1
00:00:01,840 --> 00:00:07,840
Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff, Lauren

2
00:00:07,880 --> 00:00:12,720
Speaker 1: Vogelbaum here. At the height of its glory in the

3
00:00:12,880 --> 00:00:17,120
Speaker 1: seventh and sixth centuries BCE, the ancient city of Babylon

4
00:00:17,400 --> 00:00:21,599
Speaker 1: was the largest and wealthiest in the world. Under the

5
00:00:21,800 --> 00:00:26,160
Speaker 1: ruthless and ambitious king Nebuchonezer the Second, the sprawling settlement

6
00:00:26,239 --> 00:00:29,080
Speaker 1: in what's now Iraq grew into a major city as

7
00:00:29,200 --> 00:00:34,120
Speaker 1: large as Chicago, boasting towering temples, ornately tiled palaces, and

8
00:00:34,240 --> 00:00:37,360
Speaker 1: imposing city walls thick enough that on the pathway on

9
00:00:37,400 --> 00:00:40,640
Speaker 1: top of them, two chariots drawn by four horses apiece

10
00:00:40,680 --> 00:00:45,440
Speaker 1: could pass each other side by side. According to legend,

11
00:00:45,479 --> 00:00:47,920
Speaker 1: it may have also been home to the Hanging Gardens

12
00:00:47,960 --> 00:00:50,000
Speaker 1: of Babylon, a one of the seven Wonders of the

13
00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:54,960
Speaker 1: ancient world, and a hubristic skyscraping temple that some historians

14
00:00:54,960 --> 00:00:59,920
Speaker 1: believe inspired the biblical Tower of Babel. But the glory

15
00:01:00,120 --> 00:01:03,880
Speaker 1: days of Babylon were short lived. As foretold by Old

16
00:01:03,880 --> 00:01:07,400
Speaker 1: Testament prophets, the grand ancient city fell to the Persian

17
00:01:07,400 --> 00:01:11,160
Speaker 1: Empire in five hundred and thirty nine BCE and slowly

18
00:01:11,200 --> 00:01:17,160
Speaker 1: crumbled over centuries of foreign invasions and occupations. Although Babylon

19
00:01:17,319 --> 00:01:20,560
Speaker 1: was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in twenty nineteen,

20
00:01:21,080 --> 00:01:24,400
Speaker 1: there isn't much left to see of this once unstoppable

21
00:01:24,400 --> 00:01:28,959
Speaker 1: empire that dazzled Greek historians and enslaved its rivals, most

22
00:01:28,959 --> 00:01:33,039
Speaker 1: famously the biblical Kingdom of Judah. If you took a

23
00:01:33,080 --> 00:01:36,120
Speaker 1: trip to Babylon today, located about fifty five miles or

24
00:01:36,200 --> 00:01:39,800
Speaker 1: eighty five kilometers south of Baghdad, you'd see a Taki

25
00:01:39,840 --> 00:01:43,440
Speaker 1: recreation built by Saddam Hussein in the nineteen seventies that's

26
00:01:43,480 --> 00:01:47,480
Speaker 1: been partially destroyed by decades of war. It's a sad

27
00:01:47,600 --> 00:01:53,200
Speaker 1: ending to such a fabled city. Nebukanezer was the most

28
00:01:53,240 --> 00:01:57,000
Speaker 1: famous of Babylon's rulers, but he wasn't the first, as

29
00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:00,200
Speaker 1: several empires rose and fell and rose again over the

30
00:02:00,280 --> 00:02:03,440
Speaker 1: millennia on that same coveted soil between the Tigris and

31
00:02:03,440 --> 00:02:08,280
Speaker 1: Euphrates rivers. The earliest king to unite warring factions into

32
00:02:08,360 --> 00:02:11,839
Speaker 1: a single powerful city state in southern Mesopotamia and part

33
00:02:11,880 --> 00:02:16,000
Speaker 1: of Assyria at now northern Iraq was the remarkable Hammurabi

34
00:02:16,360 --> 00:02:20,600
Speaker 1: in the eighteenth century BCE. Not only did he successfully

