The Rest Is History - 181. The Birth of Babylon

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

In January, Tom and Dominic explored the history of Babylon, from Nebuchadnezzar onwards (episode 145 in the Rest Is History feed). At the end of that episode, there was a promise to revisit Babylon's earlier period to fully do the topic justice - so here it is! Tune in to hear about the constant theft of the Statue of Marduk, the formidable Assyrians, and what Dominic describes as his 'favourite impersonation ever'... Join The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Jack Davenport *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, welcome to The Rest is History. Now, at the end of January, we did an episode on the fascinating topic of Babylon, covering the best-known period in the city's history from the great king Nebuchadnezzar onwards. And lots of people really seemed to enjoy it. And as it's got such a fascinating and impossibly old prehistory, Tom, we said that we would have to revisit the earlier period

to do it justice. Yes, we did. And we are men of our word, are we not? We always are. So we stand at the gates of the Esagila, ready to dive into the roots of ancient Babylon. If you want to know what we're talking about, go and have a look at the old podcast on Babylon and the Age

of Nebuchadnezzar. But let us now go into the gates and let's start in the most basic possible way. We had a question from somebody called First Captain. And First Captain said, basically, what was Babylon? When was it founded? Who lived there? And who ruled it? I mean, obviously, well, that's been quite a long time. Yeah. But in the very, very broadest terms, what are we talking about, Tom? Well, there's another question as well that I think goes well with that from Eric Ware. How did Babylon, a relative latecomer, make itself into the cultural epicentre of ancient Mesopotamia to the extent of even giving its own name to the whole region, i.e. Babylonia? Which kind of focuses again on this idea that Babylon, although to us it seems seems incredibly ancient actually is relatively speaking a latecomer so it's founded shortly after 2000 bc it seems to have been in a modern day iraq in what is modern day iraq uh on the the banks of the euphrates

um and you have these two great rivers euphrates and and the Tigris. So hence the Greek word for it, Mesopotamia, between the rivers. And these rivers, as with Egypt and the Nile, it's the rivers that give birth to urban civilization. And the first great cities in Mesopotamia are 2,000 years before the founding of Babylon. So around 4,000 BC. So 4,000, yeah. Yeah. So it's kind of one of those kind of you know people always say we are closer to cleopatra than cleopatra was to the building the pyramids and it

kind of makes your head swim yeah in a similar way you know we babylon was we are as close to the final kind of end of babylon as as a great urban centre, as the Babylonians in their earliest days were to the beginnings of urban civilisation. So we're talking about incredible, incredible depths of time. So yes, looking at recorded history, Babylon is in the midpoint. In a way, in a way. Yes, it's the Middle Ages. I mean, you know, in terms of Iraqi history and Middle Eastern history, yeah, Babylon is kind of the Middle Age. I mean, it's a kind of incredible thought. And the Babylonians have a sense of time.

They know that people have come before them and there have been civilizations before them, presumably. Well, so in a sense, they have two ways of seeing it, the kind of the mythical understanding of it that the Babylonians have arrived at by, let's say, the 6th century BC, which is the heyday of the great city that was being portrayed in my children's books, that people probably have a sense in their mind of the Ishtar Gate and the Hanging Gardens and all that kind of thing, you know, the great city of Nebuchadnezzar. So they had a sense that in a way Babylon, so the Esagila, which is the home of Marduk, who by the 6th century BC has been enshrined as the king of the gods, that this is his home. It's the first building to be built. Babylon is the first city that it's been built by some of the kind of the more junior gods as a prize for

the greater gods um and it's part of the kind of primordial story of of of creation so so marduk in this story he there's a there's a great kind of sea serpent he's killed it he's cut it in two he's made heaven and earth out of that and then the gods gods are bored of having to do the work. And so Marduk creates humans to do the work instead of the gods. So Babylon is the first great city for humans. And that's the kind of the sacred story. And in a sense, the Esagila stands at the heart of Babylon and Babylon stands at the heart of both the universe and of time. So it's absolutely at the kind of the heart of temporal and geographical space. Okay.

