Dr. H. V. Hilprecht, Professor of Assyrian at the University of Pennsylvania, dreamed that a Babylonian priest, associated with the king Kurigalzu, ( 1300 B.C. ) escorted him to the treasure chamber of the temple of Bel, gave him six novel points of information about a certain broken relic, and corrected an error in its identification.

In a Hittite text is mentioned that the king invited a Babylonian priestess for a certain " purification ".

In later Assyrian and Babylonian texts, the name Akkad, together with Sumer, appears as part of the royal title, as in the Sumerian LUGAL KI. EN. GIR < sup > KI </ sup > URU < sup > KI </ sup > or Akkadian Šar māt Šumeri u Akkadi, translating to " king of Sumer and Akkad ".

These alleged refugees claimed the ancestry of Sargon of Akkad ( whose dynasty died out some 15 centuries before the fall of Assyria ), they also contradictionally claimed ancestry from Nabopolassar, a Babylonian king of Chaldean extraction who played a major part in the destruction of the Assyrian Empire.

The earliest parts of the book are possibly chapters 2 – 11, the story of the conquest ; more certain is that this section was then incorporated into an early form of Joshua that was part of then original Deuteronomistic history, written late in the reign of king Josiah ( reigned 640 – 609 BCE ); it seems clear that the book was not completed until after the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586, and possibly not until after the return from the Babylonian exile late in the 6th century.

These all culminate in frightening depictions of a powerful king who, like the Babylonian rulers of the court tales, attacks Israel, defiles the temple, and incurs divine judgment.

The fragments describe a Babylonian king ( spelled N-b-n-y ) who is afflicted by God with an " evil disease " for a period of seven years ; he is cured and his sins forgiven after the intervention of a Jewish exile who is described as a " diviner "; he issues a written proclamation in praise of the Most High God, and speaks in the first person.

The first was the late 7th century Deuteronomistic reform of official Judean religion under king Josiah, who banned many elements of the old polytheistic cult from the Temple, and the sudden collapse of Assyria and the rise of Babylon to take its place ; the second was exile of the royal court, the priests and other members of the ruling elite following the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem c. 586 BCE.

Egyptian and Babylonian armies fought each other for control of the near east throughout much of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, and this encouraged king Zedekiah of Israel to revolt.

The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a human-sized stone stele and various clay tablets.

The Babylonian Talmud claims that Hezekiah, the 14th king of Judah, composed the book.

The most extensive Babylonian medical text, however, is the Diagnostic Handbook written by the ummânū, or chief scholar, Esagil-kin-apli of Borsippa, during the reign of the Babylonian king Adad-apla-iddina ( 1069-1046 BC ).

Hammurabi ( Akkadian from Amorite ʻAmmurāpi, " the kinsman is a healer ", from ʻAmmu, " paternal kinsman ", and Rāpi, " healer "; ( died c. 1750 BC ) was the sixth king of Babylon ( that is, of the First Babylonian Dynasty ) from 1792 BC to 1750 BC middle chronology ( 1728 BC – 1686 BC short chronology ).

He became the first king of the Babylonian Empire following the abdication of his father, Sin-Muballit, extending Babylon's control over Mesopotamia by winning a series of wars against neighboring kingdoms.

For the unnamed " king of Babylon " a wide range of identifications have been proposed. They include a Babylonian ruler of the prophet Isaiah's own time the later Nebuchadnezzar II, under whom the Babylonian captivity of the Jews began, or Nabonidus, and the Assyrian kings Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon II and Sennacherib, Herbert Wolf held that the " king of Babylon " was not a specific ruler but a generic representation of the whole line of rulers.

Some of the important historical Mesopotamian leaders were Ur-Nammu ( king of Ur ), Sargon ( who established the Akkadian Empire ), Hammurabi ( who established the Old Babylonian state ), Ashur-uballit II and Tiglath-Pileser I ( who established the Assyrian Empires ).

The most extensive Babylonian medical text, however, is the Diagnostic Handbook written by the ummânū, or chief scholar, Esagil-kin-apli of Borsippa, during the reign of the Babylonian king Adad-apla-iddina ( 1069-1046 BC ).

A large battle was fought against the Babylonian rebels at Nippur, their king was captured and in turn taken to Nineveh.

The last Babylonian king, Nabonidus ( who was Assyrian born, and not a Chaldean ), improved the ziggurat.

* c. 2492 BC The Armenian patriarch Hayk defeats the Babylonian king Bel ( legendary account ).

* 539 BC – Cyrus the Great enters the city of Babylon, detains Nabonidus and ends the Babylonian captivity.

Of the reign of the last Babylonian king, Nabonidus ( Nabu-na ' id ), and the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus, there is a fair amount of information available.

Nabonidus and his son, the regent Belshazzar were not Chaldeans or Babylonian, but hailed from the last Assyrian capital of Harran.

Cyrus now claimed to be the legitimate successor of the ancient Babylonian kings and the avenger of Bel-Marduk, who was assumed to be wrathful at the impiety of Nabonidus in removing the images of the local gods from their ancestral shrines to his capital Babylon.

The Nabonidus Chronicle records that, prior to the battle ( s ), Nabonidus had ordered cult statues from outlying Babylonian cities to be brought into the capital, suggesting that the conflict over Susa had begun possibly in the winter of 540 BCE.