35
00:02:20,639 --> 00:02:24,360
Speaker 1: conquer or forge alliances with Babylon's fiercest enemies. During his

36
00:02:24,440 --> 00:02:27,680
Speaker 1: forty three year reign, he also built Babylon into a

37
00:02:27,720 --> 00:02:33,960
Speaker 1: showplace for innovations in engineering and justice. Hammurabi ordered the

38
00:02:34,040 --> 00:02:38,120
Speaker 1: construction of intricate canals to provide babylon citizens with fresh water,

39
00:02:38,600 --> 00:02:42,640
Speaker 1: and fortified the city's walls against invaders. He concerned himself

40
00:02:42,680 --> 00:02:45,680
Speaker 1: with food distribution and public safety in a city that

41
00:02:45,760 --> 00:02:50,520
Speaker 1: represented something entirely new, the intermingling of many people from

42
00:02:50,600 --> 00:02:55,040
Speaker 1: wildly different cultures. In order to keep the peace among

43
00:02:55,120 --> 00:02:59,160
Speaker 1: people without ties of blood or religion, Hammurabi created his

44
00:02:59,280 --> 00:03:03,440
Speaker 1: famous League Code, essentially a detailed list of some three

45
00:03:03,520 --> 00:03:07,239
Speaker 1: hundred crimes and their associated punishments, all in an if

46
00:03:07,320 --> 00:03:10,320
Speaker 1: then format. If a man put out the eye of

47
00:03:10,360 --> 00:03:13,560
Speaker 1: another man, his eye shall be put out, and so on.

48
00:03:14,919 --> 00:03:18,560
Speaker 1: The code didn't just cover bodily damage, though different stipulations

49
00:03:18,600 --> 00:03:25,920
Speaker 1: covered marriage, children, inheritance, debt, interest, and collateral. Punishments tended

50
00:03:25,919 --> 00:03:29,399
Speaker 1: to be harsh and even harsher on lower class perpetrators

51
00:03:29,480 --> 00:03:32,600
Speaker 1: than upper class ones. A copy of the code was

52
00:03:32,680 --> 00:03:35,480
Speaker 1: unearthed back in nineteen oh one by a French archaeologist.

53
00:03:35,920 --> 00:03:39,080
Speaker 1: It's inscribed on a stone pillar over seven feet or

54
00:03:39,160 --> 00:03:43,200
Speaker 1: two meters tall. A. Scholars still debate how the ancient

55
00:03:43,200 --> 00:03:47,440
Speaker 1: Babylonians would have interpreted and followed the code. Because the

56
00:03:47,440 --> 00:03:50,160
Speaker 1: code is so specific in the issues it addresses. A,

57
00:03:50,200 --> 00:03:52,520
Speaker 1: scholars think that it was a list of amendments to

58
00:03:52,560 --> 00:03:57,480
Speaker 1: an existing set of laws that have been lost to history.

59
00:03:58,040 --> 00:04:01,840
Speaker 1: But however, the code worked. Rabi's singular genius as a

60
00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:05,600
Speaker 1: military and domestic leader wasn't passed on to his successor.

61
00:04:06,680 --> 00:04:10,560
Speaker 1: Just days after Hamarabi's death, Babylon's old enemies declared their

62
00:04:10,560 --> 00:04:15,440
Speaker 1: independence and readied their armies for invasion. The Babylonian kingdom

63
00:04:15,480 --> 00:04:18,320
Speaker 1: fell to pieces, and the city wouldn't return to glory

64
00:04:18,440 --> 00:04:23,159
Speaker 1: for more than a thousand years. It was the Great

65
00:04:23,240 --> 00:04:26,680
Speaker 1: and Terrible Nebuconezzer the Second who rebuilt Babylon as a

66
00:04:26,720 --> 00:04:31,320
Speaker 1: magnificent tribute to the creator God Marduke. Ruling from six

67
00:04:31,440 --> 00:04:35,640
Speaker 1: oh five to five sixty two BCE, Nebuconezer extended the

68
00:04:35,640 --> 00:04:39,800
Speaker 1: Babylonian empire across Egypt, Syria, and the Kingdom of Judah,

69
00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:43,960
Speaker 1: where he seized Jerusalem in five ninety seven BCE, capturing