But obviously there must be another. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't really founded by Marduk. No. So simultaneous with that, they also have a sense of the very, very distant past indeed. And this manifests itself in various ways. So right from the very, very distant past indeed. And this manifests itself in various ways. So right from the beginning,

they seem to be looking back to a guy called Sargon who rules a city called Akkad. And we're not quite sure where Akkad was. Consensus now probably is that it was on the Tigris, but it's possible that it was actually on the Euphrates and maybe on the site of Babylon itself. But the reason that Sargon is remembered, he's this great conqueror who for the first time up until that point, Mesopotamia essentially has been an agglomeration of city-states. It's a bit like Greece will be. And Sargon conquers them all and is remembered

as the ruler of the first great empire. So he's the world's first emperor. Yeah. And Akkad is remembered as the kind of archetype of an imperial city. So rather than being self-sufficient, it's a city that is based on tribute and plunder. And so therefore, it's a city that is full of foreigners. It's full of exotic animals. It's cosmopolitan in a way that in due course Babylon will become as well. So it's kind of a prototype in some ways for what Babylon are ruling in the kind of same area that Sargon was ruling Akkad. And so they kind of look back to Sargon as a kind of legitimizing figure. I mean, it's a bit like, I suppose, Charlemagne perhaps looking back to Constantine or something like, you know, the line of descent is not a clear one, but it's one that the early kings of Babylon want to evoke. And this then endures right the way through.

So the Babylonians are obsessed with learning, with the past. There's a massive kind of antiquarian strain. And right up to the end of it, so Nabonidus, who is the last kind of native king of Babylon, he rules before the Persians conquer it. That's the end of Babylonian independence, effectively. But he's a massive antiquarian. So he goes away, and we'll probably come to why he goes away, but reports reach him

that people have dug up a statue of Sargon, of Akkad, and he comes rushing back. He's so excited, he wants to have a look at it. And he has a daughter, who's a princess, Enigaldinanna. Good pronunciation, Tom. Thank you very much. And she, it seems, so this is Leonard Woolley, the great British archaeologist, is excavating Ur, much, much older city than Babylon. And obviously, in a sense, the Babylonians kind of remember that. And she seems to have constructed a museum of antiquities at Ur. So when they were found, these are antiquities that are reaching back to the beginnings of Mesopotamian history. And the greatest thing is that they seem to have had kind of museum captions explaining what a collection of antiquities are. So right at the end of Babylonian independence, you get the sense that people are absolutely at the top.

The royal family are at. Yeah, that's what the princess, the princess writes the captions. She seems to have done, yeah. I mean, I don't know whether she personally did, but it's her museum. Right. So it's a bit like if, you know, Princess Anne or Carrie Johnson were setting up their own museums about Athelstan, Tom. Exactly. Yes. Or kind of the Neolithic or something with stone axes or something like that. Yes, it is. And the Babylonians can do that because they are a deeply literate society.

Okay. deeply literate society. And so I mentioned the Greeks and the Jews. So Herodotus, the first great historian, and the writers of what Christians call the Old Testament, the Tanakh for Jews. And that is the inheritance that the people in the West have had. So that's what essentially has always determined our understanding of what Babylon looked like. But in the 19th century, archaeologists went there and they discovered all these kind of tablets with what came to be called cuneiform, and the language got cracked. And now I think that the total volume of writings by Babylonians and by Assyrians, the great power to the north, who we'll also be talking about,

is equivalent to the entire corpus of Latin literature. So there's tons of stuff. There is tons and tons of stuff. So we've got the Greek and the Jewish writings that are now supplemented by the writings of the Babylonians and Assyrians themselves. And so therefore, over the past, whatever, 150, 170 years, it's been possible for people

to have a much, much better sense of what the history of babylon was before the kind of the great days of nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century right the way back to to the beginnings of it okay let me take you back to the beginning tom um so you've had akkad we don't exactly know where that is that's about what is that uh 2300 years before the birth of christ um and then babylon seems to have been founded if i'm right about four centuries later in the 19th century bc or so so 1900 years before the birth of christ and the man who found it i believe is called samu abam is that is that right am i pronouncing that correctly i don't know but i always i've always thought of him as sumo abam just because it seems funnier okay fine um and uh

now who is he and and who are the people that found it are they just local farmers or what's the story no he so he is an amurite say that again amurite so uh that's kind of um for uh more elevated listeners yeah he runs a flower stall in uh in the east end um so the amorites are um they are semitic speakers probably from syria they're they're mentioned in the bible so maybe in in canaan as well and they're the kind of classic guys who right from the beginning of time right from the beginning of civilization have kind of operated on the fringes of urban society okay so you know this is the story that that just repeats and repeats and repeats itself. And essentially, whenever they get a sense of weakness, you know, they come in. So it's the same stories you get with the Arabs,

