Babylon

The Biography of a Metropolis

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

A vibrant, colorful, and authoritative exploration of the world's first and most illustrious metropolis.

'Babylon' is a name that has a double life: it denotes the great ancient Mesopotamian city with a long and complex history, and it is also a fictive allusion with a wide variety of connotations, from the Hebrew bible's Tower of Babel, through the New Testament's 'Whore of Babylon' to the iconic song 'The Rivers of Babylon’ in the 1970s.

The first royal dynasty of Babylon was founded by an Amorite interloper named Sumu-la-El a thousand years after the fall of the great Sumerian city states of Ur and Uruk, creating a new superpower in the Near East. Clinging close to the mighty River Euphrates, the city quickly grew in size and, thanks to its military prowess, soon expanded its territories, sweeping down to the Persian Gulf and advancing north into Syria.

The kingdom of Babylonia came in to being and, governed from mighty Babylon, setting the agenda for what civilization meant. This fascinating book explores Babylon's reputation as a city with a dual legacy by exploring its rich ancient past and its astonishing mythic legacy.

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones holds the chair in ancient history at Cardiff University. The author of Persians and The Cleopatras, among other books, he has published widely on ancient history and lives in Taff’s Well, Wales.

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Endorsements & Reviews

Praise for Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones’s The Cleopatras:

“Masterful. This is historical drama at its best.” Air Mail

“A colorful history. Original and engaging.” The Wall Street Journal

“The latest service performed by the historian Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is of a higher order: to show that, extraordinary as she was, the sometime consort of Caesar and Antony was not a historic aberration but in fact the last in a long line of formidable queens.” The New Criterion

“Llewellyn-Jones’s extensive research on all seven of these intriguing Cleopatras is expertly presented. Highly recommended.” Library Journal (starred review)

“Throughout, Llewellyn-Jones highlights the queens’ ruthless determination, framing them as women with a developed sense of gender dynamics and of patriarchy’s inequities, whose political project was often—and quite explicitly—to seize power from men. It’s an innovative take on an ancient dynasty.” Publishers Weekly

“The Cleopatras is a wild ride but an enjoyable one—and surprisingly easy to follow despite the uncreative names and the deeply tangled family tree.” - Scientific American

“A fresh and vivid account of the decline and fall of what the ancients retrospectively labelled ‘the Macedonian times’ and what we know as the Hellenistic world.” Literary Review

“A thrilling biography, filled with the imperial ambitions and merciless intrigues of one of world history's most brutal families, the Ptolemy dynasty of Egypt. Llewellyn-Jones’s book places female power at the center through its seven Queen Cleopatras, culminating in the gripping story of the last of the Cleopatras and her alliances with Caesar and Antony. A real treat for those who relish epic histories of family power.” Simon Sebag Montefiore, New York Times bestselling author of The World

“There has always been far more to Cleopatra’s story. Llewellyn-Jones's The Cleopatras unlocks the fascinating history of the many queens of her era, taking the reader into the political intrigue, murderous violence, incest, and epic power struggles that marked their dynasty and examining the ways in which these queens somehow wielded power within a deeply patriarchal regime.” Kara Cooney, author of When Women Ruled the World

“Admirably readable, written with verve and a fine feeling for the ancient context of these seven queen Cleopatras and their modern afterlives. The first six are seldom studied, but here, what we can know of them is cleverly related to the seventh, the famous Cleopatra.” Robin Lane Fox, author of Honer and His Iliad