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Babylonia was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia. It emerged as an Akkadian populated but Amorite-ruled state c. 1894 BC. During the reign of Hammurabi and afterwards, Babylonia was retrospectively called "the country of Akkad", a deliberate archaism in reference to the previous glory of the Akkadian Empire. It was often involved in rivalry with the older ethno-linguistically related state of Assyria in the north of Mesopotamia and Elam to the east in Ancient Iran. Babylonia briefly became the major power in the region after Hammurabi created a short-lived empire, succeeding the earlier Akkadian Empire, Third Dynasty of Ur, and Old Assyrian Empire. The Babylonian Empire rapidly fell apart after the death of Hammurabi and reverted to a small kingdom centered around the city of Babylon.
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Cosmology in the ancient Near East (ANE) refers to the plurality of cosmological beliefs in the Ancient Near East, covering the period from the 4th millennium BC to the formation of the Macedonian Empire by Alexander the Great in the second half of the 1st millennium BC. These beliefs include the Mesopotamian cosmologies from Babylonia, Sumer, and Akkad; the Levantine or West Semitic cosmologies from Ugarit and ancient Israel and Judah (the biblical cosmology); the Egyptian cosmology from Ancient Egypt; and the Anatolian cosmologies from the Hittites. This system of cosmology went on to have a profound influence on views in early Greek cosmology, later Jewish cosmology, patristic cosmology, and Islamic cosmology (including Quranic cosmology). Until the modern era, variations of ancient near eastern cosmology survived with Hellenistic cosmology as the main competing system.
References
- ↑ Tinney, Steve (2017). "zagmuk [NEW YEAR] N". Oracc: The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
- ↑ Lang, Andrew. Magic and Religion, p. 142.
- ↑ "Zakmuk," Probert Encyclopedia.
- ↑ Lang, Andrew (August 2, 2014). "Magic and Religion, APPENDIX C, THE RIDE OF THE BEARDLESS ONE, p.302". www.gutenberg.org, EBook #46480. The Project Gutenberg EBook. Retrieved June 5, 2023.
- ↑ Yule: A Celebration of Light and Warmth By Dorothy Morrison