The Babylonian Empire was one of the richest and most powerful societies in ancient history. Situated along the Euphrates River in modern-day Iraq, the state prospered from its trade with nearby ...

In the sixth century B.C.E., the Neo-Babylonian Empire was in a nostalgic groove. Its king, Nabonidus, led by example: he venerated the customs of the Sumerian ancestors who had ruled some 1,500 years ...

Cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia cover a range of topics, from exorcising ghosts to uncovering the location of Noah’s Ark. Cuneiform tablet, c. 2nd–1st century B.C.E., Mesopotamia, probably ...

The defeat of Astyages in an 18th century tapestry. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons In the 6th century BC, the Near East was dominated by three powerful kingdoms: the Median Empire of ...

Acknowledgements The Achemenet Babylonian texts originate from the Achemenet project. Achemenet provides transliterations and translations of documents written in the Achaemenid Persian Empire ...

What we know about Babylonia is mostly derived from clay tablets. Tens of thousands of these cuneiform texts have been found in the last century and for some periods these tell us a great deal about ...

This verse from the Bible likely sounds familiar to many; it refers to the conquest of the Mesopotamian city by Cyrus the Great and the Persians in 539 BCE, the year they ended a period of Babylonian ...