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BAbylon should not be confused with the place of the tower of Babel. What we call Babylon is a comparatively newer city in Mesopotamia.

The earliest source to mention Babylon may be a dated tablet of the reign of Sargon of Akkad (ca. 24th century BC short chronology). The so-called "Weidner Chronicle" states that it was Sargon himself who built Babylon "in front of Akkad" (ABC 19:51). Another chronicle likewise states that Sargon "dug up the dirt of the pit of Babylon, and made a counterpart of Babylon next to Agade". (ABC 20:18-19). More recently, some researchers have stated that those sources may refer to Sargon II of the Neo-Assyrian Empire rather than Sargon of Akkad

This indicates that it was an Akkadian city, not the older Sumerian. The tower of Babel should instead be associated with what was the city of Eridu. Eridu is older -- a Sumerian city from the 4th millenium BC, probably as old or older than Uruk

Of course.

1. To see why Babylon got confused with Eridu you can refer to http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/saoc62.pdf "http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/saoc62.pdf"

Another city whose name became interchangeable with BAbylon was Eridu. The lexical list Erinhus V 26 and the topographical list TIN.TIR I 21 show that Eridu was a name for Babylon proper. A version of the Sumerian King List gives Eridu as the first city ever to receive kingship from heaven, where the first king was Alulim. This man was called Aloros in the text attributed to Berossus, who wrote in the fourth century B.C. but Berossus named the city ruled by Aloros as Babylon, not Eridu. Eridu is the city in which Hammurabi king of BAbylon was crowned, and this may be a reason to date the phenomenon early in the Old Babylonian period

2. Now Eridu is an ANCIENT city, terribly old, much older than the city of Babylon. Now to understand this you must realise that the origins of Mesopotamia lie with the ancient Sumerians who formed their cities in 5000 BC or earlier. Eridu dates from 5400 BC.
According to the Sumerian Kinglist, Eridu was the first city in the world. The opening line of the Kinglist reads

"[nam]-lugal an-ta èd-dè-a-ba [eri]duki nam-lugal-la"
"When kingship from heaven was lowered, the kingship was in Eridu."

In Sumerian mythology, it was said to be one of the five cities built before the Deluge occurred. This was initially dedicated to the god of waters Enki in Sumerian(Ea in Akkadian -- see point 3 below) who had married the god of sky (can't remember the name) to form the earth.

it was the chief seaport of Sumer and Babylonia and was located on the Euphrates River near the city of Ur, siltation has since moved the coastline southward and the city's remains are now some distance inland, in modern Iraq. It was revered as the oldest city in Sumer, and its patron god was Enki ( Ea). Founded on sand dunes circa 5th millennium BC , its ruins show the sequence of the preliterate Ubaid civilization, with a long succession of superimposed temples portraying the development of an elaborate mud-brick architecture. It was occupied until circa 600 BC .

3. Anyway, the Sumerians were nicely chugging along for 3000 years until the Akkadians or Amorites came. These were Semitic peoples (the ancestors of Abraham). They were nomads and initially did not stay in the cities but traded. then, slowly they took over, culminating in the reign of Sargon of Akkad --> he may be the biblical Nimrod. Read up on him -- he was the first conqueror in 2200 BC ruling all of what is now Iraq and Syria -- huge territories in an age before the saddle or chariots. BUT the Amorites still retained the Sumerian religion -- and the Sumerian language regressed to being a religious language, but the Sumerian holy cities were respected as now Akkadian holy cities.

4. So the place where the king would be crowned in Babylonia would be the holy city Eridu, the ancient one.

As an aside, the Sumerian king list also has this fantastic line

Five cities; eight kings ruled for 385,200^sic years. Then the Flood swept over.

Assyriology and Sumerian history is a bit of a side-hobby of mine and it is fascinating how this ties in to the Bible -- every word of the Bible even the ones dating back to 2000 BC (Abrahams) can factually, logically be proven true. And this was handed down by people orally and then on written texts for 1000s of years, yet are utterly true -- provably so. Ur of the Chaldeans (a later term for Sumerians) is almost as old as Eridu. It is 12 km away from Eridu. Ur or Uruk was the reason why we call Mesopotamia Irak now.