Traditionally, the major religious center of all Mesopotamia was the city of Nippur where the god Enlil was supreme, and it would remain so until replaced by Babylon during the reign of Hammurabi in the mid-18th century BC. 3500 BC until the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC, Mesopotamia had been dominated by largely Sumerian cities and city states, such as Ur, Lagash, Uruk, Kish, Isin, Larsa, Adab, Eridu, Gasur, Assur, Hamazi, Akshak, Arbela and Umma, although Semitic Akkadian names began to appear on the king lists of some of these states (such as Eshnunna and Assyria) between the 29th and 25th centuries BC. Īkkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere around the turn of the third and the second millennium BC (the precise timeframe being a matter of debate). This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium as a sprachbund. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian and vice versa is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence. ĭuring the 3rd millennium BC, an intimate cultural symbiosis occurred between Sumerian and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism. 3500 BC, and the Akkadian-speaking people appearing by the 30th century BC. Mesopotamia had already enjoyed a long history prior to the emergence of Babylon, with Sumerian civilization emerging in the region c. History Pre-Babylonian Sumero-Akkadian period
1.7 Neo-Babylonian Empire (Chaldean Empire).1.4 Early Iron Age – Native rule, second dynasty of Isin, 1155–1026 BC.1.2.3 The sack of Babylon and ancient Near East chronology.1.2 First Babylonian dynasty – Amorite dynasty, 1894–1595 BC.1.1 Pre-Babylonian Sumero-Akkadian period.
After the collapse of the Akkadian Empire, the south Mesopotamian region was dominated by the Gutian people for a few decades before the rise of the Third Dynasty of Ur, which, apart from northern Assyria, encompassed the whole of Mesopotamia, including the town of Babylon. Babylon was merely a religious and cultural centre at this point and neither an independent state nor a large city like the rest of Mesopotamia, it was subject to the Akkadian Empire which united all the Akkadian and Sumerian speakers under one rule. The earliest mention of the city of Babylon can be found in a clay tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad (2334–2279 BC), dating back to the 23rd century BC. The earlier Akkadian and Sumerian traditions played a major role in Babylonian and Assyrian culture, and the region would remain an important cultural center, even under its protracted periods of outside rule. It retained the Sumerian language for religious use (as did Assyria), but already by the time Babylon was founded, this was no longer a spoken language, having been wholly subsumed by Akkadian. Like Assyria, the Babylonian state retained the written Akkadian language (the language of its native populace) for official use, despite its Northwest Semitic-speaking Amorite founders and Kassite successors, who spoke a language isolate, not being native Mesopotamians. The Babylonian Empire rapidly fell apart after the death of Hammurabi and reverted to a small kingdom.
1696–1654 BC, short chronology) created a short-lived empire, succeeding the earlier Akkadian Empire, Third Dynasty of Ur, and Old Assyrian Empire. Babylonia briefly became the major power in the region after Hammurabi ( fl. It was often involved in rivalry with the older state of Assyria to the north and Elam to the east in Ancient Iran. During the reign of Hammurabi and afterwards, Babylonia was called "the country of Akkad" ( Māt Akkadī in Akkadian), a deliberate archaism in reference to the previous glory of the Akkadian Empire. It was merely a small provincial town during the Akkadian Empire (2335–2154 BC) but greatly expanded during the reign of Hammurabi in the first half of the 18th century BC and became a major capital city. A small Amorite-ruled state emerged in 1894 BC, which contained the minor administrative town of Babylon. Babylonia ( / ˌ b æ b ɪ ˈ l oʊ n i ə/) was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and Syria).