Babel

Babylon (now El Kasr, near Baghdad) was the center of two great empires: the kingdom of the Amorites around 1800 B.C. and the Chaldean empire around 600 B.C.  The names “Amorite” and “Chaldean” refer simply to the dynasty then in power that took Babylon as their base.

The Amorite empire reached its height under the reign of Hammurabi c. 1763 B.C., immortalized for codifying one of the earliest body of laws.  Though harsh, it at least recognized the concept of consistent laws consistently applied.  It even included the principles of "An eye for an eye" and "Let the buyer beware”. The later Chaldean empire reached its zenith under Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605-562 B.C.), famous for his rebuilding projects but also responsible for the Babylonian captivity of the Jews.

The wealth and military strength of Babylon saw its ideas spread over the world even before it fell to the Persians in 538 B.C.  From its system of reckoning time to its "science" of astrology, from its step-pyramids to its code of laws, Babylonian ideas have left their imprint far and wide.   Not the least of which is the common wall-clock: sixty minutes of sixty seconds recall, to this day, the base-60 mathematics of an era long ago but not so long forgotten. 

In the center of the once great city stood the once great Babylonian temple. We know this temple today by the tower that accompanied it: the Tower of Babel that appears in the Bible.  This is the ziggurat (“peak”) of Babylon, home of the chief Babylonian deity Marduk (comparable to Greek Zeus or Roman Jupiter).