Babylonian Civilisation

     Babylon was a great city of the ancient world and the civilisation was called as the Babylonian Civilisation. It was built by the Amonite rulers on the Euphrates river sometimes around 1900 BC.

     The people of Babylon developed their own language, used mathematics and geometry, devised the system of numbers from which we derive the sixty minutes of an hour and 360° for a circle and thus reached a high standard of civilisation. Babylon had the first library in the world; the books in it were made of rolls of papyri.

     Hammurabi was the greatest among the rulers of Babylon. He ruled from 1792-1750 BC. He gathered all the laws of the land into a code, which became famous.

     Another great ruler of Babylon was Nebuchadnazzar. He laid out the celebrated Hanging Gardens of Babylon, considered one of the seven wonders of the world.

The Assyrian Civilisation

     The Assyrians came to power in Mesopotamia after the Babylonian Empire was destroyed. Under Tiglath Pileser who became king in about 750 BC, they defeated all their enemies and expanded their empire.

     Sennacherib, another great Assyrian King, rebuilt Nineveh-a great engineering feat of that time. He made it his new capital. The last great king of Assyria was Assurbanipal. He had a vast library of 22,000 clay tablets dealing with religious, scientific and literary matters. Some of these have come down to us.

     The Assyrians were great patrons of art. Their huge sculptures of winged and human-headed bulls are magnificient in appearance. Here, we see a king watching prisoners of war dragging along a huge stone sculpture.

     The Hebrews were descended from wandering tribes of Semites in the Near East. After much wandering, they settled down in Hebrew in lower Canaan and came to be called the Hebrews. Their civilisation is called Hebrew Civilisation.

     Moses was the great Hebrew leader who led them out of bondage in Egypt and into Canaan after about forty years of wandering. This event is known as ‘Exodus’.

     Solomon was a famous Hebrew ruler. He built a huge temple in Jerusalem dedicated to the Hebrew God. His rule lasted from 970 BC to 930 BC.

     The Phoenicia was the great sea-fanning nation of the ancient world. The Phoenicians ruled the land between the mountains of Lebanon and the Mediterranean sea. Their history begins around 1600 BC. Their most famous cities were Tyre, Sidon, Aradus and Beirut.

     They discovered the first principle of navigation by observing the stars and the sun, and were expert ship-builders, dyers, engravers and engineers.

     They made textiles and wrought ornaments in silver and gold.