, and after a power struggle among his generals, Babylon passed to Seleucus.
Q 30Which Roman emperor briefly captured Babylon in AD 116?
Trajan
Trajan found only mounds and ruins at Babylon, and there he learned that the lands he had just conquered had revolted.