The Neo-Babylonian Empire

From the wreck of Assyria, a Chaldean dynasty raised Babylon to its final and most dazzling glory. Nebuchadnezzar II rebuilt the city with the blue Ishtar Gate, a towering ziggurat, and gardens remembered as a wonder of the world — and carried the people of Judah into exile. Yet within a single lifetime it all passed, at a stroke, to Cyrus the Persian. Slide across the last age of independent Babylon.