Babylon often appears more myth than history. Purportedly the site of the Hanging Gardens and the Tower of Babel, its infamous presence in the Bible has made it a byword for sinful decadence. But Babylon was a real place, a bustling mega-city on the Euphrates where schoolteachers, artisans, priests, slaves, prostitutes and soldiers rubbed shoulders in maze-like streets and busy marketplaces. The city was home to rulers from Hammurabi the lawgiver to Nebuchadnezzar II, the conqueror-king, under whose reign the city glistened in gold and lapis lazuli. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones traces the city's foundation through to its world domination, and subsequent decline, fall and ruin. Ancient sources, from ribald drinking songs to acerbic letters between rival kings, help inform this account of a long-lost world.