you know, in the 7th century. And the Amorites come in and they either take over what had been a kind of village or a small town or they found it or whatever, but they establish a city and they establish a monarchy because it's pretty fundamental to the way that the Mesopotamians see the world that you have to have a king. Is the king a representative of the gods

or the king is embodiment of some divine order or what? He's the kind of interface between humans and gods and he's the guy who can be guaranteed to protect his subjects from war to give them justice to ensure that the correct rituals are carried out so that the gods won't get cross um and you you have all this say what's called wisdom literature it's um kind of pithy sentiments that people are encouraged to recommend to to bear in mind and again and again you get these kind of ideas that um so there's this this this one that it's kind of written about 2500 bc you should submit to the strong man you should humble

yourself before the man who wields power so it's very kind of putin friendly right yeah you know there's the idea is is that that there's a big man and you should basically do what he says thomas hobbes yeah yeah and and then hopefully he will then look after you and give you justice yes if you're poor but but obedience is there so so so babylon is a city that is also a monarchy and samu abom is the the king? He's the first one that we know of. And here's a crucial question that's going to run through this podcast. How do we know about him? We know about it through these cuneiform tablets.

We know there are kind of king lists, as you get in Egypt. So there is this vast kind of corpus of material that scholars are working their way through right now. I mean, you know, there's loads and loads that haven't been read. And this is the 19th century BC. And do we have any sense, Tom, of what that city... Well, first, I mean, I know this is in many ways an impossible question. So is it on the banks of the river?

Of the Euphrates. Of the Euphrates. We're talking about it as a city. But at this stage, presumably, it's what we would now see as a town, right? I mean, it's not. It's really difficult to know because there's almost no trace of it. I mean, actually, there's literally no trace of it. Because I think there was several people asked, you know, what is left of Babylon?

One of the problems with this, say, unlike egypt where you have things built of stone there isn't really any stone available so stone is a very very precious commodity in mesopotamia so instead they make things out of baked mud bricks right so hence my magnificent opening in persian fire everything is made of mud that's how so all these kind of great monuments the ishtar gate everything is made out of baked mud that are baked really, really hard. But the problem with them is that they kind of melt away. So you have this thing over the course of Mesopotamian history. So the great ziggurats, which are the kind of stepped, great stepped temples, they kind of melt away like kind of chocolate cakes left in the rain.

And so then what people do is they just kind of build over the top of them. And again and again, you get the sense that cities rise up, they collapse, and they get rebuilt. So the Esagila, for instance, I mean, that does seem to be properly ancient. That does seem to have this shrine that becomes the Great Shrine of Marduk. That does seem to originate in the beginnings of Babylon, which is why it's commemorated as the oldest building not just in babylon but in the world in due course but it's um it gets destroyed i mean we know it gets destroyed yeah and then they rebuild it so in what sense is it but does that do they have a sense tom from the very beginning that uh life human history time is a saga of kind of, it's a cycle of destruction and rebirth?

Is that built into the world? I think they have a cyclical sense of time. But they also have a sense that everything can kind of... So Babylon becomes famous as a city of sorcerers, of astronomers, of astrologers. And the idea that the past and the future are written in the heavens and that therefore what is happening on the earthly stage of Babylon is reflecting and reflective of what is happening in the heavens is also a crucial part of the way that the Babylonians understand themselves. So they feel that the city is not just a city. You know, it's not kind of the equivalent of Basingstoke. This is, it's sacred.

It's at the center of things. And it's that that animates the Babylonians. And over the course of their 2,000 years of history, other people come to accept that. And so the story of how that happens is also really, really interesting. And it's first tied up with one of the heirs of Sumo Obama, who I prefer to call him, the famous Hammurabi. Well, just a quick note.

