Babylonia is the name of a very ancient land in western Asia. One of the earliest of all civilizations grew up there, nearly five thousand years ago. Babylonia was in the southeastern corner of the country that today is called Iraq. It is a broad, flat country through which flow two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. About 3000 B.C., a people known as the Sumerians lived in this land. They raised crops of wheat and barley, and kept cattle, sheep, and goats.

The Sumerians had an alphabet of wedge-shaped letters and wrote on soft clay tablets, which they baked hard in ovens. These clay tablets have been found in the ruins of the ancient Sumerian cities. About 2800 B.C., a group of wandering tribes from the Arabian Desert south of the Sumerian cities settled on the plains of Babylonia. They built a city called Akkad between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Under their leader, King Sargon, they soon conquered all the Sumerians but adopted their civilization.

The people of Akkad belonged to the family of peoples known as Semites. In the modern world today, the Jews and Arabs are examples of Semites. A few hundred years after this, the Amorites, another tribe of Semites, came from the west and conquered Babylonia. One of the Amorite kings, named Hammurabi, made a town named Babylon his capital or main city. Babylon became one of the greatest cities of those ancient times. Hammurabi brought order, peace, and prosperity to Babylonia. He brought together all the laws of the older conquered races, added them to the Amorite laws, and had them carved on a great stone that was found by archaeologists thousands of years later. Trade and commerce grew and ships carried cargoes of goods up and down the Tigris River and Babylonia became a very rich land.

There were schools where boys learned to write and read and studied arithmetic. There is much written about Babylon in the Bible. One of its kings, Nebuchadnezzar, about 1,500 years ago, built a palace with "hanging gardens" that were called one of the Seven Wonders of the World. At this time, too, the Babylonians conquered the Jews of Palestine and kept them as captives in Babylonia for nearly a hundred years. This is called the period of the Babylonian Captivity. It was during this period that the prophet Daniel was put into the lions' den. Finally, in 537 B.C., the Persians conquered the Babylonians and their great nation came to an end.