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Description
For thousands of years, the crown jewel of the Mesopotamian world was the shining city of Babylon, but it wasn't always this way. This ancient superpower which was once the center of the known world got its start, as all cities do, as a small, unimportant settlement between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The city was first settled in the early 3rd millennium BCE, but doesn't enter the historical record until the Akkadian king Shar-Kali-Sharri took over the region in the 22nd century BCE, listed as one of his many vassal states. Though some tellings would attribute the city's founding to the legendary king Sargon of Akkad, this connection is tenuous. Of course, if you asked the Babylonians, they would tell you that their city was built by their national god, Marduk, to serve as his throne on Earth after slaying the chaos serpent Tiamat. It's very convenient to spin a narrative that you've always been the top dog after you've already become top dog, and was a favorite of any Mesopotamian city-state that gained superiority in the region. In reality, Babylon's preeminence didn't truly begin until the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur under the weight of Amorite invasions in the 21st century BCE.

The Amorites were a mostly nomadic people who spoke a Semitic language and migrated into Sumeria from the west, settling down in major urban centers. They were a minority group in ancient Sumer, usually seen as barbarians the same way the Romans would look at the Germanic tribes. When the empire of Ur collapsed, however, these so-called barbarians swept in to fill the power vacuum. The Amorite chieftain who ruled over Babylon in this tumultuous time was Sumu-abum, who established his dynasty as the aforementioned top dog in 1894 BCE. It seems likely that the city's grand ziggurat dedicated to Marduk, the Etemenanki, was constructed around this time, coinciding with the new wave of propaganda claiming Babylon and its national god were definitely always this totally awesome since the beginning of time. Exact dates for the site are surprisingly hard to come by, though, and later kings would constantly rebuild and refurbish the structure over the centuries, so feel free to prove me wrong. I've seen it thrown around a lot that the construction of the Etemenanki is the direct inspiration for the Tower of Babel story in the Bible, but no one seems to provide much more of an explanation beyond "well it's a tower… in Babylon", so I'm skeptical. To me, that story seems to fall more into mythology than legend, a story meant to explain why people speak different languages before the advent of true linguistics. It doesn't seem to intentionally be alluding to some historical "Tower of Babel", but again feel free to prove me wrong.

While Sumu-abum got the ball rolling, Babylon's prestige really began to shine under the rule of his descendant, Hammurabi. You know, the "eye-for-an-eye" guy they glossed over in middle school while you were asleep in class. He was famous for drafting up one of the world's oldest surviving law codes, dated to around 1750 BCE, which is why he gets a headshot on the wall of the House of Representatives today. Though, most of the laws tend to amount to "you do bad thing, we just kill you," with "bad things" being anything from murder, adultery, faulty construction, or lying, so yeah maybe not the laws we want our modern politicians taking inspiration from. Then again, this is America, home of the trigger happy, so maybe his portrait is a snug fit afterall… Regardless of my modern existential dread, Hammurabi's death began the slow decline of Babylon's supremacy over the region. The territory was subjugated by insurrections from the Akkadians, and finally it was invaded by the Hittites in around 1595 BCE. The Hitties were quickly ousted from the region by the Kassite people who invaded from the other side. The Kassites were a mysterious yet long-lived dynasty who kept the region relatively stable… until the Assyrians invaded.

The Assyrians were another Semitic-speaking people who became one of the most feared powers in all of Mesopotamia. If you know anything about Biblical history, this isn't much of a surprise. They believed they had to continuously conquer and subjugate in order to please their national god, Ashur. While Babylon would go back and forth in the centuries prior to and immediately after the Bronze Age Collapse, and the minutiae are a bit beyond the scope of this blurb, by the 8th century BCE, Assyria, under the rule of Sennacherib, would more or less dominate the Mesopotamian world, Babylon included. Sennacherib actually had the city pillaged and burnt for daring to challenge his authority, wanting to make them an example to all rebels throughout his empire. This only served to ferment dissent towards Assyrian rule, though. After a long line of assassinated kings, an alliance between the Medes and a people called the Chaldeans led by a certain Nabopolassar overthrew the Assyrians by sacking their capital Nineveh in 612 BCE. Nabopolassar made his capital at Babylon, and at last the city sparkled as the center of the world once again.