70
00:04:44,040 --> 00:04:46,520
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of Israelites and dragging them off to

71
00:04:46,560 --> 00:04:50,320
Speaker 1: Babylon as forced laborers, where the Bible tells us they

72
00:04:50,560 --> 00:04:56,560
Speaker 1: wept in exile by its rivers. Because of Nebukonezzer's imperialist

73
00:04:56,560 --> 00:05:00,880
Speaker 1: cruelty and pension for golden shrines to many gods, Babylon

74
00:05:00,960 --> 00:05:05,880
Speaker 1: appears as shorthand for everything ungodly in some Judaeo Christian writings.

75
00:05:06,680 --> 00:05:09,279
Speaker 1: In the New Testament Book of Revelation, the whore of

76
00:05:09,279 --> 00:05:13,120
Speaker 1: Babylon makes an appearance quote adorned with gold and jewels

77
00:05:13,160 --> 00:05:16,320
Speaker 1: and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full

78
00:05:16,360 --> 00:05:22,800
Speaker 1: of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. According

79
00:05:22,800 --> 00:05:27,080
Speaker 1: to historians, Nibuconezzer relocated conquered people around the empire to

80
00:05:27,320 --> 00:05:31,440
Speaker 1: keep them from organizing rebellions against him. Under his leadership,

81
00:05:31,480 --> 00:05:34,240
Speaker 1: Babylon became the biggest and most modern city in the

82
00:05:34,279 --> 00:05:40,000
Speaker 1: ancient world. In addition to Babylon's colossal city walls, he

83
00:05:40,080 --> 00:05:43,920
Speaker 1: was responsible for the stunning Processional Way, a wide thoroughfare

84
00:05:44,040 --> 00:05:47,680
Speaker 1: lined with ornately tiled walls depicting lions and dragons in

85
00:05:47,760 --> 00:05:51,200
Speaker 1: bright blues and yellows. The Processional Way led to the

86
00:05:51,240 --> 00:05:57,800
Speaker 1: Ishtar Gate the city's grand northern entrance. One of Nibukinezzer's

87
00:05:57,880 --> 00:06:01,800
Speaker 1: best known construction projects was the Temple of Marduk, which

88
00:06:01,880 --> 00:06:05,320
Speaker 1: sat atop a three hundred foot that's ninety meters zigarette,

89
00:06:05,640 --> 00:06:09,560
Speaker 1: accessible by a ramp that curved around its exterior. The

90
00:06:09,560 --> 00:06:14,440
Speaker 1: Greek historian Hirototus, writing centuries after Babylon's heyday, described eight

91
00:06:14,560 --> 00:06:18,440
Speaker 1: towers stacked on top of one another. It's not hard

92
00:06:18,440 --> 00:06:21,120
Speaker 1: to believe that Old Testament authors may have modeled their

93
00:06:21,200 --> 00:06:27,039
Speaker 1: Tower of Babel after the Marduke Temple. Meanwhile, the location

94
00:06:27,160 --> 00:06:30,039
Speaker 1: of the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon is a matter

95
00:06:30,080 --> 00:06:33,320
Speaker 1: of some debate. Some historians think they may have actually

96
00:06:33,360 --> 00:06:36,560
Speaker 1: been built about three hundred miles that's five hundred kilometers

97
00:06:36,600 --> 00:06:40,719
Speaker 1: away in Nineveh by an Assyrian king. Others think the

98
00:06:40,760 --> 00:06:44,320
Speaker 1: gardens never existed, as no archaeological evidence of them has

99
00:06:44,360 --> 00:06:48,520
Speaker 1: ever been found, nor were they mentioned in contemporary Babylonian texts.

100
00:06:49,040 --> 00:06:51,239
Speaker 1: The first mention of the gardens was in two hundred

101
00:06:51,240 --> 00:06:57,160
Speaker 1: and ninety BCE, long after Nebuconesser had died. Speaking of

102
00:06:57,440 --> 00:07:01,440
Speaker 1: let's talk about how Babylon fell. Just a few short

103
00:07:01,440 --> 00:07:04,839
Speaker 1: decades after Nibakdezzar's death, Babylon was taken by the Persian

104
00:07:04,880 --> 00:07:08,159
Speaker 1: conqueror Cyrus the Second, who reduced the city to just

105
00:07:08,200 --> 00:07:11,640
Speaker 1: another outpost in his vast empire based in modern day Iran.

