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BABYLONIA Mohammed and Mosaib on the Euphrates, the full expansion of the body occurring between Chapter 1. Extent of the Babylonian Empire ... 1 Serut and El Khithr, and the pointed base Chapter 2. Climate and Productions ...... 19 reaching down to Kornah at the junction of Chapter 3. The People ...... 25 the two streams. This tract, the main region of Chapter 4. The Capital ...... 30 the ancient Babylonia, is about 320 miles Chapter 5. Arts and Sciences ...... 41 long, and from 20 to 100 broad. It may be estimated to contain about 18,000 square Chapter 6. Manners and Customs ...... 55 miles. The tract west of the Euphrates is Chapter 7. Religion ...... 63 smaller than this. Its length, in the time of the Chapter 8. History and Chronology ...... 66 Babylonian Empire, may be regarded as about 350 miles, its average width is from 25 to 30 miles, which would give an area of about Chapter 1. Extent of the Babylonian 9000 square miles. Thus the Babylonia of Empire Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar may be Daniel 4:10,11. Behold, a tree in the midst regarded as covering a space of 27,000 of the earth, and the height thereof was square miles--a space a little exceeding the great; the tree grew and was strong: and the area of the Low countries. height thereof reached unto heaven, and the The small province included within these sight thereof to the end of all the earth. limits--smaller than Scotland or Ireland, or The limits of Babylonia Proper, the tract in Portugal or Bavaria--became suddenly, in the which the dominant power of the Fourth latter half of the seventh century B.C., the Monarchy had its abode, being almost mistress of an extensive empire. On the fall of identical with those which have been already Assyria, about B.C. 625, or a little later, Media described under the head of Chaldea, will not and Babylonia, as already observed, divided require in this place to be treated afresh, at between them her extensive territory. It is any length. It needs only to remind the reader with the acquisitions thus made that we have that Babylonia Proper is that alluvial tract now to deal. We have to inquire what portion towards the mouth of the two great rivers of exactly of the previous dominions of Assyria Western Asia--the Tigris and the Euphrates-- fell to the lot of the adventurous which intervenes between the Arabian Desert Nabopolassar, when Nineveh ceased to be-- on the one side, and the more eastern of the what was the extent of the territory which two streams on the other. Across the Tigris was ruled from Babylon in the latter portion the country is no longer Babylonia, but Cissia, of the seventh and the earlier portion of the or Susiana--a distinct region, known to the sixth century before our era? Jews as Elam--the habitat of a distinct people. Now the evidence which we possess on this Babylonia lies westward of the Tigris, and point is threefold. It consists of certain consists of two vast plains or flats, one notices in the Hebrew Scriptures, situated between the two rivers, and thus contemporary records of first-rate historical forming the lower portion of the value; of an account which strangely mingles "Mesopotamia" of the Greeks and Romans-- truth with fable in one of the books of the the other interposed between the Euphrates Apocrypha; and of a passage of Berosus and Arabia, a long but narrow strip along the preserved by Josephus in his work against right bank of that abounding river. The Apion. The Scriptural notices are contained in former of these two districts is shaped like an Jeremiah, in Daniel, and in the books of Kings ancient amphora, the mouth extending from and Chronicles. From these sources we learn Hit to Samara, the neck lying between that the Babylonian Empire of this time Baghdad and Ctesiphon on the Tigris, embraced on the one hand the important

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country of Susiana or Elam, while on the excellent strategic boundary. Khuzestan is other it ran up the Euphrates at least as high one of the most valuable provinces of modern as Carchemish, from thence extending Persia. It consists of a broad tract of fertile westward to the Mediterranean, and alluvium, intervening between the Tigris and southward to, or rather perhaps into, Egypt. the mountains, well watered by numerous The Apocryphal book of Judith enlarges these large streams, which are capable of giving an limits in every direction. That the abundant irrigation to the whole of the low Nabuchodonosor of that work is a region. Above this is Luristan, a still more reminiscence of the real Nebuchadnezzar pleasant district, composed of alternate there can be no doubt. The territories of that mountain, valley, and upland plain, monarch are made to extend eastward, abounding in beautiful glens, richly wooded, beyond Susiana, into Persia; northward to and full of gushing brooks and clear rapid Nineveh; westward to Cilicia in Asia Minor; rivers. Much of this