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50 free Babylon trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Babylon trivia quiz follows the 'gate of the gods' from a small Akkadian town on the Euphrates to the largest city on Earth and back to a village of brick-robbers. It covers Hammurabi and his law code, the Hittite sack of 1595 BC, the Kassites, Sennacherib's demolition of the city in 689 BC, Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II, the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way, the Etemenanki ziggurat behind the Tower of Babel story, and the Hanging Gardens that may never have existed in Babylon at all. It then covers the fall: Cyrus diverting the Euphrates in 539 BC, the Cyrus Cylinder, Alexander the Great dying in Nebuchadnezzar's palace, the Seleucids, Parthians and Trajan, the Biblical Babylon of Daniel and Revelation, and the modern story: Koldewey's German dig, the Pergamon Museum reconstruction, Saddam Hussein's inscribed bricks, Camp Alpha and the 2019 UNESCO listing. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on Babylon, its monuments and its kings, and each explanation adds one further fact. Good for ancient history students, Bible study groups and quiz nights.
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Q 01On which river did ancient Babylon stand?
Euphrates
Babylon straddled the Euphrates; Herodotus described the river dividing the city in two, spanned by a bridge, and a branch of it runs through the ruins.
Q 02In which modern country are the ruins of Babylon?
Iraq
The ruins lie in Iraq's Babil Governorate, south of Baghdad on the Euphrates; the modern governorate takes its name from Babylon.
Q 03What does the Akkadian name Babilim, from which 'Babylon' derives, traditionally mean?
Gate of the gods
Bab-ilim is traditionally read as 'Gate of the gods', though many Assyriologists treat this as a folk etymology for an older, non-Semitic name such as Babilla.
Q 04In the Book of Genesis, the name Babel is interpreted to mean what?
Confusion
Genesis 11:9 links Babel to the Hebrew verb balal, 'to confuse', so the name signifies confusion: God confounded the builders' speech there; the English verb 'babble' is unrelated.
Q 05Which Amorite king founded the Old Babylonian Empire in the 18th century BC?
Hammurabi
Hammurabi (r. c.1792-1750 BC), sixth Amorite king of Babylon, conquered Larsa, Eshnunna and Mari, uniting southern Mesopotamia into the Old Babylonian Empire.
Q 06On what kind of stone is the primary copy of the famous Old Babylonian law code inscribed?
Basalt
The Code of Hammurabi's primary copy is a 2.25-metre stele of black basalt; its top shows the king receiving the laws' authority from the sun god Shamash.
Q 07Which Babylonian creation epic opens with the words 'When on high'?
Enuma Elish
The Enuma Elish, recited at Babylon's New Year festival, opens 'When on high' and tells how the city's patron god defeats Tiamat to create the world.
Q 08Which museum received the Babylonian law-code stele after its 1901 discovery at Susa?
The Louvre
The French expedition under Jacques de Morgan shipped the stele to Paris, where the Louvre has displayed it since the early 1900s; Jean-Vincent Scheil published the first translation in 1902.
Q 09Which Hittite king is thought to have sacked Babylon in 1595 BC, ending its first dynasty?
Mursili I
Mursili I marched down the Euphrates, sacked Babylon around 1595 BC and carried off the statue of the city's patron god, ending the dynasty of Hammurabi.
Q 10Which people ruled Babylon for 435 years after the Hittite sack, calling it Karduniash?
The Kassites
The Kassites ruled Babylonia as Karduniash for some four centuries; kings such as Burna-Buriash II corresponded as equals with Egypt's pharaohs in the Amarna letters.
Q 11Which Assyrian king razed Babylon to the ground in 689 BC and dumped the rubble in the water?
Sennacherib
Sennacherib levelled Babylon in 689 BC and flooded the site; his murder by his own sons in 681 BC was seen as divine vengeance, and his successor Esarhaddon rebuilt the city.
Q 12Which Assyrian prince, ruling Babylon, started a civil war against his brother Ashurbanipal in 652 BC?
Shamash-shum-ukin
Shamash-shum-ukin, installed as king of Babylon by their father Esarhaddon, rebelled in 652 BC; after a long siege Babylon was starved into surrender in 648 BC.
Q 13Which king freed Babylon from Assyria and founded the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 626 BC?
Nabopolassar
Q 21According to legend, for whom did the king build the Hanging Gardens?
