Babylon: The Mother of All Cities

by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

Babylon often appears more myth than history. Purportedly the site of the Hanging Gardens and the Tower of Babel, its infamous presence in the Bible has made it a byword for sinful decadence. But Babylon was a real place teeming with life, a bustling mega-city on the Euphrates where schoolteachers, artisans, priests, slaves, prostitutes and soldiers rubbed shoulders in maze-like streets and busy marketplaces.

The city was home to some extraordinary rulers, from Hammurabi the great lawgiver to Nebuchadnezzar II, the conqueror-king, under whose reign the city glistened in gold and lapis lazuli.

In Babylon, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones brings the city vividly to life, tracing its foundation through to its world domination, and subsequent decline, fall and ruin into dust. From ribald drinking songs to acerbic letters between rival kings, the extraordinary ancient sources help inform what is both a stunning work of scholarship and a fascinating evocation of a long-lost world.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Audiobook

528 pages, Hardcover

First published May 21, 2026

About the author

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University and a specialist in the histories and cultures of ancient Iran and Greece. He also works on dress and gender in antiquity and on the ancient world in popular culture, especially Hollywood cinema.

Reviews

[Erik Champenois · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful biography of a city, "Babylon" covers both the city itself and the empire. The book alternates between chapters covering the chronology of the different Babylonian dynasties and chapters covering life, culture, mythology, and architecture. The book focuses on the older Babylonian dynasties including the Kassite dynasty, but also covers the Neo-Babylonian dynasty down to the Persian destruction of Babylon - and briefly the after-lives of Babylon. This book gives you a good feel for both the history and the culture and people who lived it. Highly recommended to anyone interested in ancient history.

[Tanner Sousley · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far, one of my favorite Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones publications. Descriptions of the city from various sides, including recently analyzed tablets from the British Museums helps create a visual that former sources (Greek and Hebrew) failed to bring to life. Separating various propagandized traditions, we are taken through a semi chronological timeline of the city, up to its modern Instagram-ed fame.

[Kolt A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Babylon, the city who’s reputation precedes it as one of sin and decadence, of horror and violence, turns out to be much more than what the victors have written about it.

The city had no definitive beginning, rising out of the mud bricks and sand of modern day Iraq, becoming one of the ancient world’s greatest cities and religious centers. The city is responsible for many ideas and achievements that those empires that overtook and succeeded it adopted as their own and should be remembered for its highly dedicated kings and their religious fervor, who brought the little known village into its own right and established an empire around it.

Babylon is typically remembered most as the city of Hammurabi, known for his code of laws or for Nebuchadnezzar II, who built the Ishtar Gate and those that know it for that would be correct, but the city had a strong culture of literature, mythology and a high turnover of leadership as well that should not be discounted.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable.

I am impressed by Llewellyn-Jones' decisions on how to structure the book: chapters are both thematic and broadly chronological, which is no mean feat for several thousand years of history.

Very interesting to see history through the perspective of a city, rather than a family, dynasty or culture.

More political than anticipated, and pleasantly so - the author dedicates a fair amount of time to explaining why texts were written and thus how they should be interpreted. Hammurabi's Code is the prime example (not laws as we might imagine, but more likely to be propoganda extolling Hammurabi's piousness) but there are many others.

I was also very interested to read about the forced migration of the Jews and how this is reflected in the Old Testament. I would have loved to have more content / exploration of how Sumerian myths have wound up in the Bible, but that could be a whole book in itself!

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book about babylon, from history all the way to modern cultural relevance. Unlike the author I think it sounds like a horrible culture and I don't mind the negative connotations today.

Even though it mentions Jews it glosses over the plagiarism of the Babylonian myths, when I learned about it from a different book I found it fascinating so was disappointed it's barely mentioned. I know that the book can't cover everything but I wish it spent more that on religion and daily life and less on sex.