region is of course and southward to the very borders of uncultivable mountain, range succeeding Ethiopia. Among the countries under his sway range, in six or eight parallel lines, as the are enumerated Elam, Persia, Assyria, Cilicia, traveler advances to the north-east; and most Coele-Syria, Syria of Damascus, Phoenicia, of the ranges exhibiting vast tracts of bare Galilee, Gilead, Bashan, Judea, Philistia, and often precipitous rock, in the clefts of Goshen, and Egypt generally. The passage of which snow rests till midsummer. Still the Berosus is of a more partial character. It has lower flanks of the mountains are in general no bearing on the general question of the cultivable, while the valleys teem with extent of the Babylonian Empire, but, orchards and gardens, and the plains furnish incidentally, it confirms the statements of our excellent pasture. The region closely other authorities as to the influence of resembles Zagros, of which it is a Babylon in the West. It tells us that Coele- continuation. As we follow it, however, Syria, Phoenicia, and Egypt, were subject to towards the south-east into the Bakhtiyari Nabopolassar, and that Nebuchadnezzar country, where it adjoins upon the ancient ruled, not only over these countries, but also Persia, it deteriorates in character; the over some portion of Arabia. mountains becoming barer and more arid, From these statements, which, on the whole, and the valleys narrower and less fertile. are tolerably accordant, we may gather that All the other acquisitions of Babylonia at this the great Babylonian Empire of the seventh period lay towards the west. They consisted century B.C. inherited from Assyria all the of the Euphrates valley, above Hit; of southern and western portion of her Mesopotamia Proper, or the country about territory, while the more northern and the two streams of the Bilik and the Khabour; eastern provinces fell to the share of Media. of Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Idumaea, Setting aside the statement of the book of Northern Arabia, and part of Egypt. The Judith (wholly unconfirmed as it is by any Euphrates valley from Hit to Balis is a tract of other authority), that Persia was at this time no great value, except as a line of subject to Babylon, we may regard as the communication. The Mesopotamian Desert most eastern portion of the Empire the presses it closely upon the one side, and the district of Susiana, which corresponded Arabian upon the other. The river flows nearly with the modern Khuzestan and mostly in a deep bed between cliffs of marl, Luristan. This acquisition advanced the gypsum, and limestone, or else between bare eastern frontier of the Empire from the Tigris hills producing only a few dry sapless shrubs to the Bakhtiyari Mountains, a distance of 100 and a coarse grass; and there are but rare or 120 miles. It gave to Babylon an extensive places where, except by great efforts, the tract of very productive territory, and an water can be raised so as to irrigate, to any

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extent, the land along either bank. The course hundred pure running brooks." Irrigation is of the stream is fringed by date-palms as high quite possible in this region; and many as Anah, and above is dotted occasionally remains of ancient watercourses show that with willows, poplars, sumacs, and the large tracts, at some distance from the main unfruitful palm-tree. Cultivation is possible in streams, were formerly brought under places along both banks, and the undulating cultivation. country on either side affords patches of good Opposite to Mesopotamia Proper, on the west pasture. The land improves as we ascend. or right bank of the Euphrates, lay Northern Above the junction of the Khabour with the Syria, with its important fortress of main stream, the left bank is mostly Carchemish, which was undoubtedly included cultivable. Much of the land is flat and well- in the Empire. This tract is not one of much wooded, while often there are broad value. Towards the north it is mountainous, stretches of open ground, well adapted for consisting of spurs from Amanus and Taurus, pasturage. A considerable population seems which gradually subside into the desert a in ancient times to have peopled the valley, little to the south of Aleppo. The bare, round- which did not depend wholly or even mainly backed, chalky or rocky ranges, which here on its own products, but was enriched by the continually succeed one another, are divided important traffic which was always passing only by narrow tortuous valleys, which run up and down the great river. chiefly towards the Euphrates or the lake of Mesopotamia Proper, or the tract extending Antioch. This mountain tract is succeeded by from the head streams of the Khabour about a region of extensive plains, separated from Mardin and Nisibis to the Euphrates at Bir, each other by low hills, both equally desolate. and thence southwards to Karkesiyeh or The soil is shallow and stony; the streams are Circesium, is