Page 21 - Bible Geography and Near East Studies

The Babylonian rule of Babylon ended in 539 B.C. when the Persian army under Cyrus the Great
conquered the city in the Battle of Opis. Babylon retained its glory as a center of learning and culture as
a province of the Persian Empire.

Alexander the Great conquered the city in 331 B.C., dying there in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace in 323 B.C.

The city was taken by the Parthians in 141 B.C. It was then retaken by the Persians and finally became
part of the Muslim world in the mid-7th century A.D.

Abram and Babylonia

Abram, according to most scholars, lived in Ur around 2000 BC. The world Abram was born into was a
world surprisingly rich in culture and learning. Astronomy and mathematics were already well developed
in Mesopotamia in Abram’s time; a clay tablet with geometrical calculations, now in the British Museum,
shows that the Mesopotamians had discovered the same theorem Pythagoras would make famous—
1,500 years later! Mesopotamia also boasted a rich literature, made possible by a complex system of
cuneiform writing, a system of communication fed by a bustling trade that promoted widespread
literacy due to its heavy use of countless business documents—inventories, orders, receipts, and the
like. Fully one-fifth of all the buildings excavated at Ur contained clay tablets with writing on them.

There are some disputes about exactly where Abram was born. From the Biblical text, we know that
Abram was living in Ur of the Chaldeans, which probably refers to the ancient metropolis of UR, capital
of the mini-empire Sumer, which was, indeed, located in southeastern Iraq, not far from Nasiriyah. It
was located on the western portion of the Euphrates River and was a very wealthy city. The history in
this region exceeds that of the land of Egypt.

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