Ebook: A Short History Of Babylon

Much of our perception of Babylon in the West is filtered through the poignant echoes of loss and longing that resonate in the Hebrew Bible. The lamenting exiles of Judah craved a return to their lost homeland after the sack of Jerusalem in 587 BC and their forcible removal by Nebuchadnezzar to the alien floodlands of the Euphrates. But to see Babylon only as an adjunct to Old Testament history (while it may be fascinating for the correspondences between – for example – Hammurabi’s famous law code and the Book of Deuteronomy, or the biblical story of the Flood and the Epic of Gilgamesh), is misleading. By the time ill-fated Judaean ruler Hezekiah rebelled against his Babylonian overlord, and was blinded, bound and hustled off to captivity in the city that the Book of Revelation portrays as an epicentre of depravity and harlotry, Babylon had already, for fifteen hundred years, enjoyed a rich and independent history. A Short History of Babylon explores the ever-changing city that shaped world history for two millennia.