List of kings of Babylon
The king of Babylon was the ruler of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon and its kingdom, Babylonia, which existed as an independent realm from the 19th century BC to its fall in the 6th century BC. For the majority of its existence as an independent kingdom, Babylon ruled most of southern Mesopotamia, composed of the ancient regions of Sumer and Akkad. The city experienced two major periods of ascendancy, when Babylonian kings rose to dominate large parts of the Ancient Near East: the First Babylonian Empire and the Second Babylonian Empire. Babylon was ruled by Hammurabi, who created the Code of Hammurabi.
Many of Babylon's kings were of foreign origin. Throughout the city's nearly two-thousand year history, it was ruled by kings of native Babylonian, Amorite, Armenian, Kassite, Elamite, Aramean, Assyrian, Chaldean, Persian, Greek and Parthian origin. A king's cultural and ethnic background does not appear to have been important for the Babylonian perception of kingship, the important matter instead being whether the king was capable of executing the duties traditionally ascribed to the Babylonian king: establishing peace and security, upholding justice, honouring civil rights, refraining from unlawful taxation, respecting religious traditions, constructing temples, providing gifts to the gods in the temples and maintaining cultic order. Babylonian revolts of independence during the times the city was ruled by foreign empires probably had little to do with the rulers of these empires not being Babylonians and more to do with the rulers rarely visiting Babylon and failing to partake in the city's rituals and traditions.
Babylon's last native king was Nabonidus, who reigned from 556 to 539 BC. During his rule, Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire conquered Babylon. Though early Achaemenid kings continued to place importance on Babylon and continued using the title 'king of Babylon', later Achaemenid rulers being ascribed the title is probably only something done by the Babylonians, while the kings abandoned it. Babylonian scribes continued to recognise rulers of the empires that controlled Babylonia as their kings until the time of the Parthian Empire, when Babylon was gradually abandoned. Though Babylon never regained independence after the Achaemenid conquest, there were several attempts by the Babylonians to drive out their foreign rulers and re-establish their kingdom, possibly as late as 336/335 BC under the rebel Nidin-Bel.
Introduction
Royal titles
Throughout the city's long history, various titles were used to designate the ruler of Babylon and its kingdom, the most common titles being 'viceroy of Babylon', 'king of Karduniash' and 'king of Sumer and Akkad'. Oftne, more than one of these titles was used.- Viceroy 'of Babylon – emphasises the political dominion of Babylon. For much of Babylon's history, its rulers referred to themselves as viceroys or governors, rather than kings. The reason for this was that Babylon's true king was formally considered to be its national deity, Marduk. By not explicitly claiming the royal title, rulers thus showed reverence to the city's god. The reign of the Neo-Assyrian king Sennacherib has been noted as a particular break in this tradition, as he assumed the title king of Babylon, which may have contributed to widespread negative reception of him in Babylonia. However, is recorded as being used in some inscriptions from before Sennacherib, such as in the inscriptions of his father and predecessor Sargon II, who used it interchangeably with. Though Sennacherib's successors would primarily use, there are likewise examples of them instead using. These titles were also used interchangeably by the later Neo-Babylonian kings.
- King of Karduniash – refers to rule of southern Mesopotamia as a whole. 'Karduniash' was the Kassite name for the Babylonian kingdom, and the title 'king of Karduniash' was introduced by the city's third dynasty. The title continued to be used long after the Kassites had lost control of Babylon, for instance as late as under the native king Nabu-shuma-ukin I and the Neo-Assyrian king Esarhaddon.
- King of Sumer and Akkad' – refers to rule of southern Mesopotamia as a whole, a title originally used by the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur, centuries prior to Babylon's foundation. The title was used by kings to connect themselves to the culture and legacy of the Sumerian and Akkadian civilizations, as well as to lay claim to the political hegemony achieved during the Akkadian Empire. The title was also a geographical one, in that southern Mesopotamia was typically divided into the two regions Sumer and Akkad, meaning that 'king of Sumer and Akkad' referred to rulership over the entire country. The title was used by the Babylonian kings until the end of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 539 BC and was also assumed by Cyrus the Great, who conquered Babylon in 539 BC and ruled Babylonia until his death in 530 BC.
Role and legitimacy
Babylonian kings were expected to establish peace and security, uphold justice, honor civil rights, refrain from unlawful taxation, respect religious traditions and maintain cultic order. None of the king's responsibilities and duties required him to be ethnically or even culturally Babylonian. Any foreigner sufficiently familiar with the royal customs of Babylonia could adopt the title, though they might then require the assistance of the native priesthood and the native scribes. Ethnicity and culture does not appear to have been important in the Babylonian perception of kingship: many foreign kings enjoyed support from the Babylonians, and several native kings were despised. That the rule of some foreign kings was not supported by the Babylonians probably has little to do with their ethnic or cultural background, but rather that they were perceived as not properly executing the traditional duties of the Babylonian king.
