Stephanie Andersson

"At its height, Babylon was one of the largest, most important cities of the ancient world. It was located in central Mesopotamia, near the point where the Tigris and Euphrates flow closest to one another. This same region has been home to many capital cities over the centuries: Kish, Agade, Seleucia, and Baghdad among them. The city’s ancient name, Babil, may well be in an unknown language that predates Sumerian and Akkadian in Mesopotamia. It came to be understood in Akkadian as bab-ili, meaning “gate of the god,” also written in Sumerian as ka-dingir-ra, which has the same meaning. Babylon is the Greek version of the name. Today we refer to the southern half of ancient Mesopotamia—the region extending from around Babylon south to the Persian Gulf —as Babylonia, but in ancient times this land was called Sumer and Akkad."

So now you know...