If you are from Basingstoke and you do think your city has a divine significance, I apologize. Write in, let us know. But yeah, but Tom, so Hammurabi or whatever you, what did you call him? Hammurabi. Hammurabi. I think the diversity of pronunciations

is one of the great joys of this podcast. Strengths of this podcast. So we've moved on 100 years or so from the, 200 years maybe from the foundation of the city, I guess. Yeah. And now it's becoming under Hammurabi or whatever you want to call him. Am I right in thinking it's becoming more of an imperial power

taking over other towns, cities nearby? So this is where the kind of comparison with Sargon comes in is that Hammurabi is a great conqueror. He buys his time and then he seems to have basically just kind of gone berserk. And he conquers this great empire that basically embraces most of certainly southern Mesopotamia, reaching up in towards Syria. And, you know, so he's a great conqueror. But the other reason that he's remembered is that he's a great lawgiver.

Well, there's the code, isn't there? And this is one of the foundational documents in some ways of, well, it's one of the first great documents of human history, isn't there and this is one of the foundational documents in some ways of well it's one of the first great documents of human history isn't it is if you were doing a sort of compilation of top documents this is this is often number one or two in the list it is although whether it's a law code in the way that we would understand it is much debated um you know and this is kind of part of the fascination and the frustration of ancient history is that you get a great chunk of writing and you don't have the context that necessarily enables you to work out quite how do you frame it. law uh or it could be um a collection of royal rulings um or it could be a kind of an accounting from the king to the gods of everything that he's done and what sort of things are in it well it's written very kind of poetically yeah so just to reiterate it's not the kind of thing that you would get you know kind of bill of parliament or anything like that um it features a lot of boasting from the king um so the king i stand head and shoulders above

other kings um my words are basically brilliant um i'm absolutely i have no rival in terms of my diligence so there's a lot of that kind of stuff. That's you talking to him about it. Not at all, Dominic, not at all. There's a lot of stuff about marriages. Right. There's a lot of stuff about inheritance. There's a sense that the king is upholding the laws and the frameworks. And he's kind of socializing people. Right. there are there are set rules that people should follow and he is he is kind of in trying you know he's delivering them and that these serve the causes of justice as understood by the gods i mean that's

basically what it is and i think that um but there's a kind of there's a there's a temptation on our behalf to kind of identify it with the understanding of law that we have that I think should probably be resisted because it's always kind of, it's weirder and stranger and more distant than that. Fair enough. What about Hammurabi himself, Tom? Because Liam Boyd had a question. He said, is Hammurabi a leader who could be considered a great man of history, successful both militarily, administratively and changed the religious and political landscape of Mesopotamia? So our very first podcast of this entire series was about greatness. Is Hammurabi, is he one of these people who is seen as a sort of a titanic, a genuinely titanic figure? Or is that just an accident because of the sources we have that reflect well on him? He sees himself as a titanic figure. He sees himself pretty clearly as the heir of Sargon, who's the archetype of a great man.

And Mesopotamia is absolutely a society that believes in great men. I mean, great kings. So absolutely by that standard, he's a great conqueror and he's a great lawgiver. You know, and by our standards as well. I mean, that's a kind of Napoleonic record. But rather like Napoleon, his empire. Then crumbles.

It crumbles. And it crumbles when he dies, basically, after he dies. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. So it's very much a personal creation rather than a kind of institutional one, his empire, do you think? Well, I think at this point, so as Sargon had done, Hammurabi is conquering city-states that regard themselves as being naturally independent.

Right. So again, it's a bit like the Macedonians conquering the city-states of Greece, that the city-states don't like it. They're kind of constantly trying to throw off, you know, the yoke. And essentially after Hammurabi's life Babylon reverts back to being Basingstoke you know you've got really got it in for Basingstoke or Reading or whatever I mean it's it's it's it's a kind of you know it's a wealthy prosperous slightly provincial place with that has had its moment in the sun but now has kind of retreated again um and you know for several centuries you don't really know what's going on well it's on the receiving end right i mean it gets uh attacked by the hittites who are another sort of mysterious people aren't they anatolian

the hittites i think are they yes so so from what's now turkey and they establish a kind of a massive empire um and the hittites do something that, and they establish a kind of a massive empire. And the Hittites do something that I think will become a bit of a theme. So they steal or confiscate a statue of Marduk. Now, what's all that about? Tell me, explain to me about the statue of Marduk and why basically people keep stealing it. But before you answer that, actually, Tom, hold on. We will take a break.

We'll go and admire our own statues of Marduk, and we'll be back in just a few minutes i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the resterestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Now, Tom, you were about to explain why they keep stealing the statue of Marduk. So Marduk, as we've mentioned, is enshrined in the Esagila. According to legend, he builds the Esagila himself. Obviously, that didn't happen.

