Uncovering the Secrets of the Neo-Babylonian Empire
Although the empire was short-lived, spanning merely eighty-seven years from ca. 626 B.C. to 539 B.C. (Baker 2012: 914), the Neo-Babylonian empire changed the geopolitical and cultural landscapes of the Near East (Beaulieu 2018: 219). The empire itself was born out of revolution, specifically the Chaldean revolt against Assyria, and it managed to gain control not only of lower Mesopotamia but upper Mesopotamia as well, along with parts of modern day Iran, much of modern day Syria, and the Levant (Jursa 2014: 121), including the capture of Jerusalem (Beaulieu 2018: 2) as recorded in the Scriptures.
Resurgence of Babylon
Babylonia at the beginning of the first millennium was economically poor and politically unstable (Saggs 2000: 153). The power of the rightful kings of Babylon was being destabilized by multiple Semitic tribes moving into the area, and under Šamši-Adad V, Babylon became so weak that the Assyrians were able to take a key stronghold and imprison the Babylonian king, all to the benefit of the migrating tribes (Saggs 2000: 153) who already controlled much of the rural hinterland (Jursa 2014: 123) and therefore the agricultural economy.
Southern Babylonia at this time consisted mainly of marshes and lagoons, and the tribes who controlled the southern alluvium, the semi-autonomous (Nielsen 2021: 109) Chaldean tribes (Bagg 2020: 58), became more and more powerful. Unrest at the hands of these tribes brought the military might of Assyria back to the area over and over again (Saggs 2000: 153) to quell resurgent rebellions, the Assyrians attempting not to destroy or dismantle their southern neighbors but rather to end the tribal assaults on a weakened Babylon.
Having a rather strong tendency toward urban life, the Chaldeans competed for the Babylonian throne, likely rotating power amongst the three major Chaldean tribes (Jursa 2014: 123), and the native Babylonians resented the foreign rule (Legrain 1944: 61), taking the throne back whenever the chance arose. At the time that Tiglath-Pileser III took power in Assyria, ca. 745 B.C., a native Babylonian king sat on the throne of Babylon, but when that king died a power struggle ensued, and ultimately the Chaldean Nabu-mukin-zer seized the throne; Tiglath-Pileser III marched on the south, but it took him three years to defeat the well-entrenched Chaldeans (Saggs 2000: 154) who ultimately fled to the unconquerable swamps of the south (Bagg 2020: 57).
These attacks against the Babylonian region were not anti-Babylonian (Saggs 2000: 153), particularly as Assyria supported native Babylonians holding the throne (Nielsen 2021: 112) as a stable and subservient south only enriched the north. In fact, native Babylonians supported the Assyrian attack upon the city when in 710 B.C. Sargon moved to expel the Chaldeans who were under the tribal leadership of Merodach-baladan, these native Babylonians welcoming Assyria (Saggs 2000: 155).
These types of battles recurrently transpired over about a century (Baker 2012: 914), and the rather constant intrusion on part of the Assyrians had a reverse effect than they had hoped for, namely the uniting of the Chaldean tribes (Zawadski 1988: 21). Of interest, it was during these resistance years that Marduk-apla-iddina II sent a letter to Hezekiah, king of Judah in the Southern Levant, as recorded in 2 Kings 20:12-19 under the name Merodach‐Baladan (Beaulieu 2018: 199). Hezekiah then, likely in an attempt to recruit Babylon as allies against Assyrian threat (Harris 2003: 203), shows off the riches of Judah.
Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II
In the year of Nabopolassar’s accession, the first king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, a prolonged war was occurring in Assyria (Beaulieu 2018: 223). The Medes and Scythians threatened Assyrian dominance in the east, and while the Assyrians were fighting the Elamites, the Cimmerians in the west attempted an attack that although ending in failure allowed for a destabilization of the west that led to the independence of western several states (Zawadski 1988: 21).
Nabopolassar began to consolidate power in the region of Babylonia, including the making of a matrimonial alliance with the Medes, finding a wife for Nebuchadnezzar (Beaulieu 2018: 225), and even forming an alliance with Josiah, king of Judah (Sweeney 2001: 16). Nabopolassar would proclaim himself as an avenger of Babylon who swore to punish the Assyrians for their arrogance and past sacrilege (Beaulieu 2018: 227).
In Nabopolassar’s tenth year, the king, strategically planning for a future war with Assyria, campaigned up the Euphrates into the regions of Suḫu and Ḫindanu in order to control major roads leading to Anatolia and the iron trade centers found there (2017: 336). Only a few months later, the Babylonian armies marched east of the Tigris where they were victorious in Arrapha, opening the heartland of Assyria to attack; by 615 B.C., Nabopolassar laid siege to Aššur itself (Beaulieu 2018: 225).
