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Babylon ( or ; (アラビア語:بابل), ''Bābil'') was a significant city in ancient Mesopotamia, in the fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The city was built upon the Euphrates and divided in equal parts along its left and right banks, with steep embankments to contain the river's seasonal floods. Babylon was originally a small Semitic Akkadian city dating from the period of the Akkadian Empire c. 2300 BC. The town attained independence as part of a small city state with the rise of the First Amorite Babylonian Dynasty in 1894 BC. Claiming to be the successor of the more ancient Sumero-Akkadian city of Eridu, Babylon eclipsed Nippur as the "holy city" of Mesopotamia around the time Amorite king Hammurabi created the first short lived Babylonian Empire in the 18th century BC. Babylon grew and South Mesopotamia came to be known as Babylonia. The empire quickly dissolved after Hammurabi's death and Babylon spent long periods under Assyrian, Kassite and Elamite domination. After being destroyed and then rebuilt by the Assyrians, Babylon became the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 609 to 539 BC. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. After the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the city came under the rules of the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Roman and Sassanid empires. It has been estimated that Babylon was the largest city in the world from c. 1770 to 1670 BC, and again between c. 612 and 320 BC. It was perhaps the first city to reach a population above 200,000.〔Tertius Chandler. ''Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth: An Historical Census'' (1987), St. David's University Press (). ISBN 0-88946-207-0. See Historical urban community sizes.〕 Estimates for the maximum extent of its area range from 890 to . The remains of the city are in present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about south of Baghdad, comprising a large tell of broken mud-brick buildings and debris. ==Name== The English ''Babylon'' comes from Greek ''Babylṓn'' (), a transliteration of the Akkadian '. The Babylonian name in the early 2nd millennium BC had been ' or ', which appears to be an adaption of an unknown original non-Semitic placename.〔Liane Jakob-Rost, Joachim Marzahn: ''Babylon'', ed. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Vorderasiatisches Museum, (Kleine Schriften 4), 2. Auflage, Putbus 1990, p. 2〕 By the 1st millennium BC, it had changed to ' under the influence of the folk etymology which traced it to ' ("Gate of God" or "Gateway of the God").〔Dietz Otto Edzard: ''Geschichte Mesopotamiens. Von den Sumerern bis zu Alexander dem Großen'', Beck, München 2004, p. 121.〕 In the Bible, the name appears as Babel ((ヘブライ語:בָּבֶל), ''Bavel'', Tib. , ''Bāvel''; , ''Bāwēl''), interpreted in the Hebrew Scriptures' Book of Genesis to mean "confusion",〔.〕 from the verb ''bilbél'' (, "to confuse"). The modern English verb, to "babble", or to speak meaningless words, is popularly thought to derive from this name, but there is no direct connection. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「babylon」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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