Gateway of the Gods: The Rise and Fall of Babylon - Hardcover

Gill, Anton

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847246699 ISBN 13: 9781847246691

Publisher: Quercus Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

Nebuchadnezzar: military genius, law-giver, architect of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and ruler of marvelous Babylon, city of 200,000 souls girded by 18 kilometres of walls so wide two four-horse chariots were said to be able to pass side-by-side; or 'destroyer of nations', the vilified despoiler of Judea ultimately driven mad by the Lord's vengeance? Two very different portraits exist for Babylon's greatest ruler. Wherein lies the truth? Nebuchadnezzar's reign (c630 A--- 562 BC) represents the last and perhaps greatest flowering of a culture that had endured for three millennia. His capital, Babylon, home of the famous Hanging Gardens, was a wonder of the ancient world in itself, but nothing remains today of the city except a scattering of dusty mounds, Nebuchadnezzar's deeds have been obscured by time, and popular history has failed to engage this most fascinating of rulers. Anton Gill's new book charts not only Nebuchadnezzar's rise to power, his hand in the downfall of the Assyrian Empire, his campaigns and his architectural transformation of Babylon, but also explores the deeper history of Fertile Crescent and explains why, for all its apparent majesty, Babylon was to fall to Cyrus the Persian only 13 years after Nebuchadnezzar's death.

About this title

About the Author

Anton Gill worked for the English Stage Company, the Arts Council of Great Britain, and the BBC before becoming a full-time writer in 1984. He is the author of The Journey Back from Hell: Conversations with Concentration Camp Survivors (winner of the H. H. Wingate Award), A Dance Between Flames: Berlin Between the Wars, and An Honourable Defeat: A History of the German Resistance to Hitler.

From the Back Cover

The extraordinary story of the most magnificent city of the ancient world.

From the Inside Flap

Ancient Mesopotamia - centred on the southern part of the floodplain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (in what is modern Iraq) - has long been known as the cradle of human civilization. It was here, in the fourth millennium BC, that the worlds' first city-states came into being, and with them many of the social, legal and economic structures that we recognize today.
Between 6000 BC and 1900 BC a number of different peoples - Sumerians, Akkadians, Gutians, Amorites and Elamites - established dynasties in the region, power constantly shifting between them. Around 1800-1750 BC, however, the Amorite king Hammurabi unified Mesopotamia under the hegemony of Babylon. Although its power both waxed and waned over the succeeding centuries, Babylon retained its importance as a cultural, religious and political centre until its fall to the Persians in 539 BC.
Anton Gill tells the thousand-year story of the splendour that was ancient Babylon - the "gateway of the gods". Beginning with a survey of the early Mesopotamian dynasties, he goes on to chronicle the city's rise under Hammurabi, its troubled fortunes in the centuries that followed, its golden age under a dynasty of Chaldean kings in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, and the life of its last great king Nebuchadrezzar II.
Ruling from c.605 until 562 BC, Nebuchadrezzar created a Neo-Babylonian empire that extended over much of the Levant, and presided over a magnificent flowering of culture, including the construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Anton Gill not only describes the political and military triumphs of Nebuchadrezzar's reign but also explores its many achievements in the cultural sphere - from art to mathematics, from economics to legal matters, and from astronomy to writing - as well as features of everyday life, from sex and shopping to food and drink customs.
Studded with detailed profiles of the rulers of the period, and embellished with 130 colour illustrations, maps and timelines, Gateway of the Gods is a vivid and richly informative portrait of an extraordinary era.

Edition details

• Publisher: Quercus Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1847246699
• ISBN 13: 9781847246691
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256