Ancient Babylon was an influential city that served as a center of Mesopotamian civilization for nearly two millennia, from roughly 2000 B.C. to 540 B.C. It was located near the Euphrates River, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Baghdad in what is now Iraq.This is a long, informative article. It surveys the entire history of the city of Babylon from antiquity to the present.Babylon had a significant impact on Mesopotamia. One of its early rulers, Hammurabi, created a harsh system of laws, while in later times, the Babylonian language was used across the Middle East as a way of communicating across borders. The law code, while not the oldest in the Middle East, is one of the most famous. The city is also famous for the construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (if the ancient stories are true), a wonder of the ancient world that some people believe was built by the biblical king Nebuchadnezzar II.
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For many PaleoJudaica posts on Babylon see the links collected here, plus here and here. For the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which, if they existed at all, may not have been at Babylon, see here and links. See the latter link, and follow the links, for what I like to call the Greek Fantasy Babylon tradition. For the parallel Aramaic Fantasy Babylon tradition, especially in relation to the Book of Daniel, see here and here.
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