Nebuchadnezzar II

Nebuchadnezzar II ruled Babylon for forty-three years, destroyed Jerusalem, and built a city the Greeks counted among the wonders of the world. Born around 634 BC, he was the son of Nabopolassar, the founder of the Neo-Babylonian empire who had destroyed Assyria in alliance with the Medes. He commanded his father's armies and won the decisive battle at Carchemish in 605 BC, destroying an Egyptian force under Necho II and taking Syria and the Levant. He learned of his father's death while campaigning and rode across the desert to secure the throne. Judah was a client caught between Babylon and Egypt. It rebelled twice. In 597 BC he took Jerusalem, deported King Jehoiachin and the elite, and installed Zedekiah. Zedekiah revolted, and in 587 or 586 BC the city was taken after an eighteen-month siege, the Temple was burned, the walls were demolished and the population deported — the Babylonian exile, which reshaped Judaism permanently and is the setting of much of the Hebrew Bible. He besieged Tyre for thirteen years without taking it. His building programme is the other half of the record. He rebuilt Babylon on an enormous scale — the double walls, the Processional Way, the Ishtar Gate in glazed blue brick with reliefs of bulls and dragons, the ziggurat Etemenanki, and the temple of Marduk. The hanging gardens are attributed to him by Greek writers and appear in no Babylonian source. The book of Daniel describes him grazing like an ox in madness. He died in 562 BC.

• Lived: 634 BCE – 562 BCE
• Nationality: Iraqi
• Roles: ruler, military_leader, builder