History of Babylon Timeline

The city became the administrative capital of the Achaemenid Empire and remained prominent for over two centuries.

Image source: Achaemenid Empire

After revolts against Persian rule were quickly repressed, Babylon remained under Persian rule for two centuries, until Alexander the Great's entry into the city in 331 BC.

Under the Parthian and Sassanid Empires, Babylon (like Assyria) became a province of these Persian Empires for nine centuries, until after AD 650.

Image source: Parthian Empire

In the mid-7th century, Mesopotamia was conquered and settled by the expanding Muslim empire, and a period of Islamization followed.

Image source: Muslim conquest of Persia

Ibn Hawqal (10th century) and Arab scholar al-Qazwini (13th century) describe Babylon (Babil) as a small village.

Image source: Ibn Hawqal

Benjamin of Tudela, a 12th-century traveller, mentions Babylon, but it is not clear if he went there. The last known habitation of the town dates from the 11th century AD, when it was referred to as the 'small village of Babel'.

Image source: Benjamin of Tudela

Pietro della Valle travelled to the village of Babil in Babylon in the 17th century and noted the existence of both baked and dried mudbricks cemented with bitumen.

Image source: Pietro Della Valle

The eighteenth century saw an increasing flow of travellers to Babylon, including Carsten Niebuhr and Pierre-Joseph de Beauchamp, as well as measurements of its latitude.

Image source: Carsten Niebuhr

Beauchamp's memoir, published in English translation in 1792, provoked the British East India Company to direct its agents in Baghdad and Basra to acquire Mesopotamian relics for shipment to London.

Image source: Pierre-Joseph de Beauchamp

Claudius Rich, working for the British East India Company in Baghdad, excavated Babylon in 1811–12 and again in 1817.

Image source: Claudius Rich

Captain Robert Mignan explored the site briefly in 1827. In 1829, he completed a map of Babylon which includes the location of several villages.

William Loftus visited there in 1849. Austen Henry Layard made some soundings during a brief visit in 1850 before abandoning the site.

Fulgence Fresnel, Julius Oppert and Felix Thomas heavily excavated Babylon from 1852 to 1854. Henry Rawlinson and George Smith also worked there briefly in 1854.

Image source: Julius Oppert

Much of their work was lost in the Qurnah Disaster, when a transport ship and four rafts sank on the Tigris river in May 1855. Recovery efforts loaded the equivalent of 80 crates on a ship for Le Havre in May 1856, but subsequent efforts, including a Japanese expedition in 1971–72, have been largely unsuccessful.

Image source: Qurnah disaster

Work began in 1879, continuing until 1882, and was prompted by widespread looting of the site. Many tablets had appeared on the market in 1876 before Rassam's excavation began.

Image source: Hormuzd Rassam

The work was conducted daily from 1899 until 1917. A major problem for Koldewey was the large scale mining of baked bricks, which began in the 19th century and which were mainly sourced from the time of Nebuchadnezzar II. The German archaeologists fled before oncoming British troops in 1917, and many objects went missing in the following years.

Image source: Robert Koldewey

Lenzen in 1956 and Hansjörg Schmid in 1962 worked on the Hellenistic, Parthian, Sasanian, and Arabic levels of the site.

A topographical survey at the site was conducted in 1974, followed in 1977 by a review of the stratigraphical position of the main monuments and reconsideration of ancient water levels, by the Turin Centre for Archaeological Research and Excavations in the Middle East and Asia, and the Iraqi-Italian Institute of Archaeological Sciences.

Additional work in 1987–1989 concentrated on the area surrounding the Ishara and Ninurta temples in the Shu-Anna city-quarter of Babylon.

By 1905, there were several villages in Babylon, one of which was Qwaresh, with about 200 households, located within the ancient inner city walls. The village grew due to the need for laborers during the German Oriental Society excavations between 1899 and 1917.

A number of Iraqi excavations have occurred at Babylon, the earliest in 1938. The site of Babylon has been a cultural asset to Iraq since the creation of the modern Iraqi state in 1921.

In February 1978, the Ba'athist government of Iraq under Saddam Hussein began the 'Archaeological Restoration of Babylon Project': reconstructing features of the ancient city atop its ruins. In 1982, the government minted a set of seven coins displaying iconic features of Babylon.

From 1979 to 1981 excavation and restoration work was conducted at the Ninmah Temple, Istar Temple, and the Southern Palace.

The Babylon International Festival was held in September 1987 and annually thereafter until 2002, except in 1990 and 1991, to showcase the restoration work at the site.

Image source: Babylon

In 2003, Saddam Hussein intended to have a cable car line constructed over Babylon, but plans were halted by the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Image source: 2003 invasion of Iraq

Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the area around Babylon came under the control of US troops, before being handed over to Polish forces in September 2003. Poland resolved in 2004 to place the city under Iraq's control, and commissioned the Report Concerning the Condition of the Preservation of the Babylon Archaeological Site, presented at a meeting in December 2004.

In 2005, the site was handed over to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture.

In April 2006, Colonel John Coleman, former Chief of Staff of the I Marine Expeditionary Force, offered to apologize for the damage caused by military personnel under his command. An April 2006 article stated that UN officials and Iraqi leaders have plans to restore Babylon, making it into a cultural center.

In May 2009, the provincial government of Babil reopened the site to tourists. Over 35,000 people visited in 2017.

In July 2019, the site of Babylon was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognizing its outstanding universal value.