Introduction

The origins of Babylon date back almost two thousand years before the foundation of Rome. Among the longest continuously inhabited urban settlements in human history, it became the centre of one of the most culturally and intellectually vibrant civilizations of the ancient world, exercising a profound influence on its Near Eastern contemporaries, and contributing to the religious, scientific, and literary traditions of the Classical world. This VSI does not just deal with Babylon, but with the whole of southern Mesopotamia, extending southwards from modern Baghdad, in the region where the Tigris and the Euphrates closely approach each other, through the marshlands in the deep south to the Persian Gulf.