And he constructs his own statue. I mean, he sought literally to live there with his wife. Literally, so it's not symbolic. No, he literally lives there. He lives there with his wife. So there's a statue of her as well. Their son, who has a house outside town every year, is brought in. So he's kind of like he's coming back from university or something.

Bring all his washing with him. Bring all his washing with him. Marduk is kind of the patron of Babylon, but he's nothing really more than that at this point. But therefore, he's kind of like the symbol of Babylon, but he's nothing really more than that at this point. But therefore, he's kind of like the symbol of Babylon. So if you conquer Babylon and you steal Marduk, you're removing its great patron. And therefore, as you say, this is something that punctuates the history, because every time Babylon gets captured, the people who've done it nick the statue of Marduk. So a quick question, Tom, just to interrupt. So when these people steal the statue, maybe the answer to this is unknowable. Do they think they are literally stealing the god,

or are they merely stealing a symbol of the god? I think it's hard to know with the Hittites, because they're from a culturally a very different society. But I think when you have, so in due course, say the Assyrians, who become the great rivals of the Babylonians, that they're bred of the same cultural matrix. And the Assyrians look to Babylon as, you know, the great cultural center of the world, they kind of take Babylon at its own estimation. Yeah. And so therefore, when they steal the statue of Marduk, yes, absolutely, they feel that they're taking the God, and they're nervous about it, because they steal the statue of Marduk, yes, absolutely. They feel that they're taking the God and they're nervous about it because they feel that they're potentially committing sacrilege. But I think the Hittites don't think that.

I mean, the Hittites, it's kind of like the Romans stealing the treasures of the temple when they sacked Jerusalem. It's a way to humiliate and rub the noses of the conquered in the ashes of their defeat. And so Babylon is left kind of traumatized by that. And so they get taken over by, after that, by a mysterious people called the Kassites. And who are they? This is,

I'll be frank. This is the first I've ever heard of the Kassites. Who are they? They're very obscure. They speak a language that is kind of a bit like Basque. It doesn't seem to be Semitic. It doesn't seem to, you know,

it doesn't bear any relationship to any of the kind of languages that are being spoken. They don't play pilota and pride themselves on their pinchos, presumably. Well, so, no. But they end up becoming very, very Babylonian. So they become more Babylonlonian than the babylonians they they become great great patrons of you know everything that ties the babylonians into their history um so this is a very example of the invader who is assimilated and takes on the the the the culture of the conquered people basically yeah so so again's, it's Charlemagne sponsoring monks writing out the Latin classics.

Yeah. That's exactly what it is. And they, they rule Babylon for about 400 years. And this is the period. So we took, we had, we talked about Akhenaten in the episode we did about Tutankhamen in that period. And Akhenaten is one of the ruler of four superpowers. So the Hittites, who we've mentioned, Egypt itself, of course, people called the Mitanni, who are the kind of buffer kingdom between Mesopotamia and the Hittites, and then Babylon. And so Akhenaten, so we have all these kind of tablets from his capital, Amarna, in which Akhenaten is writing to kind of various foreign kings.

And Babylon, the king of Babylon, is one of the three other kings that he describes as brother. Which he wouldn't do if it was a minor kingdom, presumably. kingdom presumably yeah and his and akhenaten's dad uh aminotep the third this kind of the sun king uh anyone who's been to the british museum seen that great kind of portrait bust with the enigmatic smile that's aminotep the third and he marries a daughter of the king of babylon so um there's this kind of network of you know the superpowers of the near east uh and babylon babylon is up there what i love about doing this subject just to interrupt is the cassites so the cassites are just an episode of babylon in history but but they rule 400 years i mean they ruled for twice as long as the united states has existed yeah i think we spend hours going through the jeremy thorpe scandal and then we just dismiss the

cassites and you know i know they're only there for 400 years. I know. I know. And important things are happening because it's under the Kassites that you start to get a sense. So again, to go back to Eric Ware's question, how did it end up giving its name to the whole region? It's under the Kassites that this process happens, that this agglomeration of independent city-states start to be absorbed into something that that is called babylonia and at this stage tom do we have any sense of babylon the place how many people live there what it looks like or again is as the mud is melted the mud is melted there you know there are kind of um so there are uh clay tablets on which there are drawings, illustrations, but they're symbolic. And so it's difficult to know exactly how credibly they should be taken.

