# Babylon and its long shadow The city that became a name for the world: Babylon's rise on the Euphrates, Marduk and Ishtar, Hammurabi's law, and Nebuchadnezzar. Its deepest legacy hides in plain sight, the base-60 math behind our hours and the 360-degree circle, the zodiac, the seven-day week, and the flood story before Noah. *This story parallel: The biblical timeline* *This story parallel: The story of Judaism* *This story parallel: The old gods and their long shadow* *This story part of: State, law, and coercion* *Babylonian astronomy and the birth of the zodiac part of this story* *Easter, Lent, and the roots of the spring festival parallel this story* ## c. 2501 BCE — Inanna, later Ishtar, is the goddess of love and war The Sumerian Inanna and her Akkadian counterpart Ishtar embodied both sexual love and battle, linked to the planet Venus. Her worship spread widely and influenced later Near Eastern and Greek goddess figures. ## c. 1894 BCE — Babylon rises under the Amorite dynasty An Amorite dynasty makes the small town of Babylon on the Euphrates the seat of a kingdom. Over the next centuries it becomes the political and religious center of Mesopotamia and a name that would echo for millennia. ## c. 1800 BCE — Babylonian base-60 math gives us the hour and the circle Old Babylonian mathematicians, inheriting Sumerian practice, count in base 60 (sexagesimal). This is the hidden root of the 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 degrees in a circle that the modern world still uses every day. ## c. 1754 BCE — Code of Hammurabi sets law under a king King Hammurabi of Babylon issued one of the earliest written law codes, presenting himself as chosen by the gods to bring justice. It tied the king's authority to the enforcement of written law. ## c. 1751 BCE — Marduk rises to head the Babylonian pantheon As Babylon grew powerful under Hammurabi and after, its city god Marduk was elevated above the older Sumerian gods. He was credited with ordering the cosmos and holding the tablets of destiny. ## 1595 BCE — The Hittites sack Babylon The Hittite king Mursili I raids down the Euphrates and sacks Babylon, ending the dynasty of Hammurabi. The Kassites later take the city and rule it for centuries. ## c. 1200 BCE — The Epic of Gilgamesh and the flood before Noah The standard Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh tells of Utnapishtim, a man warned by a god to build a boat and survive a great flood, centuries before the biblical Noah. The parallel is one of the clearest threads from Mesopotamian myth into the Hebrew Bible. ## c. 1000 BCE — Babylonian astronomers compile the star catalogues Babylonian scribes compile systematic records of the stars and planets, such as the MUL.APIN tablets, and read the sky for omens. Their celestial science is the ancestor of both modern astronomy and Western astrology. ## 626 BCE — Nabopolassar founds the Neo-Babylonian empire Nabopolassar throws off Assyrian rule and founds the Neo-Babylonian, or Chaldean, empire. Under him and his son the city reaches its greatest glory. ## 605 BCE — Nebuchadnezzar II takes the throne of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar II becomes king and makes Babylon the wonder of the ancient world. He is the Nebuchadnezzar of the Book of Daniel and the builder of its greatest monuments. ## c. 600 BCE — The ziggurat Etemenanki and the Tower of Babel Nebuchadnezzar rebuilds Etemenanki, the great ziggurat of Marduk, a stepped temple-tower reaching to the sky. It is widely thought to lie behind the biblical story of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues. ## 586 BCE — Babylon destroys Jerusalem and carries off the Jews Nebuchadnezzar's army destroys Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple and deports the Judean elite to Babylon. The Babylonian captivity reshaped Judaism, produced much of the Hebrew Bible in its current form, and gave the word Babylon its lasting weight for exile and worldly power. ## c. 575 BCE — The Ishtar Gate and the Hanging Gardens Babylon is adorned with the blue-glazed Ishtar Gate, dedicated to the goddess of love and war, and, by tradition, the Hanging Gardens counted among the seven wonders of the ancient world. The city becomes the archetype of imperial splendor. ## 539 BCE — Cyrus the Persian takes Babylon and frees the Jews Cyrus the Great captures Babylon almost without a fight, ending the Neo-Babylonian empire. His decree, recorded on the Cyrus Cylinder, lets the exiled Jews return home and rebuild the Temple, a turning point for Judaism and an early charter of a ruler's tolerance. ## c. 451 BCE — Babylon divides the sky into the twelve signs of the zodiac Babylonian astronomers divide the ecliptic into twelve equal signs, creating the zodiac still used in horoscopes today. Their astrology passed to the Greeks and, through them, into Western culture, where the Chaldeans became a byword for astrologers. ## c. 280 BCE — Berossus carries Babylonian astrology to the Greeks The Babylonian priest Berossus writes the Babyloniaca in Greek, transmitting Mesopotamian history, myth, and astronomy to the Hellenistic world. He is remembered as a founder of astrology in the Greek and later Roman imagination. ## c. 95 — Revelation names Rome 'Mystery, Babylon the Great' The Book of Revelation casts the Roman Empire as 'Babylon the Great, mother of harlots', turning Babylon into the enduring symbol of worldly power and corruption. The image still drives religious and conspiratorial talk of a 'Mystery Babylon' today. ## c. 100 — The planetary seven-day week spreads through the Roman world The seven-day week with days named for the sun, moon, and five planets, rooted in Babylonian astrology and merged with the Jewish sabbath, takes hold across the Roman Empire. It is the direct ancestor of the modern week and the planetary names still carried by the days.