not certainly known to have few and of little volume; irrigation is thus belonged to the kingdom of Babylon, but may difficult, and, except where it can be applied, be assigned to it on grounds of probability. the crops are scanty. The pistachio-nut grows Divided by a desert or by high mountains wild in places; Vines and olives are cultivated from the valley of the Tigris, and attached by with some success; and some grain is raised means of its streams to that of the Euphrates, by the inhabitants; but the country has few it almost necessarily falls to that power which natural advantages, and it has always holds the Euphrates under its dominion. The depended more upon its possession of a tract is one of considerable extent and carrying trade than on its home products for importance. Bounded on the north by the prosperity. range of hills which Strabo calls Mons Masius, West and south-west of this region, between and on the east by the waterless upland it and the Mediterranean, and extending which lies directly west of the middle Tigris, southwards from Mount Amanus to the it comprises within it all the numerous latitude of Tyre, lies Syria Proper, the Coele- affluents of the Khabour and Bilik, and is thus Syria of many writers, a long but better supplied with water than almost any comparatively narrow tract of great fertility country in these regions. The borders of the and value. Here two parallel ranges of streams afford the richest pasture, and the mountains intervene between the coast and whole tract along the flank of Masius is fairly the desert, prolific parents of a numerous fertile. Towards the west, the tract between progeny of small streams. First, along the line the Khabour and the Bilik, which is of the coast, is the range known as Libanusin diversified by the Abd-el-Aziz hills, is a land of the south, from lat. 33 deg. 20' to lat. 34 deg. fountains. "Such," says Ibn Haukal, "are not to 40', and as Bargylus in the north, from lat. 34 be found elsewhere in all the land of the deg. 45' to the Orontes at Antioch, a range of Moslems, for there are more than three great beauty, richly wooded in places, and

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abounding in deep glens, foaming brooks, and abundance, though at present it is cultivated precipices of a fantastic form. More inland is only in patches immediately about the towns, Antilibanus, culminating towards the south in from fear of the Nusairiyeh and the Bedouins. Hermon, and prolonged northward in the Parallel with the southern part of the Coele- Jebel Shashabu, Jebel Biha, and Jebel-el-Ala, Syrian valley, to the west and to the east, which extends from near Hems to the latitude were two small but important tracts, usually of Aleppo. More striking than even Lebanon regarded as distinct states. Westward, at its lower extremity, where Hermon lifts a between the heights of Lebanon and the sea, snowy peak into the air during most of the and extending somewhat beyond Lebanon, year, it is on the whole inferior in beauty to both up and down the coast, was Phoenicia, a the coast range, being bleaker, more stony, narrow strip of territory lying along the and less broken up by dells and valleys shore, in length from 150 to 180 miles, and in towards the south, and tamer, barer, and less breadth varying from one mile to twenty. This well supplied with streams in its more tract consisted of a mere belt of sandy land northern portion. Between the two parallel along the sea, where the smiling palm-groves ranges lies the "Hollow Syria," a long and grew from which the country derived its broad valley, watered by the two streams of name, of a broader upland region along the the Orontes and the "Litany" which, rising at flank of the hills, which was cultivated in no great distance from one another, flow in grain, and of the higher slopes of the opposite directions, one hurrying northwards mountains which furnished excellent timber. nearly to the flanks of Amanus, the other Small harbors, sheltered by rocky projections, southwards to the hills of Galilee. Few places were frequent along the coast. Wood cut in in the world are more, remarkable, or have a Lebanon was readily floated down the many more stirring history, than this wonderful streams to the shore, and then conveyed by vale. Extending for above two hundred miles sea to the ports. A narrow and scanty land from north to south, almost in a direct line, made commerce almost a necessity. Here and without further break than an occasional accordingly the first great maritime nation of screen of low hills, it furnishes the most antiquity grew up. The Phoenician fleets convenient line of passage between Asia and explored the Mediterranean at a time anterior Africa, alike for the journeys of merchants to Homer, and conveyed to the Greeks and the and for the march of armies. Along this line other inhabitants of Europe, and of Northern passed Thothines and Barneses, Sargon, and and Western Africa, the wares of Assyria, Sennacherib, Neco and Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon, and Egypt. Industry and enterprise Alexander and his warlike successors, reaped their usual harvest of success; the Pompey, Antony, Kaled, Godfrey of Bouillon; Phoenicians grew in wealth, and their towns along this must pass every great army which, became great and magnificent cities. In the starting from the general seats of power in time when the Babylonian Empire came into Western Asia, seeks conquests in Africa, or being, the narrow tract of Phoenicia--smaller which, proceeding from Africa, aims at the than many an English county--was among the acquisition of an Asiatic dominion. Few richer most valuable countries of Asia; and its tracts are to be found even in these most possession was far more to be coveted than favored portions of the earth's surface. that of many a land whose area was ten or Towards the south the famous El-Bukaa is a twenty times as great. land of cornfields and vineyards, watered by Eastward of Antilibanus, in the tract between numerous small streams which fall into the that range and the great Syrian desert, was Litany. Towards the north El-Ghab is even another very important district--the district more splendidly fertile, with a dark rich soil, which the Jews called "Aram-Dammesek," and luxuriant vegetation, and water in the utmost which now forms the chief part of the

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Pashalik of Damascus. From the eastern Tyrian merchant-princes and to the flanks of the Antilibanus two great and voluptuous Persian kings. numerous smaller streams flow down into Below the Coelo-Syrian valley, towards the the Damascene plain, and, carrying with them south, came Palestine, the Land of Lands to that strange fertilizing power which water the Christian, the country which even the always has in hot climates, convert the arid philosopher must acknowledge to have had a sterility of the desert into a garden of the greater influence on the world's history than most wonderful beauty. The Barada and any other tract which can be brought under a Awaaj, bursting by narrow gorges from the single ethnic designation. Palestine-- mountain chain, scatter themselves in etymologically the country of the Philistines-- numerous channels over the great flat, was somewhat unfortunately named. intermingling their waters, and spreading Philistine influence may possibly have them out so widely that for a circle of thirty extended at a very remote period over the miles the deep verdure of Oriental vegetation whole of it; but in historical times that replaces the red hue of the Hauran. Walnuts, warlike people did but possess a corner of the planes, poplars, cypresses, apricots, orange- tract, less than one tenth of the whole--the trees, citrons, pomegranates, olives, wave low coast region from Jamnia to Gaza. above; corn and grass of the most luxuriant Palestine contained, besides this, the regions growth, below. In the midst of this great mass of Galilee, Samaria, and Judaea, to the west of of foliage the city of Damascus "strikes out the Jordan, and those of Ituraea, Trachonitis, the white arms of its streets hither and Bashan, and Gilead, east of that river. It was a thither" among the trees, now hid among tract 140 miles long, by from 70 to 100 broad, them, now overtopping them with its domes containing probably about 11,000 square and minarets, the most beautiful of all those miles. It was thus about equal in size to beautiful towns which delight the eye of the Belgium, while it was less than Holland or artist in the East. In the south-west towers Hanover, and not much larger than the the snow-clad peak of Hermon, visible from principality of Wales, with which it has been every part of the Damascene plain. West, compared by a recent writer. north-west, and north, stretches the long The great natural division of the country is Antilibanus range, bare, gray, and flat-topped, the Jordan valley. This remarkable except where about midway in its course, the depression, commencing on the west flank of rounded summit of Jebel Tiniyen breaks the Hermon, runs with a course which is almost uniformity of the line. Outside the circle of due south from lat. 33 deg. 25' to lat. 31 deg. deep verdure, known to the Orientals as El 47', where it is merged in the Dead Sea, which Merj ("the Meadow"), is a setting or may be viewed, however, as a continuation of framework of partially cultivable land, dotted the valley, prolonging it to lat. 31 deg. 8'. This with clumps of trees and groves, which valley is quite unlike any other in the whole extend for many miles over the plain. To the world. It is a volcanic rent in the earth's Damascus country must also be reckoned surface, a broad chasm which has gaped and those many charming valleys of Hermon and never closed up. Naturally, it should Antilibanus which open out into it, sending terminate at Merom, where the level of the their waters to increase its beauty and Mediterranean is nearly reached. By some luxuriance, the most remarkable of which are wonderful convulsion, or at any rate by some the long ravine of the Barada, and the unusual freak of Nature, there is a channel romantic Wady Halbon, whose vines opened out from Merom, which rapidly sinks produced the famous beverage which below the sea level, and allows the stream to Damascus anciently supplied at once to the flow hastily, down and still down, from Merom to Gennesareth, and from

