Babylon

Versión en Español 

Babylon

 By the year 450 B.C. Herodotus had described Babylon as a great capital, crossed the Euphrates and protected by a gigantic wall of about 86 kilometers in circumference. According to this historian, traveler, was in Babylon a hundred brass hinged doors, houses three and four floors, a palace and a temple topped by a tall tower, the same as in Genesis, attempted to construct the descendants of Noah to reach heaven. The city's history, Herodotus barely knew more than two female figures and Nitocris Semiramis, and ignored even the name of Nebuchadnezzar. As for the customs of its inhabitants, was interested especially in women the annual auction, in which the most beautiful passing into the hands of the wealthy while the poor had to settle for the ugliest. Had, finally, that every woman should go once in his life "to a sanctuary of Aphrodite and join a foreigner." Your autoridadde "father of history" imposed for a long time these fantasy news. It was not until Roman times to Diodorus of Sicily historians describe as one of the wonders of the Hanging Gardens, attributed to Semiramis and we do not know if any real or are they added by historians but imagined in their dreams because among historians today is debatable whether an irrigation system discovered in Iraq was part of this wonder. Regarding the location of the "Tower", located in the tradition, south of the town of Hillah, the immensity of the ruins discouraged archaeologists. However, some went to Birs Nimrud to find, while others sought in the district of Baghdad, Aqarquf.

The Discovery of the Ruins

 In the late nineteenth century, German archaeologists led by the architect Robert Koldewey undertook the exploration of Babylon, which lasted until 1917. Delicate task if we think in Mesopotamia temples, palaces and houses are adobe, effective material against the relentless heat, but that breaks easily. At last, the painstaking work of archaeologists was rewarded, and appeared the ruins of Babylon, high walls covered with molded and glazed bricks. There are some remains great, but art remains poor when compared with the Assyrian palaces in the same period.


The Code of Hammurabi

 First it was necessary to delimit the territory of the city. Then it was found that the measures mentioned by Herodotus were fanciful, but nevertheless it was the city to have an outline of 18 kilómetrosy of actually being crossed by the Euphrates, whose bed was moved from antiquity. Year after year were progresanso Assyriologists work while deciphering the thousands of texts discovered. It is well known that Babylon was a relatively young city in Mesopotamian history.

  Sumerian cities had been founded long before her, and his name appears for the first time to the 2250 AC Nomadic Amorites, coming from the northern edge of the Syrian desert, established a series of kingdoms in the former site of the Sumerians, and further north, at Assur and Mari. In Babylon, the first royal dynasty founded in the early nineteenth century BC The city was then called Babila, significadose old name which was lost and who was awarded a etiomología Semitic (bab "gate" and ili, "the god"), you would come to mean "gate of god." But during his two thousand years of existence shall hold in official inscriptions Kadingirra name, translating Sumerian Babili, as the Sumerian language was learned from the Babylonians.

Hammurabi, the fifth monarch of the Babylonian dynasty I was undoubtedly the most prestigious ruler (reigned from 1792 to 1750 BC). It was crushing on his opponents, usually Ammonites like him, and formed a powerful empire that included all of southern Mesopotamia. His genius unifying be evident in the drafting of a code inscribed on a stela discovered at Susa 1901-1902. There is a relief to the king receiving the god Shamash, patron of justice, the content of these laws. 

 Promulgated by Hammurabi code was not the oldest, the Sumerians had already made one three centuries earlier. But the perfection of language and the code of Hammurabi and conciseness of his style warrant further consideration as the legislature's most famous monument of antiquity. No statue has been found in the ruins. We only know that led to the Elamite Susa when the foreign dynasty overthrew the Kassites, whose kings had adopted Babylonian culture. At the end of the twelfth century A.C. the Babylonians, under the command of Nebuchadnezzar I, expelled the Elamites, destroyed their capital, Susa, and took captive the statues of the gods of Babylon.