List of kings of Babylon in the context of "Code of Hammurabi"

Ur (/ʊr/ or /ɜːr/) was a major Sumerian city-state in ancient Mesopotamia, located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar (Arabic: تَلّ ٱلْمُقَيَّر, lit. 'mound of bitumen') in Dhi Qar Governorate, southern Iraq. Although Ur was a coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf, the coastline has shifted and the site is now well inland, on the south bank of the Euphrates, 16 km (10 mi) southwest of Nasiriyah in modern-day Iraq. The city dates from the Ubaid period c. 3800 BC, and is recorded in written history as a city-state from the 26th century BC, its first recorded king being Mesannepada.

The city's patron deity was the moon god Nanna (Sin in Akkadian), and the name of the city is derived from UNUG, literally "the abode (of Nanna)". The site is marked by the partially restored ruins of the Ziggurat of Ur, which contained the shrine of Nanna, excavated in the 1930s. The temple was built in the 21st century BC (short chronology), during the reign of Ur-Nammu and was reconstructed in the 6th century BC by Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon.

The Canon of Kings was a dated list of kings used by ancient astronomers as a convenient means to date astronomical phenomena, such as eclipses. For a period, the Canon was preserved by the astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, and is thus known sometimes as Ptolemy's Canon. It is one of the most important bases for modern knowledge of ancient chronology.

The Canon derives originally from Babylonian sources. Thus, it lists Kings of Babylon from 747 BC until the conquest of Babylon by Achaemenid Persians in 539 BC, and then Persian kings from 538 to 332 BC. At this point, the Canon was continued by Greek astronomers in Alexandria, and lists the Macedonian kings from 331 to 305 BC, the Ptolemies from 304 BC to 30 BC, and the Roman and Byzantine Emperors, although they are not kings; in some manuscripts the list is continued down to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Sennacherib (Neo-Assyrian Akkadian: 𒀭𒌍𒉽𒈨𒌍𒋢, romanized: Sîn-aḥḥī-erība or Sîn-aḥḥē-erība, meaning "Sîn has replaced the brothers") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 705 BC until his assassination in 681 BC. The second king of the Sargonid dynasty, Sennacherib is one of the most famous Assyrian kings for the role he plays in the Hebrew Bible, which describes his campaign in the Levant. Other events of his reign include his destruction of the city of Babylon in 689 BC and his renovation and expansion of the last great Assyrian capital, Nineveh.

Although Sennacherib was one of the most powerful and wide-ranging Assyrian kings, he faced considerable difficulty in controlling Babylonia, which formed the southern portion of his empire. Many of Sennacherib's Babylonian troubles stemmed from the Chaldean tribal chief Marduk-apla-iddina II, who had been Babylon's king until Sennacherib's father defeated him. Shortly after Sennacherib inherited the throne in 705 BC, Marduk-apla-iddina retook Babylon and allied with the Elamites. Though Sennacherib reclaimed the south in 700 BC, Marduk-apla-iddina continued to trouble him, probably instigating Assyrian vassals in the Levant to rebel, leading to the Levantine War of 701 BC, and himself warring against Bel-ibni, Sennacherib's vassal king in Babylonia.

The Babylonian revolts of 484 BC were revolts of two rebel kings of Babylon, Bel-shimanni (Akkadian: Bêl-šimânni) and Shamash-eriba (Akkadian: Šamaš-eriba), against Xerxes I, king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire.

Babylonia had been conquered by the Persians in 539 BC, but through the 55 years of Persian rule, the Babylonians had grown dissatisfied with their foreign overlords. Babylon's prestige and significance had diminished as the Persian kings did not become absorbed by the native Babylonian culture and continued to rule from capitals outside of Babylonia. Furthermore, the Persian kings failed in the traditional duties of the Babylonian king in that they rarely partook in Babylon's rituals (which required the presence of a king) and rarely gave cultic gifts in Babylonian temples. Babylonian letters written shortly before the revolt paint a picture of dissatisfaction and concern, as the Persians withdrew the income of Babylonian temple officials without explanation and tax pressures and exploitation of resources increased throughout Babylonia. It is possible that the revolts were not just motivated by a wish to re-establish an independent Babylonian kingdom, but that the revolts also had religious undertones, something which might connect them to a religious uprising somewhere in the Persian Empire written about in Xerxes's inscriptions.

Darius the Mede is mentioned in the Book of Daniel as King of Babylon between Belshazzar and Cyrus the Great, but he is not known to secular history and there is no space in the historical timeline between those two verified rulers. Belshazzar, who is often mentioned as king in the book of Daniel, was in fact the crown-prince and governor while his father was in Arabia from ca. 553 to 543 BCE, but Nabonidus had returned to Babylon years before the fall of the Babylonian empire.

Most scholars view this Darius as a literary fiction, but some have tried to harmonize the Book of Daniel with history by identifying him with various known figures, notably Cyrus, Cyaxares II, or Gobryas, the general who was first to enter Babylon when it fell to the Persians in 539 BCE.