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511 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
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List of illustrations -- Pronunciation guide -- Babylonian periods and dynasties -- Introduction: good morning Babylon -- Out of eden -- Murky beginnings -- Will this man ever die? -- War-what is it good for? -- I am the sun of Babylon -- I fought the Law... -- Where the streets have no name -- In our living and in our dying -- You learn something new every day -- Public dreams and private myths -- To boldly go -- Dust storms -- The great revival -- A band of brothers -- Keeping enemies close -- Babylon for the Babylonians! -- Much ado about marduk -- Men of straw -- the Yoke of Assur -- Imperial expansion -- The mother of all cities -- Accidental empire -- Belsazzar's feast -- End times -- Epilogue: Babylon the Great is fallen
"Babylon often appears more myth than history. Purportedly the site of the Hanging Gardens and the Tower of Babel, its infamous presence in the Bible has made it a byword for sinful decadence. But Babylon was a real place teeming with life, a bustling mega-city on the Euphrates where schoolteachers, artisans, priests, slaves, prostitutes, and soldiers rubbed shoulders in maze-like streets and busy marketplaces. The city was home to some extraordinary rulers, from Hammurabi, the great lawgiver, to Nebuchadnezzar II, the conqueror-king, in whose reign the city glistened in gold and lapis lazuli. In Babylon, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones brings the ancient city vividly to life, tracing its foundation from its world domination to its subsequent decline and fall into ruin, and then to dust. From ribald drinking songs to acerbic letters between rival kings, extraordinary ancient sources help inform what is both a stunning work of scholarship and a fascinating evocation of a long-lost world."--Book jacket flap