I think it's very, very difficult to get a sense of what the city's like. But it's a great capital. It's a great capital uh it's a great capital it it it clearly has the kind of architectural heft that a great capital should have because um we we know this because um at 12 50 the assyrians enter the enter the the farm and they are they are what we would now call more northern iraq assyrian yeah right yeah so that's up mosul kurdistan that kind of area their capital is asser their capital is asser but you think so when the islamic states swept in and occupied it they they were notorious for kind of destroying assyrian statues and and cities and so on um so yeah so so northern iraq basically um and the assyrians are i think the most terrifying of all the ancient empires

i i mean having them as a neighbor it's it's like having a kind of angry hornet next to you because basically their approach to imperialism is to it's it's quite brutal there's quite a lot of beheadings and impalings and destruction and transplantation of peoples um this is particularly true of the kind of the later uh manifestation of the assyrian empire but even the early one they're they're they're not fun to have as your neighbors so when the asssyrians attack Babylon, it's kind of like they're attacking mummy. You know, they see it as a very important,

very significant city to which they owe a lot. But that doesn't in any way stop them from absolutely pulverising it. So it's the vandals sacking Rome, let's say, or something like that, is it? Is that maybe the analogy? I think they're more like Macedon to classical Greece, perhaps. It's that kind of relationship. They're seen by the Babylonians as northern brutes and barbarians. The Assyrians see themselves as having a kind of commonality with the Babylonians,

but at the same time, they're slightly chippy, like throw their weight around. And so the Assyrians attack Babylon. You get this great thing from the Assyrian king saying, I captured the king of Babylon. I trod with my foot upon his lordly neck as though it were a footstool. And inevitably, they steal the statue of Marduk. Of course they do. But they don't hold onto it, do they? Don't they give it back? They do, because they're worried that they've committed sacrilege by removing it. Right, so they go to all the efforts of taking it up, presumably in a great ceremonial hullabaloo,

and then they sneak it back or take it back, or we don't know, I suppose, do we? I think they're afraid of the king. I mean, they're afraid of Marduk. They're afraid that they have kind of blasphemed, that by laying their hands on the god and removing him from his home. Yeah. And Marduk is just the god of Babylon.

He hasn't spread. Or has he spread? He's starting to. He's becoming more and more important. And he's one of a whole constellation of gods yes um so that there are lots of gods um but marduk is kind of gradually going up the league table so the longer babylon endures yeah the more prestigious it becomes uh the more of a kind of cultural heft it has so the more it seems obvious both to the babylonians but then also to people who are starting to think of

themselves as belonging to a place called babylonia that marduk you know i mean he can't just be the god of babylon i mean he has to be king of the gods surely so it's a kind of gradual slow process of promotion right yes it's it's sort of the soft power yes absolutely yes uh and babylon is actually on the receiving end a lot at this point because then in 1176 bc i think so we're basically what 75 years later it is sacked again um this time by the evil terrible time so elam are you going to pronounce it elam or something no elam is good elam um where's where's elam so that's it that's um uh in iran so these are hordes of aliansaris descending right and they are much less respectful and they they inevitably nick the statue of

of course they do but they they also steal the famous law code of Hammurabi and they take it back to Susa, their capital. Yeah. And, you know, it's a great trophy. And that is where it gets then subsequently, much, much later, it gets found by French archaeologists who then take it to the Louvre. So there's these cycles of looting,

but also of kind of archaeological fascination with the past. So in that sense, the French who found it were truly the heirs of Babylon. So at that point, I mean, actually, it's interesting, isn't it? Because when the Elamites take the law code of Hammurabi, that is, I'm just working that out, they're 600, 700 years on from that.

So, I mean, that to them is an artifact as old i mean even longer as a as a as a a medieval you know plantagenet thing would be to us i suppose like taking magna carta or something yeah it's yeah it's i mean they can't even read it presumably i think they probably can really well because it's the lingua franca but it's surely evolved in the intervening 700 years or whatever. No, because there's a kind of conscious antiquarianism. So if you have a Babylonian scribe, he'll be able to read it. So it's as though it were in Latin, basically.

