Babylon in the context of "Ur"

The death of Alexander the Great and subsequent related events have been the subjects of debates. According to a Babylonian astronomical diary, Alexander died in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon between the evening of 10 June and the evening of 11 June 323 BC, at the age of 32.

Macedonians and local residents wept at the news of the death, while Achaemenid subjects were forced to shave their heads. The mother of Darius III, Sisygambis, having learned of Alexander's death, became depressed and killed herself later. Historians vary in their assessments of primary sources about Alexander's death, which has resulted in different views about its cause and circumstances.

The Partition of Babylon was the first of the conferences and ensuing agreements that divided the territories of Alexander the Great. It was held at Babylon in June 323 BC.Alexander’s death at the age of 32 had left an empire that stretched from Greece all the way to Pakistan. The issue of succession resulted from the claims of the various supporters of Philip Arrhidaeus (Alexander’s half-brother), and the as-of-then unborn child of Alexander and Roxana, among others. The settlement saw Arrhidaeus and Alexander’s child designated as joint kings with Perdiccas serving as regent. The territories of the empire became satrapies divided between the senior officers of the Macedonian army and some local governors and rulers. The partition was solidified at the further agreements at Triparadisus and Persepolis over the following years and began the series of conflicts that comprise the Wars of the Diadochi. The term "Partition of Babylon" is a modern designation.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to ancient Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC and being firmly established through the fall of the Assyrian Empire in 612 - 609 BC, the Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 539 BC, less than a century after the founding of the Chaldean dynasty.The defeat of the Assyrian Empire and subsequent return of power to Babylon marked the first time that the city, and southern Mesopotamia in general, had risen to dominate the ancient Near East since the collapse of the Old Babylonian Empire (under Hammurabi) nearly a thousand years earlier. The period of Neo-Babylonian rule thus saw unprecedented economic and population growth throughout Babylonia, as well as a renaissance of culture and artwork as Neo-Babylonian kings conducted massive building projects, especially in Babylon itself, bringing back many elements from the previous 2,000 years of Sumero-Akkadian culture.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire retains a notable position in modern cultural memory due to the portrayal of Babylon and its greatest king Nebuchadnezzar II in the Bible. The biblical account of Nebuchadnezzar describes his military campaign against the Kingdom of Judah, and in particular the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 587 BC which resulted in the destruction of Solomon's Temple and the subsequent Babylonian captivity. The Bible also describes the majesty of Nebuchadnezzar's rule and his sympathetic relationship with his Jewish captives. Babylonian sources describe Nebuchadnezzar's reign as a golden age that transformed Babylonia into the greatest empire of its time.

Babylonian astronomy was the study or recording of celestial objects during the early history of Mesopotamia. The numeral system used, sexagesimal, was based on 60, as opposed to ten in the modern decimal system. This system simplified the calculating and recording of unusually great and small numbers.

During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers developed a new empirical approach to astronomy. They began studying and recording their belief system and philosophies dealing with an ideal nature of the universe and began employing an internal logic within their predictive planetary systems. This was an important contribution to astronomy and the philosophy of science, and some modern scholars have thus referred to this approach as a scientific revolution. This approach to astronomy was adopted and further developed in Greek and Hellenistic astrology. Classical Greek and Latin sources frequently use the term Chaldeans for the philosophers, who were considered as priest-scribes specializing in astronomical and other forms of divination. Babylonian astronomy paved the way for modern astrology and is responsible for its spread across the Graeco-Roman empire during the 2nd-century Hellenistic Period. The Babylonians used the sexagesimal system to trace the planets' transits, by dividing the 360 degree sky into 30 degrees, they assigned 12 zodiacal signs to the stars along the ecliptic.

Geography (from Ancient Greek γεωγραφία geōgraphía; combining gê 'Earth' and gráphō 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be. While geography is specific to Earth, many concepts can be applied more broadly to other celestial bodies in the field of planetary science. Geography has been called "a bridge between natural science and social science disciplines."

The history of geography as a discipline spans cultures and millennia, being independently developed by multiple groups, and cross-pollinated by trade between these groups. Geography as a discipline dates back to the earliest attempts to understand the world spatially, with the earliest example of an attempted world map dating to the 9th century BCE in ancient Babylon. Origins of many of the concepts in geography can be traced to Greek Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who may have coined the term "geographia" (c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BC). The first recorded use of the word γεωγραφία was as the title of a book by Greek scholar Claudius Ptolemy (100 – 170 AD). During the Middle Ages, geography was influenced by Islamic scholars, like Muhammad al-Idrisi, producing detailed maps of the world. The Age of Discovery was influential in the development of geography, as European explorers mapped the New World. Modern developments include the development of geomatics and geographic information science.

Babylonia (/ˌbæbɪˈloʊniə/; Akkadian: 𒆳𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠, māt Akkadī) was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based on the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Akkadian-populated but Amorite-ruled state c. 1894 BC. During the reign of Hammurabi and afterwards, Babylonia was retrospectively called "the country of Akkad" (māt Akkadī in Akkadian), a deliberate archaism in reference to the previous glory of the Akkadian Empire. It was often involved in rivalry with the linguistically related state of Assyria in Upper Mesopotamia, and with Elam to the east. Babylonia briefly became the major power in the region after Hammurabi (fl. c. 1792–1752 BC middle chronology, or c. 1696–1654 BC, short chronology) created a short-lived empire, succeeding the earlier Akkadian Empire, Third Dynasty of Ur, and Old Assyrian Empire. The Babylonian Empire rapidly fell apart after the death of Hammurabi and reverted to a small kingdom centered around the city of Babylon.

Like Assyria, the Babylonian state retained the written Akkadian language for official use, despite its Northwest Semitic-speaking Amorite founders and Kassite successors, who spoke a language isolate. The state retained the Sumerian language in sacred texts for the Babylonian religion, but already by the time Babylon was founded, this was no longer a spoken language, having been replaced by Akkadian. The earlier Akkadian and Sumerian traditions played a major role in the descendant Babylonian culture, and the region would remain an important cultural center, even under its protracted periods of outside rule.

The Babylonian calendar was a lunisolar calendar used in Mesopotamia from around the 2nd millennium BC until the Seleucid Era (294 BC), and it was specifically used in Babylon from the Old Babylonian Period (1780s BC) until the Seleucid Era.

In the Seleucid Era it was reformed as "Greek time", Anno Graecorum was introduced and used in the Middle East and Egypt until the middle of the first millennium when the First Council of Nicaea AD 325 defined the Church year based on the Roman early Julian calendar. As Anno Graecorum formed the basis for time references in the Bible and spread westward, it rather increased the Babylonian calendars importance. The Babylonian calendar is also partly reflected in calendars in South and East Asia and the Islamic calendar as well as Iranian calendars. The Julian calendar inherited the definitions of the 12 month system, week, hour etc. from the Babylonian calendar and the current Jewish calendar can be seen as a slightly modified Babylonian calendar that still exists today and is practised, but with Anno Mundi Livryat haOlam year calculation since the creation of the world. Today's global time system UTC (Gregorian calendar) therefore has its main structure inherited from the Babylonian calendar.