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Gennesareth to the Dead Sea, where the ranges of St. Gall and Appenzell are divided depression reaches its lowest point, and the off from the rest of the Swiss mountains by land, rising into a ridge, separates the Jordan the flat which extends from the Rhine at valley from the upper end of the Gulf of Eagatz to the same river at Waldshut, so the Akabah. The Jordan valley divides Palestine, western highland of Palestine is broken in strongly and sharply, into two regions. Its twain by the famous "plain of Esdraelon," depth, its inaccessibility (for it can only be which runs from the Bay of Acre to the Jordan entered from the highlands on either side valley at Beth-Shean or Scythopolis. down a few steep watercourses), and the East of the Jordan no such depression occurs, difficulty of passing across it (for the Jordan the highland there being continuous. It differs has but few fords), give it a separating power from the western highland chiefly in this-- almost equal to that of an arm of the sea. In that its surface, instead of being broken up length above a hundred miles, in width into a confused mass of rounded hills, is a varying from one mile to ten, and averaging table-land, consisting of a long succession of some five miles, or perhaps six, it must have slightly undulating plains. Except in been valuable as a territory, possessing, as it Trachonitis and southern Ituraea, where the does, a rich soil, abundant water, and in its basaltic rock everywhere crops out, the soil is lower portion a tropical climate. rich and productive, the country in places On either side of the deep Jordan cleft lies a wooded with fine trees, and the herbage highland of moderate elevation, on the right luxuriant. On the west the mountains rise that of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea, on the left almost precipitously from the Jordan valley, that of Ituraea, Bashan, and Gilead. The right above which they tower to the height of 3000 or western highland consists of a mass of or 4000 feet. The outline is singularly undulating hills, with rounded tops, uniform; and the effect is that of a huge wall composed of coarse gray stone, covered, or guarding Palestine on this side from the wild scarcely covered, with a scanty soil, but tribes of the desert. Eastward the tableland capable of cultivation in corn, olives, and figs. slopes gradually, and melts into the sands of This region is most productive towards the Arabia. Here water and wood are scarce; but north, barer and more arid as we proceed the soil is still good, and bears the most southwards towards the desert. The lowest abundant crops. portion, Judaea, is unpicturesque, ill-watered, Finally, Palestine contains the tract from and almost treeless; the central, Samaria, has which it derives its name, the low country of numerous springs, some rich plains, many the Philistines, which the Jews called the wooded heights, and in places quite a sylvan _Shephelah_, together with a continuation of appearance; the highest, Galilee, is a land of this tract northwards to the roots of Carmel, water-brooks, abounding in timber, fertile the district known to the Jews as "Sharon," or and beautiful. The average height of the "the smooth place." From Carmel to the Wady whole district is from 1500 to 1800 feet Sheriah, where the Philistine country ended, above the Mediterranean. Main elevations is a distance of about one hundred miles, within it vary from 2500 to 4000 feet. The which gives the length of the region in axis of the range is towards the East, nearer, question. Its breadth between the shore and that is, to the Jordan valley than to the sea. It the highland varies from about twenty-five is a peculiarity of the highland that there is miles, in the south, between Gaza and the hills one important break in it. As the Lowland of Dan, to three miles, or less, in the north, mountains of Scotland are wholly separated between Dor and the border of Manasseh. Its from the mountains of the Highlands by the area is probably from 1400 to 1500 square low tract which stretches across from the miles, This low strip is along its whole course Firth of Forth to the Firth of Clyde, or as the divided into two parallel belts or bands-the

