Presents an introduction to ancient Babylon, discussing its government, religion, social classes, writing, literature, festivals, calendar, and architecture.

Babylon stands with Athens and Rome as a cultural ancestor of western civilization. It was founded by the people of ancient Mesopotamia, who settled in the fertile crescent between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers before the fourth millennium b.c. Some of the earliest experiments in agriculture and irrigation, the invention of writing, the birth of mathematics and the development of urban life all began there. Biblical associations are also numerous, from Nineveh to the Tower of Babel and the Flood. In Babylonians, H. W. F. Saggs describes the ebb and flow in the successive fortunes of the Sumerians, Akkadians, Amorites, and Babylonians who flourished in this region. Using evidence from pottery, cuneiform tablets, cylinder seals, early architecture and metallurgy, he illuminates the myths, religion, languages, trade, politics, and warfare--as well as the legacy--of the Babylonians and their predecessors. During the twentieth century, collaboration by archaeologists from many nations has greatly increased the range of archaeological evidence, while work by linguists has gradually unlocked the secrets of the thousands of clay tablets recovered from the area. Today the historical record for some periods of ancient Mesopotamia is substantially better than for some centuries of Europe in the Christian era. Gaps and uncertainties remain, but Babylonians conveys a rich and fascinating picture of the development of this remarkable civilization from before the beginning of the third millennium b.c.

Our introductory "Peoples" books (The Romans, The Israelites, The Greeks and Arabia and Arabs) have been consistently successful - this is in the same mould. Babylon/Mesopotamia are of interest to the general reader public as well as to an academic audience - our reference books in this area, plus competing titles, bear this out! Gwendolyn Leick is already a successful author on this topic for us and other publishers. Lively, easy to read style mean this really will be accessible to all levels of reader.

Who was Hammurapi, and what role did his famous "law code" serve in ancient Babylonian society? Who was the mysterious Merodach-baladan, and why did the appearance of his emissaries in Jerusalem so upset Isaiah? Who was Nebuchadnezzar II, and why did he tear down the Solomonic temple and drag the people of God into exile? In short, who were the Babylonians? This engaging and informative introduction to the best of current scholarship on the Babylonians and their role in biblical history answers these and other significant questions. The Babylonians were important not only because of their many historical contacts with ancient Israel but because they and their predecessors, the Sumerians, established the philosophical and social infrastructure for most of Western Asia for nearly two millennia. Beginning and advanced students as well as biblical scholars and interested nonspecialists will read this introduction to the history and culture of the Babylonians with interest and profit. Paperback edition available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org).

Although Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi patriots, their community—which had existed in Iraq for more than 2,500 years—was displaced following the establishment of the state of Israel. New Babylonians chronicles the lives of these Jews, their urban Arab culture, and their hopes for a democratic nation-state. It studies their ideas about Judaism, Islam, secularism, modernity, and reform, focusing on Iraqi Jews who internalized narratives of Arab and Iraqi nationalisms and on those who turned to communism in the 1940s. As the book reveals, the ultimate displacement of this community was not the result of a perpetual persecution on the part of their Iraqi compatriots, but rather the outcome of misguided state policies during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Sadly, from a dominant mood of coexistence, friendship, and partnership, the impossibility of Arab-Jewish coexistence became the prevailing narrative in the region—and the dominant narrative we have come to know today.

This engaging and informative introduction to the the Babylonians were important not only because of their many historical contacts with ancient Israel but because they and their predecessors, the Sumerians, established the philosophical and social infrastructure for most of Western Asia for nearly two millennia. Beginning and advanced students as well as biblical scholars and interested nonspecialists will read this introduction to the history and culture of the Babylonians with interest and profit.