Over generations members of the Vedii family served as magistrates (panegyriarchs, agonothetes, etc.) of important local agonistic festivals, and as high priests and priestesses of the imperial cult temples of Ephesos. In these capacities they organized different aspects of festivals, paid for prizes and associated festivities, and were in the public gaze for the period of their tenure. Regarding the imperial cult, inscriptions and other evidence may point to their ownership of a ludus, or gladiatorial training school, in the Ephesos as late as the mid-third century. This chapter argues that the holding of festival magistracies was another very significant euergetic opportunity for members of city elites, like the Vedii.

Early attempts by Parthian rulers to take Babylon were short-lived, but in 141 BC they established their kingship by celebrating the New Year festival. Chronicles and astronomical diaries continued to be written. An independent ruler of Maysan in the Sealand, Hyspaosines, captured the port on the Tigris, took control of Bahrain and Failaka to control Gulf trade, and briefly claimed kingship of Babylon. He wrote in Aramaic. The Parthians regained control and rebuilt the Greek theatre. The old buildings and city plan continued to be in use, although the Summer Palace had been reroofed with terracotta tiles. New kinds of text were written on clay in cuneiform, astronomical science developed; an archive shows that temples were still active, and much older literature was still prized. Greek knowledge of the Epic of Creation was still alive in Athens from the time of Alexander until the sixth century AD. The cult of Bēl had spread west to Palmyra, to the Aegean island of Kos, and north to Edessa. In AD 116 Trajan visited the Summer Palace on a pilgrimage to the place where Alexander had died.

Relations with Assyria dominated from the tenth to the late seventh century. Marduk’s reputation was tarnished as Babylon lost power. Tribes of Chaldeans and Arameans moved into the Sealand, where some settled, becoming literate and powerful. Iron gradually replaced bronze. Fine stone carving continued. Warlike Assyrian kings venerated Babylon, incorporated its gods into their pantheon, and treated the city separately from the rest of Babylonia; but Assyria and Babylon clashed east of the Tigris at Der. Chaldeans intermittently took the throne. Tiglath-pileser III, the first Assyrian king to become king of Babylon, took part in the New Year festival; Sargon II, the second, deposed a Chaldean and deported many disloyal groups, but invested in the city. When Sennacherib ruled Assyria, various rulers of Babylon and interference from Elam ended when he sacked Babylon, which remained kingless for seven years. His patricidal son Esarhaddon made some restitution. At his early death, Esarhaddon’s elder son took the throne, dominated by his younger son, Ashurbanipal, whose library at Nineveh included many Babylonian texts. Betrayed by his brother under Elamite influence, Ashurbanipal sacked Babylon. Royal records end, and three subsequent kings are poorly attested. Nabopolassar, a Babylonian general working in the Assyrian army, defected and took the throne of Babylon.

Nabopolassar fought with an Assyrian-style army and took the throne of Babylon. Thirteen years later, Nineveh fell despite Egyptian help. Babylon took over much of the Assyrian empire. Later he defeated the last Assyrian king at Harran. His success was seen as Marduk’s revenge. Captured wealth from Assyrian royal cities allowed major building work at Babylon, which was continued by Nabopolassar’s son Nebuchadnezzar II. Neither king left statues of themselves, and cylinder seals represent gods by their symbols. Major subsidence in the citadel required frequent rebuilding on the Southern Palace. The names of temples and gates were compiled on to a clay tablet as a literary work. Colour-glazed bricks adorned the Processional Way leading to the temple of the New Year festival outside the citadel walls. That festival is described. Some of his creations Nebuchadnezzar described as a Wonder, but he made no mention of the Hanging Garden. In a separate part of the citadel, Nebuchadnezzar built a Summer Palace. His conquests included Tyre and Ashkelon but not Egypt or Lydia. He sacked the Temple in Jerusalem and deported its royal family to Babylon. Other captives settled on land nearby. Business archives of long duration continue into the Achaemenid period.

The setting of the city within the environment of Mesopotamia, on a branch of the river Euphrates, was without special advantages amid more ancient cities with older fame. Sumerian and Semitic Akkadian were very different languages integrated into the urbanized written culture, whereas Amorite immigrants from the west were tribal outsiders who often assimilated in the cities. Water management by canals, sluices, and flood control, and the extension of land for agriculture and settlement were duties of kings reflected in early myths. Merchants travelled abroad, west to the Mediterranean, north into Anatolia, east across the river Tigris into Iran, where they encountered the rival civilization of Elam, and south down the Arabian Gulf. They brought in precious metals, stones, timber, and plants. After 1,300 years, Babylon became a ceremonial centre without indigenous kings, but foreign kings still came to have their claim to rule legitimized in a city where the bearing of arms was prohibited. King-lists and chronicles underpinned Babylonians’ understanding of their own history; prayers, songs, epics, technical manuals, rituals, records of divination, and astronomy as well as archival and administrative texts were written on various media, of which only clay, being inorganic, survives. Temples, a palace, a harbour, city walls, and gates characterized urban space.

The content and significance of Hammurabi’s law code stela, including material and artistic aspects as well as text, are described and related to earlier law codes from other cities and biblical parallels. Protection of property, trade, family, warfare, and personal injury are among the topics. The separate content of its prologue and epilogue are discussed. The system of scribal education that lay behind its composition, from primary school to tertiary, was based on a formal curriculum beginning with sign lists and word lists. Model contracts and model letters, and extracts from myths and epics are found alongside satire and humour. The importance of divination and oracles for military success is emphasized. Precursors to themes later found in the Epic of Creation, such as gods waging war against Chaos can already be found in contemporary literature. The rise of Marduk can be traced in relation to Hammurabi’s conquests. The downside of warfare is explored in the Poem of Agushaya. The Epic of Creation is of central importance for Marduk and Babylon as world leaders, superseding earlier claimants. Epics from southern Mesopotamia are earlier and do not feature Marduk or Babylon.