Along with his Median allies, Nabopolassar defeated the Assyrians in 612 B.C. (Baker 2012: 914) and ushered in the Neo-Babylonian Empire, also called the Tenth Dynasty (Beaulieu 2018: 12) of Babylon or the “Chaldean” Empire (Beaulieu 2018: 224), pushing the region of Babylon into an era of economic and political stabilization (Da Riva 2017: 75).
Around forty years after the foundation of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the transition was made from aggression to consolidation (Levavi 2020: 61). The ‘New’ Babylonian kings partially consolidated power by forcing temples and cities that had previously been granted tax and labor exemptions to relinquish a great deal of their autonomy (Beaulieu 2018: 219). The new empire increased its investments and paid much more attention to the empire’s periphery than before (Levavi 2020: 61), and the flow of resources from the periphery to the core of the empire brought new construction projects to Babylon and its close surroundings (Alsotla 2020: 3), surpassing the Assyrians as builders (Legrain 1944: 1).
Of note, toward the end of his reign, Nabopolassar moved to crush Assyria, which had retreated to Carchemish in the Levant after the temporary capital at Haran had fallen (Saggs 2000: 164). King Necho II of Egypt marched toward Carchemish to reinforce his Assyrian allies, but he was delayed when Josiah, king of Judah, attempted to stop Egypt at Megiddo, as noted in 2 Kings 23:29-30. Josiah met Egypt in battle, but upon his death in that battle, Judah fell under Egypt’s authority, who now promised to support Judah against the Babylonians (Alstola 2020: 5). Unfortunately for Egypt, the Battle of Carchemish in 605 B.C. was a decisive victory for Babylonia, whose armies were at the time led by Nebuchadnezzar II, the crown prince of Babylon (Beaulieu 2018: 227).
Egypt now retreating back to her own lands, Nebuchadnezzar campaigned throughout the Levant in order to gain control of the region, and Jehoiakim, who had been placed on the Judean throne by Necho II, changed allegiance and bowed before Babylon (Leick 2007: 547) but not before Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem and carried off many of its inhabitants (Beaulieu 2018: 2) and the very treasures that were egotistically displayed to the Babylonians under Hezekiah as seen in 2 Kings 20:12-19.
In 601 B.C., only a few years after the death of Nabopolassar, Judah openly defied and challenged the Babylonian empire, resulting in a military response by the new king, Nebuchadnezzar II (Beaulieu 2018: 228), as noted in the biblical text. Unfortunately for Judah, Nebuchadnezzar II was a rather successful general (Saggs 2000: 165) who recaptured Jerusalem in 597 B.C., carrying off even more of its inhabitants (Beaulieu 2016: 1). Ten years later, Judah rebelled again, but this time Babylon would destroy Jerusalem, and the temple, exiling the ruling class (Kriwaczek 2012: 161).
Fall of Babylon
The greatness that was the Neo-Babylonian Empire really only lasted during the reigns of the first two kings, Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II. Amel-Marduk, Evil-Merodach of 2 Kings 25:27, came to the throne after his father, Nebuchadnezzar, but his reign lasted only about two years before his assassination at the hands of Nergal-sharru-usur, commonly known as Neriglissar (Beaulieu 2016: 2), an Aramaean . The latter reigning only about three years (Sack 1972: 3) before his death and succeeded by his son, La-Abashi-Marduk, for only a few months before another coup brought power to yet another dignitary, Nabonidus (Beaulieu 2016: 3). Nabonidus, along with Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, was both a conquerer and a builder, surpassing even the Assyrians (Legrain 1944: 1).
One aspect of the changing administration during the Neo-Babylonian Empire involved state-sponsored religion, particularly as Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus increased royal control over the temples which included royal appointees to new religious offices (Beaulieu 2018: 234). Although Nabonidus completed several civil building projects, such as the rebuilding of a hydraulic system near Sippar (Zawadzki 2014: 876), it is perhaps his cultic building projects that receive the most attention, such as construction work on the temple Ebabbar at Sippar or the creation of a new tiara for the god Shamash (Beaulieu 2018: 239). Other projects include rebuilding or restoring temples and ziggurats, such as the temple of Lugal-Marada at Marad and the ziggurat of Ur (Beaulieu 1989: 42).
