CHAPTER FORTY - NINE The Neo - Babylonian Empire Heather D. Baker 1 Introduction The Neo - Babylonian empire spanned the period from the accession of Nabopo- lassar in 626 BC to the conquest of Babylonia and the defeat of its last native ruler, Nabonidus (555 – 539 BC ), by the Persian king Cyrus in 539 BC . During the century preceding the rise of the Neo - Babylonian (or “ Chaldean ” ) dynasty, Babylonia had been involved in a long - standing struggle for independence from its more powerful neighbor to the north, Assyria. When Nabopolassar fi nally defeated Assyria with the aid of his Median allies in 612 BC , Babylonia gained control over the Assyrian heartland and what remained of its subject territories. In terms of its material culture assemblage, the Neo - Babylonian empire, which lasted less than 100 years, forms a continuum with what went before: it is diffi cult to distinguish it from that of the long period from c.1150 to 626 BC which has been variously termed “ Middle Babylonian ” or “ Post - Kassite ” (Brinkman 1984a : 3). Sometimes the latter part of this long period has been referred to as “ Assyr- ian ” – for example, Woolley (1965) wrote of “ the period of the Assyrian kings ” at Ur. However, Assyrian control over the region was by no means stable and continuous; moreover, the material culture of the time was Babylonian rather than Assyrian, so the term is of purely historical application. It is diffi cult to distinguish not only the beginning of the Neo - Babylonian period proper in material culture terms, but also its end. Historians have repeat- edly stressed the continuity in administration and daily life which marked the A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, First Edition. Edited by D.T. Potts. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. The Neo-Babylonian Empire 915 transition to Achaemenid rule over Babylonia. From a material culture perspec- tive, Zettler ( 1979 : 268), for example, noted that typical Neo - Babylonian seal types remained in common use until at least the reign of Darius I (521 – 486 BC ), a quarter of a century after the Persian conquest in 539 BC . As Zettler also noted (1979: 269), we have to consider the possibility that some items of material culture were more easily affected than others by political change. Moreover, when old pottery forms are only gradually superseded by new ones, decisions about dating may rest on the relative proportions of certain types within the overall assemblage. This in turn requires an overview of entire assemblages – something often lacking because most of the relevant sites were excavated before the development of modern techniques of excavation and analysis, and selective publication of ceramic types was the norm. Our knowledge of the archaeology of this period in Babylonia itself is domi- nated by monumental buildings located at the heart of the major cities. In large degree this refl ects the preoccupations of earlier excavators, who were primarily interested in these impressive structures to the neglect of the other (to them) less prepossessing urban features such as residential areas and the margins of settle- ments. This bias of interest has resulted not only in an incomplete picture of the makeup of urban sites; it has also seriously affected our understanding of the settlement hierarchy, since smaller sites, especially villages, remain unex- plored. Further investigation is clearly needed in order to make good these gaps in our knowledge, but in the meantime we have to work with what is available; nevertheless, this state of affairs should be kept in mind when reading the overview that follows. For a number of reasons, relatively little is known about the immediate precursors of the Neo - Babylonian cities. Royal building inscriptions, which were typically buried in the foundations of the structures which they commemorated, are an approximate indicator of the level of such activity in a particular period. When found in situ, they serve to date the building level with which they are associated and often to identify a structure by name. The dearth of building inscriptions for the period between the reign of king Adad - apla - iddina (1068 – 1047 BC ) and the mid - 8th century BC therefore refl ects, in all likelihood, the actual situation: the absence of a powerful central authority with the means and motivation to implement construction projects on any signifi cant scale. During this period, which has been termed a “ Dark Age, ” the material culture associated with the Babylonian rulers is dominated by inscribed artifacts, often of bronze, such as arrowheads, generally of uncertain or unknown provenience (on the so - called “ Luristan bronzes, ” see Frame 1995 : 3 – 4). Even when monumental building activity resumed, the fi rst projects documented after this long interval were those carried out in Borsippa and Uruk by local inhabitants rather