Darius I overcame rebellions and seized the throne of Babylon, but cuneiform scholarship continued and developed; religious practices did not change, nor did the great buildings on the citadel. The zodiac scheme came into use. The Achaemenid king took Babylonian royal titles and promoted the worship of Marduk for local purposes. Xerxes broke the continuity. Following an uprising, a purge led to the ending of many archives. The province of Babylon was divided in two. Subsequent Achaemenid kings continued to treat Babylon with reverence. Alexander the Great defeated Darius III, entered Babylon, retained the Persian satrap, and moved treasure from Susa and Ecbatana to Babylon. He was recognized as a god. Lack of sons at his premature death precipitated a civil war from which Alexander’s commander Seleucus emerged to take the throne jointly with his son Antiochus. The derelict ziggurat was demolished, but temples and rituals, chronicles and astronomical diaries, continued as before. Aramaic was widely used, and fewer texts were inscribed in cuneiform. Interest in the fall of Assyria and of the Babylonian empire is apparent in Greek literature. Famous scholars include Berossus and named astronomers. Parthians invaded and eventually ended the dynasty.

Following unsuccessful attempts to keep the descendants of Nebuchadnezzar II on the throne, the usurper Nabonidus became king. Persian tribes had moved into Elamite lands, and the Medes made Harran a dangerous city; Nabonidus‘ mother, an aged acolyte of Ashurbanipal, resided there. His lengthy inscriptions are informative about his deeds and his character. He dedicated his daughter to the Moon-god at Ur according to precedent, and spent ten years in Arabia, leaving his son Belshazzar in charge in Babylon. He returned and restored the temple in Harran. Cyrus the Great brought his rule to an end, but continued to employ some high officials. Cyrus was probably of mixed Elamite and Persian descent. The Cyrus Cylinder, inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform for a Babylonian audience, used traditional denigration of the previous king Nabonidus, and acknowledged Marduk as Babylon’s god. In another cuneiform text, Nabonidus was mocked for his scholarly pretensions and for sacrilegious acts. Babylon continued to be the centre where all subsequent kings felt obliged to celebrate the New Year festival to be accepted as legitimate rulers. Old monuments were not defaced. Cyrus may have been responsible for an imitation of Babylon’s glazed bricks at Persepolis. He made his son Cambyses co-regent.

The First Dynasty, an unbroken succession of Amorite kings, lasted 300 years despite a major rebellion. Babylon had close relationships with the nearby cities Sippar, Kish, and Borsippa. Trade and alliances reached much further. The Sumerian king-lists of earlier times were replaced by Babylonian equivalents, various cities having their own version. Kings briefly recorded major events; names were given to each year of their reign for dating documents. Trade was widespread, by canal and river, or overland by donkey. Royal edicts excluded certain groups from trade. Evidence comes from a profusion of clay tablets. Official letters are plentiful. Priestesses of Marduk carried out trade for Babylon in other cities. The temple of Marduk was built and furnished with a golden throne. Elamite control over several major cities, which left its mark on temple design, was ended by Hammurabi late in his reign; there is a possible connection with Genesis 14:1–16. Regular edicts were issued to release individuals from debt and to regulate trade. The main powers were Halab (Aleppo), Eshnunna, and Larsa, until Hammurabi achieved supremacy and claimed divinity. His successor Samsu-iluna followed his father’s example.

Early explorers and excavators knew only biblical and classical accounts, some of them garbled and confusing. They were unaware that Babylon had an advanced literate culture. Mud-brick ruins contrasted unfavourably with marble, and the sprawling site of Babylon had many separate mounds, with the Tower of Babel indistinguishable amid the rubble. As Babylon’s power grew, quarters of the citadel were named after more ancient cities, and branches of temples to deities in other cities became established there. Early travellers from the twelfth century onwards brought back to the west their accounts of what they saw. In the seventeenth century, cuneiform writing on stone was identified at Persepolis. In the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, cuneiform inscriptions from Mesopotamia increasingly arrived in Europe and a few national museums were soon built to house the items discovered by travellers, dilettante collectors, and informal excavators. Decipherment then began to excite public interest, but literal understanding gave way only slowly to appreciation of symbolism and rhetoric. Official excavations in Babylon took place under German leadership between 1899 and 1917. A chronological sequence for the history still has a few unsolved problems. Cuneiform writing unexpectedly lasted into Roman times.

Hard times for Babylon followed the end of the First Dynasty; but records of two Sealand kings, and the account of magnificent rebuilding of Marduk’s temple by a Kassite king imply wealth and energy. Glass production brought a new source of wealth, and horses were bred for chariots. Marduk was still the supreme god. The top status of the Kassite kings in Babylon was recognized by the pharaohs in Egypt. There cuneiform was used for international correspondence and Babylonian literature used to train local scribes. Foreign wives were taken from Elamite, Assyrian, and Hittite royalty. A top scribe from Babylon served in Assyria, and literature flourished. Boulders recording donations of land were carved with texts and celestial motifs. The office of eunuch is discussed. The Assyrian king raided Babylon, looting literary tablets among other valuables. He took over rule of Bahrain to access Gulf trade. The Kassite kings soon resumed the dynasty but the Elamite king raided and in turn took huge amounts of booty. In the next dynasty, the great Nebuchadnezzar I defeated Elam and wrote a heroic account. As a result of tribal incursions by Arameans, the Aramaic language began to spread, and camels trained for transport opened up desert trade. A library already existed in Babylon.