106
00:07:12,960 --> 00:07:16,320
Speaker 1: Two centuries later, Alexander the Great planned to make Babylon

107
00:07:16,360 --> 00:07:19,559
Speaker 1: the jewel of his Asian Empire, but ended up dying

108
00:07:19,600 --> 00:07:23,680
Speaker 1: in the city in three twenty three BCE. After a

109
00:07:23,840 --> 00:07:26,800
Speaker 1: solid sacking by the Parthians in the second century CE,

110
00:07:27,360 --> 00:07:33,200
Speaker 1: Babylon never made a comeback. A two millennia of looting

111
00:07:33,280 --> 00:07:37,040
Speaker 1: and warfare reduced Babylon to the barest of ruins. In

112
00:07:37,080 --> 00:07:40,520
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, German archaeologists recovered remnants of the

113
00:07:40,560 --> 00:07:44,520
Speaker 1: processional way and reconstructed its blue glazed tile murals at

114
00:07:44,560 --> 00:07:48,840
Speaker 1: a museum in Berlin. It was Saddam Hussein who took

115
00:07:48,920 --> 00:07:52,280
Speaker 1: up Nibakonezzer's mantle and tried to reconstruct some of Babylon's

116
00:07:52,280 --> 00:07:56,280
Speaker 1: former glory, but ended up with what art historians decried

117
00:07:56,400 --> 00:08:01,760
Speaker 1: as disney for a despot, much to consternation of archaeologists.

118
00:08:01,960 --> 00:08:05,400
Speaker 1: Hussain raised city walls of thirty eight feet that's eleven

119
00:08:05,400 --> 00:08:08,520
Speaker 1: and a half meters, had built a Roman style arena

120
00:08:08,800 --> 00:08:12,200
Speaker 1: on the ruins of old Babylon. He even stamped his

121
00:08:12,240 --> 00:08:14,760
Speaker 1: own name on the bricks, just as Nemakonezer had done.

122
00:08:16,040 --> 00:08:18,720
Speaker 1: Although some of the recreations were damaged during the prolonged

123
00:08:18,720 --> 00:08:22,000
Speaker 1: occupations of the Iraq War from twenty three to twenty eleven,

124
00:08:22,720 --> 00:08:25,760
Speaker 1: many of the gaudily painted buildings remain and are open

125
00:08:25,800 --> 00:08:31,520
Speaker 1: to the public, including his Babylonian Palace. So what else

126
00:08:31,520 --> 00:08:34,840
Speaker 1: can you see in Babylon today? There are remnants of

127
00:08:34,920 --> 00:08:38,280
Speaker 1: brick and clay structures spread across about four square miles

128
00:08:38,360 --> 00:08:42,040
Speaker 1: or ten square kilometers, with notable features like the Lion

129
00:08:42,120 --> 00:08:45,520
Speaker 1: of Babylon statue and portions of the original ishtar gate.

130
00:08:46,800 --> 00:08:50,240
Speaker 1: And while Babylon itself is mainly a ruin, it's located

131
00:08:50,360 --> 00:08:52,839
Speaker 1: just a few miles from the modern city of Alpilla,

132
00:08:53,120 --> 00:08:55,840
Speaker 1: which has a population of about five hundred thousand people.

133
00:09:00,800 --> 00:09:03,320
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article where was Babylon

134
00:09:03,480 --> 00:09:05,920
Speaker 1: and Does it Still Exist? On how stuffworks dot Com?

135
00:09:05,960 --> 00:09:09,239
Speaker 1: Written by Dave Ruse. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio

136
00:09:09,280 --> 00:09:11,560
Speaker 1: in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced

137
00:09:11,559 --> 00:09:14,640
Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang. But four more podcasts from my heart Radio,

138
00:09:14,920 --> 00:09:18,000
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen

139
00:09:18,040 --> 00:09:19,040
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.