Babylonia is an ancient cultural region occupying southeastern Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (modern southern Iraq from around Baghdad to the Persian Gulf). Because the city of Babylon was the capital of this area for so many centuries, the term Babylonia has come to refer to the entire culture that developed in the area from the time it was first settled, about 4000 BCE. Before Babylon’s rise to political prominence (c. 1850 BCE), however, the area was divided into two countries: Sumer in the southeast and Akkad in the northwest.
The history of Sumer and Akkad is one of constant warfare. The Sumerian city-states fought one another for the control of the region and rendered it vulnerable to invasion from Akkad and from its neighbor to the east, Elam. Despite the series of political crises that marked their history, however, Sumer and Akkad developed rich cultures.
The Sumerians were responsible for the first system of writing, cuneiform; the earliest known codes of law; the development of the city-state; the invention of the potter’s wheel, the sailboat, and the seed plow; and the creation of literary, musical, and architectural forms that influenced all of Western civilization.