It's a kind of lingua franca and it has an antiquarian prestige? No, because it's not a completely different language. It's the same language. And so Babylonian kings are writing stuff in in way i you know it's like us using thee or thou or something in a you know in a document yeah um it's it's it's kind of got an antique feel but definitely you can read it now tom in the notes that you sent me because tom very kindly sent me a whole load of notes because he thought i was utterly incapable of informing myself about babbitt to be fair, you were actually right.

It says in the notes, I don't know if this is you, I think it looks like you're quoting somebody, from now until the period of the Syrian supremacy in the 8th century BC, the country was ruled by six politically unimportant dynasters. I just thought that was very funny. So again, you were saying that 400 years ago. So the Elamites, when they sack Babylon, they also transport the last of the Kassite kings. So that's terminus for the elamites when they sack babylon they they also transport the last of the

kings so that's terminus for the cassites yeah and so now suddenly you've got six politically unimportant dynasties that's that's like 400 500 years well it's not quite it's not quite because because actually about 50 years after the sack, you get the first guy to be called Nebuchadnezzar pops up on the scene. Is he Nebuchadnezzar or is he Nebuchadrezzar? Well, same difference. Okay, fair enough. He's only king for, what is he king for? 20 years? 21 years? Yeah, but he does quite a lot in that time because he wants to get marduk back right so so he he attacks elam and they get hit by the plague so that's not good so he has to withdraw and then he attacks again in high summer and everyone who followed the iraq war will know

how hot it gets and there's this incredible description from one of the cuneiform tablets where it describes how the axes in the soldier's hands burn like fire and the road surfaces scorch like flame you know so you real credible sense of of the heat but this is he's able to um surprise elamites he gets marduk back and this is really the point from which marduk is being enshrined as as top dog as and on the tablets tom i mean that description that you read out what is that is that a history is it a um what are they writing there's there's a lot of boasting that goes that goes on in ancient mesopotamia the guys who really really boast about um all their victories and stuff are the assyrians so So they're always going on about, we sacked this, I impaled this king,

I chopped off his head and hung it from a tree. I destroyed the city and transported all the people. A lot of boasting. You know, they do it not just in written form, but in, you know, freezes. So again, the British Museum, they have these incredible illustrations of the Assyrian army at work. Terrifying. Babylonians, Babylonian kings are generally keener

on boasting about how many buildings they've put up. So that's what they really like to go on about. Yeah. But, you know, there's a bit of boasting about all the stuff that they've done as well. Well, they should be pleased with themselves. I mean, they've got their statue back. Yeah, absolutely.

And presumably to them, not having the statue means that they're in some way mutilated, ideologically mutilated. They need the statue because Marduk is the god and, you know, without him, they can't be whole. So they've got him back. But they don't then go on to, you know, to dominate the region, do they? Because then the Assyrians are the big men again. Is that right? Or the Assyrians maybe have been the big power all through this time.

Well, they've gone kind of into eclipse and now they've come back again. And this is the period that everyone who's familiar with the Bible will know where they're just kind of like the wolf on the fold. They're terrifying and you don't want to mess with them. The advantage that Babylon has is that the Assyrians respect Babylon. They see it as the cultural capital of the world. So there's a lot of respect. But then the Babylonians make the mistake of launching a full-scale revolt. And they ally themselves

with the Elamites, who have now become their friends. Right. So they've forgiven the Elamites for the previous theft of Marduk. Yeah. And they're facing the Assyrian army, the most frightening in the world. And the king of Elam gets locked jaw.

Gosh. He can't shut his mouth well it's hard to shout out orders right also engage in complicated tactical discussions yeah it's the last thing you want when the assyrians so i changed the second and his nosebleed during the glorious revolution yeah so so he doesn't come because he's kind of ah so that's my favorite of all your impersonations is the yeah so so he's ah and so the babylonians are left to face the assyrians on their own and they've got they've got obviously got massive walls so they're able to hold out and they last for 15 months and then the city falls you know and have you got an exciting description of the fall of the city

i have so this is the syrian king seneca rib so seneca rib um and this is this is kind of classic assyrian boasting this is the kind of stuff that syrian kings went in for i destroyed the city and its houses from foundation to parapet i devastated and burned them i raised the brick and earth and work of the outer and inner wall of the city, of the temples, of the ziggurat. I dumped these into the canal. I dug canals through the midst of that city. I overwhelmed it with water. I made its very foundations disappear, and I destroyed it more completely than a devastating flood, so that it might be impossible in future days to recognize the site of that city and its temples i utterly dissolved it with water and made it like

