Babylonia

Babylonia was an ancient state and cultural region centered on the city of Babylon, located in central-southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It was populated by Akkadian speakers and ruled by Amorites when it first emerged around 1894 BC. Later, during and after the reign of Hammurabi, the area was deliberately called "the country of Akkad" in Akkadian, a backward-looking reference meant to evoke the earlier Akkadian Empire. Babylonia frequently competed with Assyria, a culturally and linguistically similar Akkadian civilization to the north, and with Elam to the east. Under Hammurabi (who ruled roughly from 1792 to 1752 BC by the middle chronology, or 1696 to 1654 BC by the short chronology), Babylonia briefly became the dominant power in the region, creating a short-lived empire that succeeded the earlier Akkadian Empire, the Third Dynasty of Ur, and the Old Assyrian Empire. This empire quickly fell apart after Hammurabi’s death, and Babylonia shrank back to a small kingdom centered on Babylon.

For official purposes, the Babylonian state used written Akkadian, even though its Amorite founders spoke a Northwest Semitic language and its later Kassite rulers spoke a language isolate. Sumerian was retained for sacred religious texts, but by the time Babylon was founded, Sumerian was no longer a spoken language, having been replaced by Akkadian. The earlier traditions of the Akkadians and Sumerians heavily influenced Babylonian and Assyrian culture, and the region remained an important cultural center even during long periods of foreign rule.

Mesopotamia had a long history before Babylon appeared. Sumerian civilization emerged around 5400 BC, and Akkadian speakers—who would later form Akkad, Assyria, and Babylonia—appeared sometime between the 35th and 30th centuries BC. During the third millennium BC, there was a close cultural exchange between Sumerian and Akkadian speakers, leading to widespread bilingualism. This mutual influence is visible in massive lexical borrowing and in syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence, leading scholars to describe Sumerian and Akkadian in that period as a sprachbund. Around the turn of the third and second millennia BC, Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia, though the exact timing is debated.

From about 5400 BC until the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC, Mesopotamia was dominated by largely Sumerian cities and city-states, including Ur, Lagash, Uruk, Kish, Isin, Larsa, Adab, Eridu, Gasur, Assur, Hamazi, Akshak, Arbela, and Umma. However, Semitic Akkadian names began appearing on the king lists of some states (such as Eshnunna and Assyria) between the 29th and 25th centuries BC. The major religious center for all Mesopotamia was traditionally Nippur, where the god Enlil was supreme, until Babylon replaced it under Hammurabi in the mid-18th century BC. The Akkadian Empire (2334–2154 BC) united the Akkadian Semites and Sumerians under one rule, with the Akkadians gaining ascendancy over the Sumerians and dominating much of the ancient Near East. This empire eventually collapsed due to economic decline, climate change, civil war, and attacks by the Gutians, who spoke a language isolate and came from the Zagros Mountains to the northeast. Sumer revived with the Third Dynasty of Ur (Neo-Sumerian Empire) in the late 22nd century BC, expelling the Gutians from southern Mesopotamia in 2161 BC (based on surviving tablets and astronomy simulations). This dynasty also seems to have gained control over much of the territory of the Akkadian-speaking kings of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia for a time.

After the Sumerian Ur-III dynasty fell to the Elamites in 2002 BC, the Amorites—a foreign Northwest Semitic-speaking people—began migrating into southern Mesopotamia from the northern Levant. They gradually took control of most of the south, forming a series of small kingdoms, while the Assyrians reasserted their independence in the north. The southern states could not stop the Amorite advance and may have relied on their fellow Akkadians in Assyria for protection for a time. King Ilu-shuma (around 2008–1975 BC) of the Old Assyrian period (2025–1750 BC) left an inscription describing his exploits to the south: he claimed to have established freedom for the Akkadians and their children, purified their copper, and set freedom from the border of the marshes and Ur and Nippur, Awal, and Kish, Der of the goddess Ishtar, as far as the city of Ashur. Past scholars thought this meant he defeated invading Amorites to the south and Elamites to the east, but there is no explicit record of that, and some scholars believe the Assyrian kings were simply offering preferential trade agreements to the south. These policies—whether military, economic, or both—were continued by his successors Erishum I and Ikunum. However, when Sargon I became king in Assyria in 1920 BC, he eventually withdrew Assyria from the region, focusing instead on expanding Assyrian colonies in Anatolia at the expense of the Hurrians, Hattians, and the Amorite-inhabited Levant. Southern Mesopotamia then fell to the Amorites. During the early centuries of the Amorite period, the most powerful city-states in the south were Isin, Eshnunna, and Larsa, along with Assyria in the north.