Brill’s New Pauly Supplements I - Volume 3 : Historical Atlas of the Ancient World

Get access Subject: Classical Studies
Edited by: Anne Wittke, Eckhart Olshausen and Richard Szydlak

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This new atlas of the ancient world illustrates the political, economic, social and cultural developments in the ancient Near East, the Mediterranean world, the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic world and the Holy Roman Empire from the 3rd millennium BC until the 15th century AD.

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Bābilu (‘gate of God’)/Babylon at the time of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (7th/6th cents. BC)

(2,014 words)

Author(s): Novák, M.
The Mesopotamian metropolis of Bābilu with its 2,200 acres (890 hectares) of enclosed space was one of the largest cities of Antiquity as well as the cultural, economic and at times also political centre of the Ancient Middle East. The city’s ruins are situated in the centre of the southern Mesopotamian alluvial plain on a branch of the Euphrates that was called Araḫtu in Antiquity. The city existed at least from the 3rd millennium; its original name was *Ba(b)bal, which in folk-etymology was interpreted as Bāb ilim, i.e. ‘God’s Gate’ (Sumerian: KÁ.DINGIR.RA; OT: Babel; Greek: Babylon). I.…