| Page 139 | |
Although sharing roots with other Mesopotamian civilizations, such as the Sumerian and the Assyrian, the Babylonian civilization derived from the city of Babylon, a major city in southern mesopotamia (now Iraq). Much of what we know about the history of the Babylonian civilization comes from the analysis of cuneiform texts that have been preserved among the ruins of palaces, temples, and administrative buildings. Monuments and other items of material culture have been used to give further texture to information derived from the excavation of cities and from surveys of the landscape of the region.
Fragment from an early Babylonian royal stela
(Ann Ronan Picture Library)
The empire of Hammurabi (1792–1750 b.c. ) marks the emergence of Babylon as the major cultural and political center of the region as a result of warfare and later economic reorganization. The empire barely survived Hammurabi’s reign, however. The decline of the old Babylonian kingdom after Hammurabi was most likely the result of a complex interplay of political and environmental factors, the latter directly related to the changing behavior of the Euphrates River as a source of water for irrigation. After Babylon was attacked by the Hittites in 1595 b.c., the political picture becomes hazy until the mid-fifteenth century b.c. when the Kassites seized control of Babylon. Although