BABYLON 



532 



BABYLONIA 



RrUted Subject*. The reader who is inter- 

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Chicken Pox Health Habits 



Child Infantile Paralysis 



Cholera, subhead Infant Mortality 



Cholera Infantum Measles 

 Croup ^I jl k 



Diphtheria Scarlet Fever 



Eugenics Whooping Cough 



BABYLON, bab'ilon, a city of the ancient 

 world, the capital of Babylonia, situated on the 

 left bank of the Euphrates River, about sev- 

 enty miles south of Bagdad. Babylon, whose 

 name is the Greek form of a word meaning 

 gate of the Gods, is first known to history 

 more than 5,000 years ago as the city of Sargon 

 of Akkad (about 3800 B.C.). As the capital of 

 all Babylonia in 2094 B.C., it was the prey of 

 numerous Assyrian kings until 689 B. c., when 

 it was destroyed by Sennacherib. It was re- 

 built by his successor, Esarhaddon, and then 

 under Nebuchadnezzar (604-561 B.C.) became 

 one of the wonders of the ancient world, its 

 walls of immense height and thickness enclos- 

 ing magnificent buildings and pleasure grounds. 

 The celebrated Hanging Gardens (see HANG- 

 ING GARDENS OF BABYLON) and the great temple 

 of Belus are among the world's greatest 

 achievements. 



The city under Nebuchadnezzar was built 

 in the form of a square, the area of which 

 modern scholars give as twelve square miles. 

 Cyrus the Great seized the city in 538 B. c., and 

 with this conquest it became a part of the 

 Persian empire. Under the Persian monarchs 

 the once famous city began a rapid decline, 

 and when Alexander the Great entered it he 

 found it falling into ruins. 



The history of Babylon ends practically in 

 275 B. c., when the remaining inhabitants were 

 taken to the newly-founded city of Selucia. 

 Modem excavations, begun in 1899, have 

 brought to light many art treasures and inscrip- 

 tions that reveal interesting facts about the 

 city which Nebuchadnezzar called "Babylon 

 the Great"; but little has been found which 

 throws light on the earlier periods of its his- 

 tory. See BABYLONIA. 



BABYLONIA, babilo'nia, the ancient 

 southern portion of the Tigris-Euphrates Val- 

 ley, the seat of a mighty empire, the earliest 

 in the history of mankind. This land, after 

 centuries of varying fortune, became a part of 

 the Turkish Empire, and now is included in 

 the modern Irak-Arabi, which contains parts of 

 the divisions known as Bagdad and Basra. 



Geography. Babylonia was a plain lying 

 south of Assyria and Susiana, and stretching 

 southward to the Persian Gulf. Westward, it 

 merged with the Arabian Desert; along the 

 eastern border flowed the River Tigris. At 

 various times its rule extended westward to the 

 sea. The name Babylonia comes from Baby- 

 lon, the ancient capital of the district, and the 

 latter term is used in the Old Testament to 

 mean the country as a whole. Akkad, or 

 Accad, and Shumar, or Shinar, were applied in 

 early times to the northern and southern 

 divisions. 



Like the Valley of the Nile, the Babylonian 

 plain was enriched by the deposits of rivers, 

 and so fertile was the land that tradition made 

 this region the scene of the Garden of Eden, 

 "out of the ground of which God made to 

 grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight 

 and good for food" (Genesis II, 9). In ancient 

 times Babylonia was covered by a network of 

 dikes and canals, the ruins of which may still 

 be seen in the present cheerless waste of 

 country. 



People. It is supposed that the Babylonians 

 were a union of the Semitic and non-Semitic 

 races, the latter being the first inhabitants of 

 the country, and the former a people who came 

 there from Arabia. They were an industrious 

 and peace-loving people, and became wonderful 

 farmers and traders. Their harvests of grain 

 excited the amazement of the Greek historian 

 Herodotus. Across the Arabian Desert came 

 caravans laden with precious stones, spices, cop- 

 per and gold; from the East they received 

 marble and precious metals, and the kings 

 bought cedar-wood obtained from the Syrian 

 mountains to adorn their temples and palaces. 

 Babylonian traders traveled to far-distant lands 

 with native products, thus putting the ancient 

 world in contact with Babylonian civilization. 



Their language was much like that of the 

 Hebrews and Phoenicians, and was written in 

 the form of wedge-shaped characters, to which 

 the name cuneiform has been given (see 

 CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS). For writing mate- 

 rials they used clay and stone tablets, espe- 

 cially the former. Babylonian literature in- 

 cluded many different subjects hymns, prayers 

 to the gods, poetry, myths, history, science, 

 agriculture and law. The Babylonians were 

 ruled by kings who had absolute power; under 

 the king were officers called viceroys, who 

 governed the provinces. They had a religion 

 of many gods, and each important city was 

 the center of the worship of a particular god. 



