A warrior hero built this city. How fitting since Babylon one of the oldest cities on the planet-eventually flexed its muscles and conquered most of the Middle East to become the sprawling Babylonian Empire,

Nimrod was that warrior. A descendant of Noah’s second son, Ham, Nimrod “built the foundation for his empire in the land of Babylonia, with the cities of Babel [Hebrew for “Babylon”], Erech, Akkad, and Calneh” (Genesis 10:10).

When the city was built is anyone’s guess. Archaeologists say people were living in the region as early as 5000 BC and that Babylon is mentioned by name as early as about 2200 BC.

King Hammurabi united the region four centuries later and governed it with a set of laws known as Hammurabi’s Code, which shares a few notable similarities to the law of Moses that came later. Both, for example, call for fair punishment: “an eye for an eye.”

Yet this wanna-be empire faded in an out of history-depending on the ruler. It took a thousand years for Babylon to emerge as a stable, world-class power. In the mid-600s BC, Babylon conquered the Assyrian Empire.