Copper was known to some extent from the beginning, while bronze was introduced about 2500 B.C. For the poor who couldn’t afford the luxury of wood, there were circular mud-brick huts, supported by a center post, the walls packed with reeds and mud.īudding plumbers worked their ingenuity with the only available resource in unlimited supply-clay mixed with finely chopped straw. Many of the houses were three stories high whose flat roofs were buttressed with timbers packed with mud. In existence since 2900) B.C., the city of Babylon, under the rule of King Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.), had spread on both sides of the Euphrates River. Wheeled vehicles became common – and water management evolved into irrigation dams, drains and basins, and personal bathrooms of their era’s rich and famous. In their wake were produced systems of writing and communication, literature, a codified set of laws, a calendar and system for ascertaining time. Here the warrior peoples of Assyria reigned with a fearsome hand over Sumerian and Babylonian culture. were the beginnings of western civilization. What developed in this area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers from about 6000-3000 B.C. But beneath these mounds or “tells” are shattered remnants of past civilizations, crumbled foundations of clay cities literally layered one on top of the other. Located some 50 miles south of Baghdad in what is now Iraq, the flat land today is broken only by a series of desolate mounds and occasional patches of green cultivation and small villages. high ziggurat or temple tower in the city’s center, surrounded on all sides by lush gardens and date palm trees that swayed upon the terraced city. Adding to a disbelieving eye was a 300-ft.

To the ancient traveler on foot or camel back, the massive walled city of Babylon and its network of canals and verdant crop lands must have loomed like a mirage in the simmering heat of the Near East sun. Courtesy of Plumbing & Mechanical Magazine, July 1989

Where was babylon located