His homesick wife Amytis
Berossus's tale has Nebuchadnezzar II build the gardens for his homesick wife Amytis, a Mede who missed her homeland's green hills; no Babylonian text mentions her or the gardens.
Q 22Which scholar has argued that the Hanging Gardens were really near the Assyrian capital, Nineveh?
Stephanie Dalley
Oxford Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley argued in 2013 that the gardens were built by Sennacherib at Nineveh; they are the only Wonder whose site has never been established.
Q 23How many of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were in Babylon on some ancient lists?
Two
Nabopolassar seized Babylon's throne in 626 BC and, allied with the Medes, destroyed Assyria by 609 BC; his Neo-Babylonian Empire is also called the Chaldean Empire.
Q 14Which Neo-Babylonian king rebuilt the city, built the Ishtar Gate and is blamed for the Jewish exile?
Nebuchadnezzar II
Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605-562 BC) rebuilt Babylon and its Ishtar Gate; he captured Jerusalem in 597 BC and destroyed Solomon's Temple in 586 BC, deporting Judah's elite.
Q 15How many gates ringed Babylon's inner city?
Eight
Babylon's inner wall had eight gates, each named for a god, the Ishtar Gate among them; Herodotus's claim of a hundred gates is read as an echo of Homer's Thebes.
Q 16What colour glaze covered the bricks of the Ishtar Gate?
Blue
The Ishtar Gate's bricks were glazed a deep blue to imitate lapis lazuli, with relief animals picked out in golden-yellow and white against the blue ground.
Q 17Which three animals appear in relief on the Ishtar Gate?
Dragons, bulls and lions
Dragons, bulls and lions march along the gate and Processional Way: the mushussu dragon for the city god, the aurochs for the storm god Adad, the lion for Ishtar.
Q 18In which city was the Ishtar Gate reconstructed from excavated bricks after 1918?
Berlin
The German excavators shipped the glazed-brick fragments home, and the smaller front gate was reassembled in Berlin's Pergamon Museum, opening in 1930.
Q 19What was the name of the great ziggurat of Babylon, thought to lie behind the story of the Tower of Babel?
Etemenanki
Etemenanki, 'House of the foundation of heaven and earth', was a seven-stage ziggurat; the Esagila tablet, translated by George Smith in 1876, gives its base and height as 91 metres.
Q 20To which god were Babylon's great ziggurat and the neighbouring temple Esagila dedicated?
Marduk
Marduk, Babylon's patron god, rose with the city to head the Mesopotamian pantheon; his name may mean 'calf of the sun god', and Esagila housed his cult statue.
Two Babylonian entries appear on some lists: the Hanging Gardens and the city's great walls, which Antipater of Sidon included before later lists swapped them for the Pharos.
Q 24Which Persian king captured Babylon in 539 BC?
Cyrus the Great
Cyrus the Great took Babylon in October 539 BC after his victory at Opis on the Tigris; a Babylonian chronicle records that his forces entered the city without a battle.
Q 25According to the traditional account, how did the Persians get into Babylon in 539 BC?
Diverted the river and waded in
Herodotus says the Persians diverted the river and waded in: the Euphrates was turned into a marsh until soldiers could walk its bed under the walls while the city feasted.
Q 26Which artefact is cited as evidence the Persian conqueror let exiled peoples, including Jews, go home?
The Cyrus Cylinder
The Cyrus Cylinder, a clay barrel found at Babylon in 1879, records Cyrus restoring gods and peoples to their homes; it names Mesopotamian sanctuaries only, not Jews or Jerusalem.
Q 27Who was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire when Babylon fell in 539 BC?
Nabonidus
Nabonidus, who spent about ten years at the Arabian oasis of Tayma leaving his son as regent, was captured after Babylon fell to Cyrus in October 539 BC.
Q 28According to Herodotus, in what did the Babylonians bury their dead?
Honey
Herodotus wrote that the Babylonians buried their dead in honey; he also described turbans and perfume, and three tribes who ate nothing but fish.
Q 29Which conqueror died in the royal palace at Babylon in 323 BC?
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great died in Nebuchadnezzar II's palace at Babylon on 10 or 11 June 323 BC, aged 32; he had ordered the ruined ziggurat cleared, its rubble heaped on the Homera mound.
Q 30Which Roman emperor briefly captured Babylon in AD 116?
Trajan
Trajan reached Babylon during his Parthian campaign in AD 116 and sacrificed in the room where Alexander died; his successor Hadrian abandoned everything east of the Euphrates.