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10,000 BCE
Beginnings of agriculture in the Middle East
The Middle East's leading river systems of Euphrates and Tigris, running through today's Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, and Turkey, have been known for millennia to provide lush land, facilitating one of the first human agricultural activities more than 12 thousand years ago. -
1781 BCE
1792 BC - Hammurabi becomes king of Babylon.
He establishes the Code of Hammurabi and Babylon soon takes over much of Mesopotamia. 1781 BC - King Shamshi-Adad of the Assyrians dies. The First Assyrian Empire is soon taken over by the Babylonians. -
539 BCE
who destroyed the city of babylon
When the Persian Achaemenian dynasty under Cyrus the Great attacked Babylon in 539 BCE, the Babylon capital fell almost without resistance. A legend (accepted by some as historical) states that Cyrus achieved entry by diverting the Euphrates is unconfirmed in contemporary sources -
Where is Babylon today?
Iraq
Babylon, a small port town situated on the Euphrates River, grew to become one of the most prosperous cities within Mesopotamia. Today, Babylon is located within modern-day Iraq, roughly 50 miles south of Baghdad. -
Ancient Mesopotamia: "The Land Between Two Rivers"
The civilization of Ancient Mesopotamia grew up along the banks of two great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris. In the midst of a vast desert, the peoples of Mesopotamia relied upon these rivers to provide drinking water, agricultural irrigation, and major transportation routes. Over centuries, the flood pulse of the Euphrates and Tigris left the southern plains of what is now Iraq with the richest soil in the Near East.