Babylon (TRIH ep 145)
539 BCE · Resource
This Rest Is History episode is a wide-ranging discussion of Babylon, concentrating on its most famous period from Nebuchadnezzar II onward. Tom Holland (who wrote Persian Fire) and Dominic Sandbrook describe Babylon’s monumental architecture — walls, the Ishtar Gate, the great ziggurat (Etemenanki) — and the city’s reputation as a cosmopolitan, wealthy, and morally ambivalent center. They discuss Herodotus’ accounts, the debated reality and provenance of the Hanging Gardens (mentioning Steph...
On these timelines: The Rest Is History (podcast), Resources: Combined
Around 539 BCE
- Ramayana (500 BCE)
- Gautama Buddha (563 BCE)
- Persian invasions of Greece (499 BCE)
- Confucius (551 BCE)
- Achaemenid Persian Empire (550 BCE)
- Roman Republic founded (509 BCE)
- Cyrus the Great (600 BCE)
- Parthenon (447 BCE)
- Cleisthenes' reforms (508 BCE)
- Babylonian Captivity of the Jews (586 BCE)