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first a flat sandy tract along the shore, the herbage, and soil that admits of cultivation; Ramleh of the modern Arabs; the second, brilliant flowers and luxuriantly growing more undulating, a region of broad rolling shrubs bedeck the glens and terraces of the plains rich in corn, and anciently clothed in Petra range; and most of the tract produces part with thick woods, watered by reedy plants and bushes on which camels, goats, streams, which flow down from the great and even sheep will browse, while occasional highland. A valuable tract is this entire plain, palm groves furnish a grateful shade and an but greatly exposed to ravage. Even the sandy important fruit. The tract divides itself into belt will grow fruit-trees; and the towns four regions--first, a region of sand, low and which stand on it, as Gaza, Jaffa, and Ashdod, flat, along the Mediterranean, the Shephelah are surrounded with huge groves of olives, without its fertility; next, a region of hard sycamores, and palms, or buried in orchards gravelly plain intersected by limestone ridges, and gardens, bright with pomegranates and and raised considerably above the sea level, orange-trees. The more inland region is of the Desert of El-Tin, or of "the Wanderings;" marvelous fertility. Its soil is a rich loam, then the long, broad, low valley of the Arabah, containing scarcely a pebble, which yields which rises gradually from the Dead Sea to an year after year prodigious crops of grain-- imperceptible watershed, and then falls chiefly wheat--without manure or irrigation, gently to the head of the Gulf of Akabah, a or other cultivation than a light plowing. region of hard sand thickly dotted with Philistia was the granary of Syria, and was bushes, and intersected by numerous torrent important doubly, first, as yielding courses; finally a long narrow region of inexhaustible supplies to its conqueror, and mountains and hills parallel with the Arabah, secondly as affording the readiest passage to constituting Idumea Proper, or the original the great armies which contended in these Edom, which, though rocky and rugged, is full regions for the mastery of the Eastern World. of fertile glens, ornamented with trees and South of the region to which we have given shrubs, and in places cultivated in terraces. In the name of Palestine, intervening between it shape the tract was a rude square or oblong, and Egypt, lay a tract, to which it is difficult to with its sides nearly facing the four cardinal assign any political designation. Herodotus points, its length from the Mediterranean to regarded it as a portion of Arabia, which he the Gulf of Akabah being 130 miles, and its carried across the valley of the Arabah and width from the Wady-el-Arish to the eastern made abut on the Mediterranean. To the Jews side of the Petra mountains 120 miles. The it was "the land of the south"--the special area is thus about 1560 square miles. country of the Amalekites. By Strabo's time it Beyond the Wady-el-Arish was Egypt, had come to be known as Idumea, or the stretching from the Mediterranean Edomite country; and under this appellation southwards a distance of nearly eight it will perhaps be most convenient to degrees, or more than 550 miles. As this describe it here. Idumea, then, was the tract country was not, however, so much a part of south and south-west of Palestine from about the Babylonian Empire as a dependency lying lat. 31 deg. 10'. It reached westward to the upon its borders, it will not be necessary to borders of Egypt, which were at this time describe it in this place. marked by the Wady-el-Arish, southward to One region, however, remains still unnoticed the range of Sinai and the Elanitic Gulf, and which seems to have been an integral portion eastward to the Great Desert. Its chief town of the Empire. This is Palmyrene, or the was Petra, in the mountains east of the Syrian Desert--the tract lying between Coelo- Arabah valley. The character of the tract is for Syria on the one hand and the valley of the the most part a hard gravelly and rocky middle Euphrates on the other, and abutting desert; but occasionally there is good towards the south on the great Arabian

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Desert, to which it is sometimes regarded as may be compared roughly to a gnomon, with belonging. It is for the most part a hard sandy one longer and one shorter arm. or gravelly plain, intersected by low rocky It added to the inconvenience of this long ranges, and either barren or productive only straggling form, which made a rapid of some sapless shrubs and of a low thin concentration of the forces of the Empire grass. Occasionally, however, there are oases, impossible, that the capital, instead of where the fertility is considerable. Such an occupying a central position, was placed oasis is the region about Palmyra itself, which somewhat low in the longer of the two arms derived its name from the palm groves in the of the gnomon, and was thus nearly 1000 vicinity; here the soil is good, and a large tract miles removed from the frontier province of is even now under cultivation. Another oasis the west. Though in direct distance, as the is that of Karyatein, which is watered by an crow flies, Babylon is not more than 450 abundant stream, and is well wooded, and miles from