What is Babylonia?
[[Image:Hammurabi's Babylonia 1.svg|right|thumb|220px|[[Hammurabi]]'s Babylonia, 1792–1750 [[Anno Domini|BC]].]]'''Babylonia''' was a [[City-state|city state]] in [[Mesopotamia]] in the [[2nd millennium BC]], over 3000 years ago. Babylonia's [[capital city]] was [[Babylon]], which meant ''The Gate of the Gods''. They built an [[empire]] out of the lands of the former [[Akkadian Empire]]. ==Geography== Mesopotamia is the region of the two rivers, [[Euphrates]] and [[Tigris]]. At that time the region also included the city states of [[Assyria]] to the north, and [[Elam]] to the south-east. It is part of the [[Fertile Crescent]] in the [[Middle East]]. It was there people first lived together in a [[civilization]], with [[farming]], cities and [[writing]]. == Old Babylonia == [[File:F0182 Louvre Code Hammourabi Bas-relief Sb8 rwk.jpg|thumb|Hammurabi (standing), depicted as receiving his royal insignia from [[Shamash]] (or possibly [[Marduk]]). Hammurabi holds his hands over his mouth as a sign of prayer<ref>{{citation |title=Ancient Iraq |first=Georges |last=Roux |chapter=The Time of Confusion |date=27 August 1992 |page=266 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=klZX8B_RzzYC&pg=PA266 |publisher=Penguin Books |isbn=9780141938257}}</ref> (relief on the upper part of the stele of [[code of Hammurabi|Hammurabi's code of laws]]).]] [[File:Cylinder seal,ca. 18th–17th century B.C. Babylonian.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|Cylinder seal, ca. 18th–17th century BC. Babylonia]] The Babylonians had a [[Writing system|written language]] that they used for trade and communication. They got it from the [[Sumer]]ians, who invented it. The Babylonians used the same [[cuneiform]] system of pressing triangular shapes into soft [[clay]]. They wrote in two different languages: Sumerian for religious purposes and [[Akkadian language]] for official purposes.<ref name='Deutscher'>{{Cite book|title=Syntactic change in Akkadian: The evolution of sentential complementation|author=Deutscher, Guy|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2007|isb