Babylonia

   The name Babylonia was and still is used in a variety of contexts. In the geographical sense, it is a general term for southeastern Mesopotamia, as opposed to the term Assyria, denoting northwestern Mesopotamia. In a political context, Babylonia usually consisted of the national unit - country, land, province, or whatever - that included the city of Babylon and the surrounding territories that its rulers controlled. The Kassites, whose dynasty ruled the area from the sixteenth to the twelfth centuries b.c., called Babylonia Kardun-iash.

   Babylonia is also sometimes used to describe one or more of the larger Meso-potamian empires carved out by Babylonian rulers. When Hammurabi ascended Babylon's throne circa 1792 b.c., Babylonia encompassed an area barely 100 miles (161 km) in extent; however, at the height of his conquests imperial Babylonia stretched from the Persian Gulf in the southeast to the foothills of the Zagros range in the northwest, an area hundreds of times larger. Later, following the fall of the Assyrian Empire in about 612 b.c., the short-lived but splendid Neo-Babylonian Empire, created by Nebuchadnezzar II, encompassed all of Mesopotamia plus Syria and Palestine.

   See also: Babylon; Hammurabi; Kassites; Neo-Babylonian Empire