than by rulers, during the reigns of Nabu - shuma - ishkun (c.760 – 748 BC ) and Nabu - nasir (747 – 734 BC ), respectively. We should note also that the inscribed monuments gener- ally known as kudurru s, especially associated with the Kassite dynasty and the 916 The Archaeology of Empire Middle - Babylonian era (Ch. II.37 ), are known also from the earlier 1st millen- nium, with dated examples spanning the 10th – 7th centuries BC . Yet these artifacts are frequently of unknown or uncertain provenance (Slanski 2003 ). The fi rst Babylonian ruler whose works have been recovered through excava- tion is Marduk - apla - iddin II (721 – 710 and 703 BC ), who was responsible for restoration work on the Eanna temple at Uruk, including the shrine of Ningizzida located within the precinct wall. He was followed by a succession of Assyrian kings who sponsored reconstruction works in Babylonia: Sargon II (the Eanna temple at Uruk; the city walls of Babylon); Sennacherib (the Processional Way at Babylon); Esarhaddon (work on the Marduk temple Esagila, the ziggurat Etemenanki, and the Processional Way at Babylon; the Gula temple at Borsippa; the Enlil and Ishtar temples at Nippur; Eanna at Uruk); Assurbanipal (the city wall at Babylon and the shrines of Ea, Ishtar - of - Babylon, and Ninmah, as well as Esagila and Etemenanki; the Ebabbar temple at Sippar; the city wall and Nabu temple at Borsippa; the ziggurat and Enlil temple at Nippur, and the Eanna temple at Uruk). During the reign of Assurbanipal (668 – 627 BC ) one governor of Ur, Sin - balassu - iqbi, exercised a considerable degree of autonomy and carried out building projects in his own name. These included work on a number of shrines and a well, which have been excavated (Woolley 1965 : 4). Also during the reign of Assurbanipal, the Assyrian king ’ s brother Shamash - shum - ukin, who served as king of Babylon until he revolted in 652 BC , performed work on the city wall and the Ebabbar temple at Sippar and on the Nabu temple in Borsippa. Finally, Assur - etel - ilani, whose precise dates are unknown but who ruled in the 630s BC , carried out work on the Urash temple at Dilbat and the Enlil temple at Nippur. Most of the aforementioned projects are known from excavation as well as written sources. However, building levels attributable to the period of Neo - Assyrian rule are in general much less well known than the Neo - Babylonian (re)buildings that overlay them. 2 Settlement Patterns Settlement survey has identifi ed sites datable to the Neo - Babylonian period in several regions of southern and central Mesopotamia: the Diyala region (Adams 1965 ); the “ heartland” region between Nippur and Uruk (Adams 1981 ); the Uruk region (Adams and Nissen 1972 ); the Kish region (Gibson 1972 ); and the Sippar region (Gasche and De Meyer 1980 ). It should be noted that the periodization of surface collections based on ceramic typology is necessarily imprecise, and the dating criteria used to defi ne the period vary between different surveys, making it diffi cult to compare results. Moreover, the most densely settled area may by now have lain somewhat to the west of the most intensively surveyed “ heartland ” region (Brinkman 1984b : 175 – 6), a diffi culty which may now be partly surmounted using advanced techniques for the study of high - resolution The Neo-Babylonian Empire 917 satellite imagery (Hritz 2004 ). By this time, fairly broad expanses of land had been brought under continuous cultivation and the Neo - Babylonian (NB) and Achaemenid (Ach) settlement systems were connected to “ an interlocking, much more ‘ artifi cial ’ grid of watercourses that broke large, contiguous areas of cultiva- tion into polygons of fairly uniform size and shape ” (Adams 1981 : 188). Survey evidence indicates a period of sustained population growth, beginning in the 8th century BC . According to this evidence, the Neo - Babylonian period saw a substantial increase in the number of settlements, with 182 sites identifi ed in the “ heartland ” area, compared with 134 of Middle Babylonian (MB) date (Adams 1981 : 177). Moreover, average site size increased, to 6.88 hectares (NB/ Ach) compared with 4.6 hectares (MB) (Adams 1981 : 178). While the numbers of sites in all size categories increased, the increase was proportionally greater for sites in the larger size brackets. For NB/Ach, 51 percent of the total occupied area was composed of settlements classifi ed as urban – i.e., larger than 10 hectares, as compared with only 36 percent of MB sites (Adams 1981 : 178). Of the 30 NB/Ach urban settlements identifi ed, some two - thirds had no earlier MB occu- pation and thus represent new settlements. Survey in the Diyala region revealed similar long - term trends, though with some variation in matters of detail: new sites tended to be rather small and the total area occupied by sites classifi ed as urban was relatively low (Adams 1965 : 58 – 9).