Religion appears to have been important to Nabonidus. Before marching toward Arabia, the king visited several southern cities where he helped with the administration of the Eanna temple (Beaulieu 2018: 239), but it would appear that his greatest desire was to restore the Eḫulḫul, the temple of the god Sîn at Ḫaran (Adalı 2009: xix). It is probable that the king’s interest in rebuilding the Eḫulḫul stems from his mother who likely originated from Ḫaran (Beaulieu 2018: 238) and who held a priestly office there (Frayne and Stuckey 2021: 310). She was devoted to the god, Sîn, of Eḫulḫul, as noted in the Adda-guppi stela (Adalı 2009: 224), a stela dedicated to Adda-guppi, Nabonidus’ mother (Moukarzel 2014: 182). Thus, this woman of the north, in her dedicatory stela, notes that she and her son promised to repay Sîn for their successes by rebuilding the temple there (Studevent-Hickman, Melville, and Noegel 2006: 391). In fact, Nabonidus called up workers from all over the empire, including the borders of Egypt and the land of Ḫatti, for the reconstruction purpose (Moukarzel 2014: 137), the reconstruction being complete only by the time of Nabonidus’ return from his Arabian campaign (Beaulieu 2018: 243).
Nabonidus attempted to rewrite history in removing blame from Nabopolassar for the destruction of Ḫaran and Eḫulḫul and shifted that blame onto the Medes likely an attempt to convince Babylonians to support his endeavor; unfortunately, the decision to rebuild the temple at Ḫaran drew sharp criticism and even plots of treason (Adalı 2009: 204), to which Nabonidus responded by beginning a ten year western campaign that brought him to Arabia (Moukarzel 2014: 180).
The Arabian campaign of the king led his armies as far south as Medina in modern day Saudi Arabia (Beaulieu 2016: 3), Nabonidus having left Babylonia for Arabia in his fourth year and returning only in his thirteenth year (Zawadzki 2014: 897). The king went to Arabia as a conqueror, defeating or killing city leaders at differing sites and then establishing himself a palace at the oasis of Taymā’ (Hoyland 2001: 62). It is uncertain why Nabonidus went to Arabia, but his elevation of Sîn above Marduk in the city of Babylon which had been the center of Marduk worship since six hundred years before, along with his neglect of other Babylonian traditional deities (Davis 2012: 756), may had created a need to escape oppression (Hoyland 2001: 75) or further assassination attempts. In fact, when Nabonidus finally returned to Babylon, the empire witnessed a replacement of the highest officials in the empire (Zawadzki 2014: 15). Another theory for the king’s long stay in Arabia includes the worship of the moon god there (Maraqten 1996: 17), but the evidence is incomplete.
While Nabonidus was in Arabia, a new power began to rise in the general region, the Persians (Beaulieu 2016: 3). Cyrus, of the Persians, overthrew the Median king and conquered the Median capital of Ecbatana (Beaulieu 2018: 240), beginning the first stages of the Persian Empire. This growing threat may had been the reason for the king’s return, to take back the control that he had left to his son, Bēl-šar-uṣur (Biblical Belshazzar), in order to prepare for war (Beaulieu 2016: 3).
Ultimately, Babylon did fall. Nabonidus had left his son as regent over the empire, but Bēl-šar-uṣur had never taken an official title, and certain responsibilities of the king went unperformed (Davis 2012: 746). For example, during the king’s self-imposed exile, the Babylonian New Year’s ritual had been suspended (Shea 1996: 5), but upon the king’s return, the akitu festival, the Babylonian New Year’s festival that usually included obeisance to Marduk and ritual humiliation of the king (Mirelman 2022: 1), may had been replaced with a similar festival from Ḫaran dedicated to Sîn; interestingly, the day of the festival celebration was the day after Babylon was taken by Cyrus, meaning that the feast in Daniel 5 was an evening of celebration before the akitu festival celebrating Sîn (Wolters 1995: 200).
Of particular interest, Cyrus, after defeating the Babylonian army (Beaulieu 2016: 3), is said to have been welcomed into Babylon by Marduk, himself (Adalı 2009: 269), as Nabonidus simply surrendered (Pedersén 2021: 82). According to Persian propaganda, the fall of the empire was the result of the sins of Nabonidus (Beaulieu 2016: 3). Although propaganda, the king’s disdain for Marduk and hatred from the Babylonians (Adalı 2009: 183) may indicate that the propaganda was at least partially true.
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[This is a lecture written for the course 'HIST 262: History of the Ancient Near East,' taught Fall 2023 at God's Bible School and College, a regionally accredited College in Cincinnati, Ohio. Bibliographical material will be posted under Research on this site.]
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