Babylonians

expand_more Description

Babylon was a major political and cultural center in the Near East during the early second and late first millenniums BCE, an heir to the Sumerian and Akkadian empires, and competitor with the Assyrian empire. Although politically unified, Babylonia was a dynamically multicultural, multiethnic, and multilingual population, with successive emigrant populations and dynastic Aramaic-speaking elites, who adopted the formal cuneiform writings of Sumer and Akkad. Agriculture, animal husbandry, and fishing were the bases of subsistence. Temple and palace institutions maintained large land holdings and a dependent labor force, controlling a fundamentally redistributive economy. A parallel entrepreneurial economy operated throughout the ancient Near East and into the Indus Valley. City gods and cults, along with grand myths and associated rituals, made up a rich religious tradition.

Identifier

Region

• Middle East

Subregion

• Middle East

Subsistence Type

• intensive agriculturalists

Samples

• EA
• SCCS

Countries

• Iraq