Opinions differ however on how best to reconcile Herodotus with the Babylonian sources and an alternative view is that the younger Labynetos is Nabonidus.

While some claim that it is obvious from his inscriptions that he became almost henotheistic, others consider Nabonidus to have been similar to other Babylonian rulers, in that he respected the other cults and religions in his kingdom.

Finally, Berossus claimed that Cyrus beat the Babylonian army, but this time, Nabonidus was supposed to have fled to nearby Borsippa.

The accounts by Berossus and the retrospective Hellenistic Babylonian dynastic prophecies, which mention that Nabonidus ' life was spared, and that he was allowed to retire to live in Carmania.

A chronicle drawn up just after the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus, gives the history of the reign of Nabonidus (' Nabuna ' id '), the last king of Babylon, and of the fall of the Babylonian empire.

This is similar to another Babylonian history, Chronicle of Nabonidus, and differs from the rationalistic accounts of other Greek historians like Thucydides.

According to the Greek author Herodotus, Cyrus treated Croesus well and with respect after the battle, but this is contradicted by the Nabonidus Chronicle, one of the Babylonian Chronicles ( although whether or not the text refers to Lydia's king or prince is unclear ).

The Nabonidus Chronicle records that, prior to the battle ( s ), Nabonidus had ordered cult statues from outlying Babylonian cities to be brought into the capital, suggesting that the conflict had begun possibly in the winter of 540 BC.

Two days later, on October 7 ( proleptic Gregorian calendar ), Gubaru's troops entered Babylon, again without any resistance from the Babylonian armies, and detained Nabonidus.

The text of the cylinder denounces the deposed Babylonian king Nabonidus as impious and portrays Cyrus as pleasing to the chief god Marduk.

The Chronicle of Nabonidus, the Cyrus Cylinder and the so-called Verse Account of Nabonidus contain apologies for the Persian king shedding a rather unfavourable light on the Babylonian king so that it appears that Cyrus I was a liberator and defender of Babylonian orthodoxy, acknowledging him has a legitimate successor to the Babylonian throne.

Aplu, it is suggested, comes from the Akkadian Aplu Enlil, meaning " the son of Enlil ", a title that was given to the god Nergal, who was linked to Shamash, Babylonian god of the sun.

Aplu, meaning the son of, was a title given to the god Nergal, who was linked to the Babylonian god of the sun Shamash.

Aquarius is identified as " The Great One " in the Babylonian star catalogues and represents the god Ea himself, who is commonly depicted holding an overflowing vase.

Other examples of his readiness for both warlike and unwarlike subjects are lyrics celebrating his brother's heroic exploits as a Babylonian mercenary and lyrics sung in a rare meter ( Sapphic Ionic in minore ) in the voice of a distressed girl, " Wretched me, who share in all ills!

2 Maccabees 2: 4-10, written around 100 BC, says that the prophet Jeremiah, " being warned by God " before the Babylonian invasion, took the Ark, the Tabernacle, and the Altar of Incense, and buried them in a cave on Mount Nebo ( Jordan ), informing those of his followers who wished to find the place that it should remain unknown " until the time that God should gather His people again together, and receive them unto mercy.

* Chapters 40 to 55 ( Second Isaiah or Deutero-Isaiah ): by an anonymous author who lived in Babylon near the end of the Babylonian captivity.

Ptolemy's catalogue is informed by Eudoxus of Cnidus, a Greek astronomer of the 4th century BC who introduced earlier Babylonian astronomy to the Hellenistic culture.

Babylon was then ruled by a native Babylonian puppet of the Assyrians Bel-ibni, who was replaced by Ashur-nadin-shumi, an Assyrian prince who was murdered by the Elamites and replaced with a native Babylonian puppet Nergal-ushezib.

* Hammurabi, a Babylonian who wrote some of the earliest codes of law

There are still others who maintain that after Nebuchadnezzar had carried the beautiful youths of Judah to Babylon, he had them executed and their bodies mutilated, because their beauty had entranced the Babylonian women, and that it was these youths whom Ezekiel called back to life.

The earliest recorded beginnings of geometry can be traced to early peoples, who discovered obtuse triangles in the ancient Indus Valley ( see Harappan Mathematics ), and ancient Babylonia ( see Babylonian mathematics ) from around 3000 BC.

The satirist Lucian, in his True History, describes him as a Babylonian called Tigranes, who assumed the name Homer when taken " hostage " ( homeros ) by the Greeks.

The Israel of the Persian period included descendants of the inhabitants of the old kingdom of Judah, returnees from the Babylonian exile community, Mesopotamians who had joined them or had been exiled themselves to Samaria at a far earlier period, Samaritans and others.

The kings who came before Hammurabi had begun to consolidate rule of central Mesopotamia under Babylonian hegemony and, by the time of his reign, had conquered the city-states of Borsippa, Kish, and Sippar.

Under the rules of Hammurabi's successors, the Babylonian Empire was weakened by military pressure from the Hittites, who sacked Babylon around 1531 BC ( short ).

However it was the Kassites who eventually conquered Babylon and ruled Mesopotamia for 400 years, adopting parts of the Babylonian culture, including Hammurabi's code of laws.

Babylonian Talmud Berakhos 28a relates that Rabban Gamliel would announce that any student who is not pure enough so that ' his outer self is like his inner self ' may not enter the study hall.