The Neo-Babylonian Period, also called the Chaldean Empire, spanned roughly 626 to 539 BC, beginning when Nabopolassar threw off Assyrian rule over Babylon and ending with the city's conquest by the Achaemenid Persian king Cyrus the Great. Its best-known ruler, Nebuchadnezzar II, rebuilt Babylon into one of the ancient world's great cities, associated with the Ishtar Gate and the legendary Hanging Gardens, and conquered the Kingdom of Judah, destroying Jerusalem's Temple in 587 BC and beginning the Babylonian captivity of the Judean elite. The period is remembered as a high point of Mesopotamian architecture, astronomy and law before Babylon's absorption into the much larger Achaemenid Persian Empire.
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