inundated land so that dominic is the answer to your question about why we we have no real idea about what the city of hara rabbi was like senna carib is not a sentimental man i would guess no and inevitably he steals something does he take the uh statue of marduk by any chance he does he does he does and what's he when they take the statue what do they do with it they take it back in great honor and again this is this is important um they senecrub goes back to assyria he says i've destroyed babylon so now babylon is in assyria so i think he takes the statue of marduk to assa or nineveh i can't remember which one but one of the great cities of Assyria. And he says, this is, actually, I think it's Nineveh. And he says, Nineveh is now Babylon.

So it basically laid claim to their historical legacy and their garden. Absolutely. So Marduk gets enshrined in Nineveh. And basically, it's kind of new Babylon. And he's laying claim to, you know, all the inheritance of Babylon. However, the Assyrians clearly, again, feel bad about this. They feel nervous about it. And his son, Esarhaddon, who has a Babylonian wife, he restores the statue of Marduk and he starts kind of sponsoring the rebuilding of it.

And he has two sons, one of them, a guy called Shamash Shuma Ukin, crazy name, crazy guy, who becomes the king of Babylon. And then he has a younger son, but who is not the son of a Babylonian wife, so so therefore syrian through and through he was called asha banapal so he does that does he do that crazy thing that people do in dividing his kingdom in two between two sons and hoping that somehow it'll be all right kind of i i think that that um asha banapal is clearly number one king right um and uh but but but shamashuma iskin is number two. Yeah, and he's the elder brother,

so I think he's a bit cross about that. So there are tensions there. Yeah, so the idea is that it's going to be a kind of double monarchy, but as you say, I mean, these things never work out. So Babylon is being rebuilt. Marduk has been returned to the esagila um the the lake has been drained they're starting to rebuild um the the great central ziggurat and this basically is

the model for the tower of babylon so it's our process of yeah yeah sorry the tower of babel so this is the process of rebuilding it it doesn't work because in 652, the two brothers go to war. And this is obviously a terrible decision on the part of Shammashuma Ukin because his brother basically has his Syrian war machine at his command. And so inevitably Babylon gets captured. And Shammashuma Ukin's palace gets put on fire and he supposedly hurls himself into the flames. And this gets remembered by fire and he supposedly hurls himself into the flames and this gets remembered

by uh by greek and roman writers who call him sardanapalus um and sardanapalus becomes this he's remembered as this guy who uh he he he's very transgender uh he likes to kind of hang out with his concubines he doesn't can't be bothered with, you know, with, with fighting. And at the end, he kind of hurls himself into the flames. Byron writes a play about him.

So that's Shamash done. He's over. Ashurbanipal. Is he, is he in a mood to be merciful? No, I'm reading it now. I fed it.

I fed their corpses cut into small pieces to dogs, pigs, vultures, the birds of the sky and the fish of the ocean. He's not messing about, is he? No. And do you know what? He's the intellectual one. So he's got his library. He's the philosopher king.

He's the philosopher king. And he's chopping his enemies up into little bits and feeding them to dogs and vultures. But that just might be a figure of speech, Tom. Mightn you don't think so you think he's fed them to fish that's what he's claiming yes i i think so okay well tom that's been a brilliant insight into the world of babylon before nebuchadnezzar and again if you haven't listened to our episode on nebuchadnezzar's babylon it was in january and what can they expect to hear in it, Tom? Yes. So that episode, basically, it goes from when Ashurbanipal, the last great Assyrian king,

dies. Assyria implodes. And one of the victorious powers that dismembers the Assyrian empire is this revived Babylonian empire. So that's the empire of Nebuchadnezzar, the empire that everyone kind of sees in their mind's eye when they think of Babylon, the Ishtar Gate and all that kind of stuff. And he is the king who sacks Jerusalem. He's the king who is basically presiding over the Tower of Babel that then gets kind of appears in the book of Genesis and supposedly builds the Hanging Gardens. Although whether he does or not, you will find out in that episode. So if you haven't heard it, it is episode number 145 in the Restless History podcast feed. And if you have heard it, very good. And thanks for coming back for another bite of Babylon. So it's goodbye from me and it's goodbye from him. Bye-bye.

Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. That have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.