You're probably more familiar with the next successor to this Neo-Babylonian throne: Nebuchadnezzar II. While his reign was prosperous for Babylon, we don't remember him for that. At most, we exalt his construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon… which may or may not have existed. Instead, we most famously remember him for his sacking of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. This is an event which the Jewish people mourn to this day, as it saw the destruction of Solomon's Temple and the exiling of their priests. For all intents and purposes, they believed their god had abandoned them, and this is sadly a trend that the Jews have had to face for millennia to come. Still, a beacon of hope arrived in 539 BCE when an up-and-coming Iranian king named Cyrus made it his mission to liberate the region. The last king of Babylon, Nabonidus, was extremely unpopular, and when Cyrus marched unopposed through the city's front gates, the writing was on the wall. An independent Babylon was snuffed out as the Achaemenid juggernaut took hold. Babylon remained a prize gem, one Alexander would covet when he marched into the city in 331 BCE, but as these successive empires held their administrative counsels elsewhere, the city slowly faded into irrelevance, which is why the old city is nothing but ruins to this day, a literal shadow of its former glory.

Design notes, there's not really a lot which distinguishes the gear of your typical ancient Babylonian from any of its Mesopotamian neighbors. Honestly, as pretty as Mesopotamian clothing can be, it's a total pain in the ass to draw from reference. Their tunics and robes are arranged in such a bizarre way that it's hard to tell what the actual pattern of the fabric cuts are meant to be. When I draw, I usually have this sort of 3d model in my head that I can spin around and extrude from, but Mesopotamian clothing seems to defy me in that regard. Ah well, I think I did alright. I'm especially happy with the regular and agile. Honestly I'm kinda wishing I did worse so that I could save the agile's robes for a more fleshed out character. Maybe it's just how good the blues look though. My camera can be pretty hit or miss with how it accepts my blue colored pencils, and luckily this was one it took to quite nicely. I couldn't actually find any specific reference stating that the Babylonians preferred blue, so really it was just a creative choice on my part. I wanted to allude to the absolutely gorgeous colors of the famed Ishtar Gate, which is decked out in gold and lapis lazuli. Overall, I'm quite pleased with this piece. Could use some tweaking, but not much.

Description
For thousands of years, the crown jewel of the Mesopotamian world was the shining city of Babylon, but it wasn't always this way. This ancient superpower which was once the center of the known world got its start, as all cities do, as a small, unimportant settlement between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The city was first settled in the early 3rd millennium BCE, but doesn't enter the historical record until the Akkadian king Shar-Kali-Sharri took over the region in the 22nd century BCE, listed as one of his many vassal states. Though some tellings would attribute the city's founding to the legendary king Sargon of Akkad, this connection is tenuous. Of course, if you asked the Babylonians, they would tell you that their city was built by their national god, Marduk, to serve as his throne on Earth after slaying the chaos serpent Tiamat. It's very convenient to spin a narrative that you've always been the top dog after you've already become top dog, and was a favorite of any Mesopotamian city-state that gained superiority in the region. In reality, Babylon's preeminence didn't truly begin until the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur under the weight of Amorite invasions in the 21st century BCE.

The Amorites were a mostly nomadic people who spoke a Semitic language and migrated into Sumeria from the west, settling down in major urban centers. They were a minority group in ancient Sumer, usually seen as barbarians the same way the Romans would look at the Germanic tribes. When the empire of Ur collapsed, however, these so-called barbarians swept in to fill the power vacuum. The Amorite chieftain who ruled over Babylon in this tumultuous time was Sumu-abum, who established his dynasty as the aforementioned top dog in 1894 BCE. It seems likely that the city's grand ziggurat dedicated to Marduk, the Etemenanki, was constructed around this time, coinciding with the new wave of propaganda claiming Babylon and its national god were definitely always this totally awesome since the beginning of time. Exact dates for the site are surprisingly hard to come by, though, and later kings would constantly rebuild and refurbish the structure over the centuries, so feel free to prove me wrong. I've seen it thrown around a lot that the construction of the Etemenanki is the direct inspiration for the Tower of Babel story in the Bible, but no one seems to provide much more of an explanation beyond "well it's a tower… in Babylon", so I'm skeptical. To me, that story seems to fall more into mythology than legend, a story meant to explain why people speak different languages before the advent of true linguistics. It doesn't seem to intentionally be alluding to some historical "Tower of Babel", but again feel free to prove me wrong.

