Babylon

The Biography of a Metropolis

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

A vibrant, colorful, and authoritative exploration of the world's first and most illustrious metropolis.

'Babylon' is a name that has a double life: it denotes the great ancient Mesopotamian city with a long and complex history, and it is also a fictive allusion with a wide variety of connotations, from the Hebrew bible's Tower of Babel, through the New Testament's 'Whore of Babylon' to the iconic song 'The Rivers of Babylon’ in the 1970s.

The first royal dynasty of Babylon was founded by an Amorite interloper named Sumu-la-El a thousand years after the fall of the great Sumerian city states of Ur and Uruk, creating a new superpower in the Near East. Clinging close to the mighty River Euphrates, the city quickly grew in size and, thanks to its military prowess, soon expanded its territories, sweeping down to the Persian Gulf and advancing north into Syria.

The kingdom of Babylonia came in to being and, governed from mighty Babylon, setting the agenda for what civilization meant. This fascinating book explores Babylon's reputation as a city with a dual legacy by exploring its rich ancient past and its astonishing mythic legacy.

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones holds the chair in ancient history at Cardiff University. The author of Persians and The Cleopatras, among other books, he has published widely on ancient history and lives in Taff’s Well, Wales.

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Endorsements & Reviews

"Compelling and authoritative, this history of Babylon combines narrative flair with the latest scholarship to deliver an exhilarating portrait of one of the world's greatest cities." Simon Sebag Montefiore, New York Times bestselling author of Jerusalem: The Biography

"An important reassessment of Babylonian civilisation, literature and science by one of our greatest scholars of the ancient world. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones achieves a remarkable feat of urban resurrection as he reanimates Babylon and shows us how far Mesopotamia's greatest metropolis rose above its caricature as the City of Sin, the home of the Great Whore, the Antichrist and the Tower of Babel.” William Dalrymple, bestselling author of The Golden Road 

"A masterpiece worthy of the greatest city in the ancient world." Tristan Hughes, host of The Ancients

"Engrossing and informative, this is a literal "tour de force" of Babylon's history, and of Babylonian society and culture, from its earliest beginnings to its final end. Highly recommended.” Dr. Eric H. Cline, historian and bestselling author of 1177 B.C.

"This book sweeps you up and carries you off like the River Tigris itself!” Irving Finkel, British Museum

Praise for Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’s The Cleopatras:

“Masterful. This is historical drama at its best.” Air Mail

“A colorful history. Original and engaging.” The Wall Street Journal

“The latest service performed by the historian Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is of a higher order: to show that, extraordinary as she was, the sometime consort of Caesar and Antony was not a historic aberration but in fact the last in a long line of formidable queens.” The New Criterion

“Llewellyn-Jones’s extensive research on all seven of these intriguing Cleopatras is expertly presented. Highly recommended.” Library Journal (starred review)

“Throughout, Llewellyn-Jones highlights the queens’ ruthless determination, framing them as women with a developed sense of gender dynamics and of patriarchy’s inequities, whose political project was often—and quite explicitly—to seize power from men. It’s an innovative take on an ancient dynasty.” Publishers Weekly