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there is ample evidence for political upheavals both before and after the Kassite period, it is also clear that the language and other cultural institutions that lay at the heart of the Babylonian civilization continued to prosper. The political instability of Babylon was further increased by the growing power of the Assyrian empire, and on more than one occasion the city was occupied by Assyrian kings or their nominees.
That situation persisted until the end of the seventh century b.c., when the Babylonians (in league with the Medes) turned the tables on the Assyrians and destroyed them. This change of fortunes ushered in the neo-Babylonian empire under Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 b.c.), which included a major restoration and expansion of Babylon, the most famous features of which were the Ishtar Gate and the Hanging Gardens.
However the neo-Babylonian empire was as short-lived as Babylon, and the territory fell victim to the Persians under Cyrus II (559–530 b.c.). The gods and religious customs and the language of Babylon lay at the heart of its civilization, but in the long term, loss of political independence meant that its distinctive form lost out after an eventful 1,200-year history.
See also
Iran; Layard, Sir Austen Henry; Rawlinson, Sir Henry Creswicke
References
Lloyd, S. 1978. Foundations in the Dust: A Story of Mesopotamia Exploration. New York: AMS Press.
Jointly excavated by the University of Pennsylvania and the Thai Department of Fine Arts in the 1970s, Ban Chiang, a major site in northeastern Thailand, essentially set the framework of a regional chronology. Although the dating of the site (via radiometric means) remains somewhat controversial, there is little doubt that the long sequence of occupation (from about 3600 b.c. to a.d. 500) makes it an ideal place to explore the cultural history of the region.
The value of Ban Chiang is further enhanced by the richness of the site, which boasts evidence of early rice cultivation (once thought to predate that in China but now believed to postdate it), early bronze technology, and a diversity of ceramic, metal, and shell objects. Aside from the long cultural sequence (which spans technological developments from the Stone Age through the Bronze Age to the Iron Age), one of the reasons for the richness and diversity of the cultural remains found at Ban Chiang is that there is evidence of ordinary habitations as well as graves.
See also
References
Higham, C. 1989. The Archaeology of Mainland South East Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
(1885–1930)
R. D. Banerji worked for the Archaeological Survey of India in the second and third decades of the twentieth century and became, after his early retirement from the survey in 1925, a professor of Indology at Banaras Hindu University. He specialized in several fields of ancient Indian studies—sculpture and architecture, numismatics, epigraphy, and palaeography and archaeological field investigations—and he was the first archaeologist to conduct excavations at the Indus Valley site of Mohenjo Daro, which had been noticed both by him and by D.R. Bhandarkar, a contemporary officer in the survey.
Banerji also excavated the eighth-century a.d. Buddhist stupa and monastic site of Paharpur in modern Bangladesh in 1924. In the field of sculpture and architecture, his contribution lay in the publication of The Temple of Siva at Bhumara (1924), Basreliefs of Badami (1928), and Eastern Indian School of Mediaeval Sculpture (1933). The publication of the last volume may be said to have cohesively established the existence of a distinct school of sculpture in eastern India which demonstrated the impact of the state of Orissa on the architecture of the region.
In the field of numismatics, Banerji wrote a large number of papers, which were mostly
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