While Sumu-abum got the ball rolling, Babylon's prestige really began to shine under the rule of his descendant, Hammurabi. You know, the "eye-for-an-eye" guy they glossed over in middle school while you were asleep in class. He was famous for drafting up one of the world's oldest surviving law codes, dated to around 1750 BCE, which is why he gets a headshot on the wall of the House of Representatives today. Though, most of the laws tend to amount to "you do bad thing, we just kill you," with "bad things" being anything from murder, adultery, faulty construction, or lying, so yeah maybe not the laws we want our modern politicians taking inspiration from. Then again, this is America, home of the trigger happy, so maybe his portrait is a snug fit afterall… Regardless of my modern existential dread, Hammurabi's death began the slow decline of Babylon's supremacy over the region. The territory was subjugated by insurrections from the Akkadians, and finally it was invaded by the Hittites in around 1595 BCE. The Hitties were quickly ousted from the region by the Kassite people who invaded from the other side. The Kassites were a mysterious yet long-lived dynasty who kept the region relatively stable… until the Assyrians invaded.

The Assyrians were another Semitic-speaking people who became one of the most feared powers in all of Mesopotamia. If you know anything about Biblical history, this isn't much of a surprise. They believed they had to continuously conquer and subjugate in order to please their national god, Ashur. While Babylon would go back and forth in the centuries prior to and immediately after the Bronze Age Collapse, and the minutiae are a bit beyond the scope of this blurb, by the 8th century BCE, Assyria, under the rule of Sennacherib, would more or less dominate the Mesopotamian world, Babylon included. Sennacherib actually had the city pillaged and burnt for daring to challenge his authority, wanting to make them an example to all rebels throughout his empire. This only served to ferment dissent towards Assyrian rule, though. After a long line of assassinated kings, an alliance between the Medes and a people called the Chaldeans led by a certain Nabopolassar overthrew the Assyrians by sacking their capital Nineveh in 612 BCE. Nabopolassar made his capital at Babylon, and at last the city sparkled as the center of the world once again.

You're probably more familiar with the next successor to this Neo-Babylonian throne: Nebuchadnezzar II. While his reign was prosperous for Babylon, we don't remember him for that. At most, we exalt his construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon… which may or may not have existed. Instead, we most famously remember him for his sacking of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. This is an event which the Jewish people mourn to this day, as it saw the destruction of Solomon's Temple and the exiling of their priests. For all intents and purposes, they believed their god had abandoned them, and this is sadly a trend that the Jews have had to face for millennia to come. Still, a beacon of hope arrived in 539 BCE when an up-and-coming Iranian king named Cyrus made it his mission to liberate the region. The last king of Babylon, Nabonidus, was extremely unpopular, and when Cyrus marched unopposed through the city's front gates, the writing was on the wall. An independent Babylon was snuffed out as the Achaemenid juggernaut took hold. Babylon remained a prize gem, one Alexander would covet when he marched into the city in 331 BCE, but as these successive empires held their administrative counsels elsewhere, the city slowly faded into irrelevance, which is why the old city is nothing but ruins to this day, a literal shadow of its former glory.

Design notes, there's not really a lot which distinguishes the gear of your typical ancient Babylonian from any of its Mesopotamian neighbors. Honestly, as pretty as Mesopotamian clothing can be, it's a total pain in the ass to draw from reference. Their tunics and robes are arranged in such a bizarre way that it's hard to tell what the actual pattern of the fabric cuts are meant to be. When I draw, I usually have this sort of 3d model in my head that I can spin around and extrude from, but Mesopotamian clothing seems to defy me in that regard. Ah well, I think I did alright. I'm especially happy with the regular and agile. Honestly I'm kinda wishing I did worse so that I could save the agile's robes for a more fleshed out character. Maybe it's just how good the blues look though. My camera can be pretty hit or miss with how it accepts my blue colored pencils, and luckily this was one it took to quite nicely. I couldn't actually find any specific reference stating that the Babylonians preferred blue, so really it was just a creative choice on my part. I wanted to allude to the absolutely gorgeous colors of the famed Ishtar Gate, which is decked out in gold and lapis lazuli. Overall, I'm quite pleased with this piece. Could use some tweaking, but not much.