18 Facts About Neo-Babylonian Empire

Neo-Babylonian Empire, known as the Second Babylonian Empire and historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last of the Mesopotamian empires to be ruled by monarchs native to Mesopotamia.

Neo-Babylonian Empire retains a position within modern day cultural memory mainly due to the unflattering portrayal of Babylon and its greatest king, Nebuchadnezzar II, in the Bible, which is owed to Nebuchadnezzar's 587 BC destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent Babylonian captivity.

Neo-Babylonian Empire is known to have completely renovated at least 13 cities but spent most of his time and resources on the capital, Babylon.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire is featured in several prophecies and in descriptions of the destruction of Jerusalem and subsequent Babylonian captivity.

Artists in the Neo-Babylonian Empire period continued the artistic trends of previous periods, showing similarities with the artwork of the Neo-Assyrian period in particular.

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In contrast to slavery in ancient Rome, where slave-owners often worked their slaves to death at an early age, slaves in the Neo-Babylonian Empire were valuable resources, typically sold for money matching several years of income for a paid worker.

Establishment of the Neo-Babylonian Empire meant that for the first time since the Assyrian conquest, tribute flowed into Babylonia rather than being drained from it.

Neo-Babylonian Empire period saw marked population growth in Babylonia, with the number of known settlements increasing from the previous 134 to the Neo-Babylonian Empire 182, with the average size of these settlements increasing.

The Neo-Babylonian period saw a dramatic increase in urbanization, reversing a trend of ruralization which southern Mesopotamia had experienced since the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire kings used the titles King of Babylon and King of Sumer and Akkad.

Babylonia itself, the heartland of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, was ruled as an intricate network of provinces and tribal regions with varying degrees of autonomy.

Neo-Babylonian Empire kings, war was a means to obtain tribute, plunder and prisoners of war which could be put to work as slaves in the temples.

Troops of the Neo-Babylonian Empire would have been supplied by all parts of its complex administrative structure – from the various cities of Babylonia, from the provinces in Syria and Assyria, from the tribal confederations under Babylonian rule and from the various client kingdoms and city-states in the Levant.

The most detailed sources preserved from the Neo-Babylonian Empire period concerning the army are from the temples, which supplied a portion of the temple dependents as soldiers in times of war.

The Neo-Babylonian army is likely to have bolstered its numbers through conscripting soldiers from the tribal confederacies within the empire's territory and through hiring mercenaries.

Temples of the Neo-Babylonian Empire are divided into two categories by archaeologists; smaller freestanding temples scattered throughout a city and the large main temples of a city, dedicated to that city's patron deity and often located within its own set of walls.

Typical residential houses from the Neo-Babylonian Empire period were composed of a central unroofed courtyard surrounded on all four sides by suites of rooms.

Houses in the Neo-Babylonian Empire period were constructed mostly of sundried mudbrick.