Dynasties
As with other monarchies, the kings of Babylon are grouped into a series of royal dynasties, a practice started by the ancient Babylonians in their king lists. The generally accepted Babylonian dynasties should not be understood as familial groupings in the same vein as the term is commonly used by historians for ruling families in later kingdoms and empires. Though Babylon's first dynasty did form a dynastic grouping where all monarchs were related, the dynasties of the first millennium BC, notably the dynasty of E, did not constitute a series of coherent familial relationships at all. In a Babylonian sense, the term dynasty, rendered as or, related to a sequence of monarchs from the same ethnic or tribal group, the same region or the same city. In some cases, kings known to be genealogically related, such as Eriba-Marduk and his grandson Marduk-apla-iddina II, were separated into different dynasties, the former designated as belonging to the Dynasty of E and the latter as belonging to the Sealand dynasty.Kingship after the Neo-Babylonian Empire
In addition to the king lists described above, cuneiform inscriptions and tablets confidently establish that the Babylonians continued to recognise the foreign rulers of Babylonia as their legitimate monarchs after the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and throughout the rule of the Achaemenid, Argead, and Seleucid empires, as well as well into the rule of the Parthian Empire.Early Achaemenid kings greatly respected Babylonian culture and history, and regarded Babylonia as a separate entity or kingdom united with their own kingdom in something akin to a personal union. Despite this, the Babylonians would grow to resent Achaemenid rule, just as they had resented Assyrian rule during the time their country was under the rule of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Babylonian resentment of the Achaemenids likely had little to do with the Achaemenids being foreigners, but rather that the Achaemenid kings were perceived to not be capable of executing the duties of the Babylonian king properly, in line with established Babylonian tradition. This perception then led to frequent Babylonian revolts, an issue experienced by both the Assyrians and the Achaemenids. Since the capitals of the Assyrian and Achaemenid empires were elsewhere, these foreign kings did not regularly partake in the city's rituals and they rarely performed their traditional duties to the Babylonian cults through constructing temples and presenting cultic gifts to the city's gods. This failure might have been interpreted as the kings thus not having the necessary divine endorsement to be considered true kings of Babylon.
The standard regnal title used by the early Achaemenid kings, not only in Babylon but throughout their empire, was 'king of Babylon and king of the lands'. The Babylonian title was gradually abandoned by the Achaemenid king Xerxes I, after he had to put down a major Babylonian uprising. Xerxes also divided the previously large Babylonian satrapy into smaller sub-units and, according to some sources, damaged the city in an act of retribution. The last Achaemenid king whose own royal inscriptions officially used the title 'king of Babylon' was Xerxes I's son and successor Artaxerxes I. After Artaxerxes I's rule there are few examples of monarchs using the title, though the Babylonians continued to ascribe it to their rulers. The only known official explicit use of 'king of Babylon' by a king during the Seleucid period can be found in the Antiochus cylinder, a clay cylinder containing a text wherein Antiochus I Soter calls himself, and his father Seleucus I Nicator, by the title 'king of Babylon', alongside various other ancient Mesopotamian titles and honorifics. The Seleucid kings continued to respect Babylonian traditions and culture, with several Seleucid kings recorded as having "given gifts to Marduk" in Babylon and the New Year's Festival still being recorded as a contemporary event. One of the last times the festival is known to have been celebrated was in 188 BC, under the Seleucid king Antiochus III, who prominently partook in the rituals. From the Hellenistic period onwards, Greek culture became established in Babylonia, but per Oelsner, the Hellenistic culture "did not deeply penetrate the ancient Babylonian culture, that persisted to exist in certain domains and areas until the 2nd c. AD".
File:Coin of Artabanus III of Parthia, Seleucia mint.jpg|thumb|Coin of Artabanus III of the Parthian Empire, the last known ruler who is attested as king in Babylonian texts
Under the Parthian Empire, Babylon was gradually abandoned as a major urban centre and the old Babylonian culture diminished. The nearby and newer imperial capitals cities of Seleucia and later Ctesiphon overshadowed the ancient city and became the seats of power in the region. Babylon was still important in the first century or so of Parthian rule, and cuneiform tablets continued to recognise the rule of the Parthian kings. The standard title formula applied to the Parthian kings in Babylonian documents was " ". Several tablets from the Parthian period also in their date formulae mention the queen of the incumbent Parthian king, alongside the king, the first time women were officially recognised as monarchs of Babylon. The few documents that survive from Babylon in the Parthian period indicate a growing sense of alarm and alienation in Babylon as the Parthian kings were mostly absent from the city and the Babylonians noticed their culture slowly slipping away.
When exactly Babylon was abandoned is unclear. The Roman author Pliny the Elder wrote in AD 50 that proximity to Seleucia had turned Babylon into a "barren waste" and during their campaigns in the east, Roman emperors Trajan and Septimius Severus supposedly found the city destroyed and deserted. Archaeological evidence and the writings of Abba Arikha indicate that at least the temples of Babylon may still have been active in the early 3rd century. If any remnants of the old Babylonian culture still existed at that point, they would have been decisively wiped out as the result of religious reforms in the early Sasanian Empire AD 230.
Due to a shortage of sources, and the timing of Babylon's abandonment being unknown, the last ruler recognised by the Babylonians as king is not known. The latest known cuneiform tablet is W22340a, found at Uruk and dated to AD 79/80. The tablet preserves the word , indicating that the Babylonians by this point still recognised a king. At this time, Babylonia was ruled by the Parthian rival king Artabanus III. Modern historians are divided on where the line of monarchs ends. Spar and Lambert did not include any rulers beyond the first century AD in their list of kings recognised by the Babylonians, but Beaulieu considered 'Dynasty XIV of Babylon' to have lasted until the end of Parthian rule of Babylonia in the early 3rd century AD.