Damascus, or more than 520 from productive of grain. The Palmyrene, however, Jerusalem, yet the necessary detour by as a whole possesses but little value, except Aleppo is so great that it lengthens the as a passage country. Though large armies distance, in the one case by 250, in the other can never have traversed the desert even in by 380 miles. From so remote a centre it was this upper region, where it is comparatively impossible for the life-blood to circulate very narrow, trade in ancient times found it vigorously to the extremities. expedient to avoid the long detour by the The Empire was on the whole fertile and well- Orontes Valley, Aleppo, and Bambuk, and to watered. The two great streams of Western proceed directly from Damascus by way of Asia--the Tigris and the Euphrates--which Palmyra to Thapsaeus on the Euphrates. afforded an abundant supply of the invaluable Small bands of light troops also occasionally fluid to the most important of the provinces, took the same course; and the great saving of those of the south-east, have already been distance thus effected made it important to described at length; as have also the chief the Babylonians to possess an authority over streams of the Mesopotamian district, the the region in question. Belik and the Khabour. But as yet in this work Such, then, in its geographical extent, was the no account has been given of a number of great Babylonian Empire. Reaching from important rivers in the extreme east and the Luristan on the one side to the borders of extreme west, on which the fertility, and so Egypt on the other, its direct length from east the prosperity, of the Empire very greatly to west was nearly sixteen degrees, or about depended. It is proposed in the present place 980 miles, while its length for all practical to supply this deficiency. purposes, owing to the interposition of the The principle rivers of the extreme east were desert between its western and its eastern the Choaspes, or modern Kerkhah, the provinces, was perhaps not less than 1400 Pasitigris or Eulseus, now the Kuran, the miles. Its width was very disproportionate to Hedyphon or Hedypnus, now the Jerahi, and this. Between Zagros and the Arabian Desert, the Oroatis, at present the Tab or Hindyan. Of where the width was the greatest, it these, the Oroatis, which is the most eastern, amounted to about 280 miles; between belongs perhaps more to Persia than to Amanus and Palmyra it was 250; between the Babylon; but its lower course probably fell Mons Masius and the middle Euphrates it within the Susianian territory. It rises in the may have been 200; in Syria and Idumea it mountains between Shiraz and Persepolis, cannot have been more than 100 or 160. The about lat. 29 deg. 45', long. 52 deg. 35' E.; and entire area of the Empire was probably from flows towards the Persian Gulf with a course 240,000 to 250,000 square miles--which is which is north-west to Failyun, then nearly about the present size of Austria. Its shape

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W. to Zehitun, after which it becomes Shuster. Of these the Shuster stream is the somewhat south of west to Hindyan, and then more eastern. It rises in the Zarduh Kuh, or S.W. by S. to the sea. The length of the stream, "Yellow Mountain," in lat. 32 deg., long. 51 without counting lesser windings, is 200 deg., almost opposite to the river Isfahan. miles; its width at Hindyan, sixteen miles From its source it is a large stream. Its above its mouth, is eighty yards, and to this direction is at first to the southeast, but after distance it is navigable for boats of twenty a while it sweeps round and runs tons burthen. At first its waters are pure and considerably north of west; and this course it sweet, but they gradually become corrupted, pursues through the mountains, receiving and at Hindyan they are so brackish as not to tributaries of importance from both sides, till, be fit for use. The Jerahi rises from several near Akhili, it turns round to the south, and, sources in the Kuh Margun, a lofty and cutting at a right angle the outermost of the precipitous range, forming the continuation Zagros ranges, flows down with a course S.W. of the chain of Zagros. about long. 50 deg. to by S. nearly to Sinister, where, in 51 deg., and lat. 31 deg. 30'. These head- consequence of a bund or dam thrown across streams have a general direction from N.E. to it, it bifurcates, and passes in two streams to S.W. The principal of them is the Kurdistan the right and to the left of the town. The right river, which rises about fifty miles to the branch, which earned commonly about two north-east of Babahan and flowing south- thirds of the water, proceeds by a tortuous west to that point, then bends round to the course of nearly forty miles, in a direction a north, and runs north-west nearly to the fort very little west of south, to its junction with of Mungasht, where it resumes its original the Dizful stream, which takes place about direction, and receiving from the north-east two miles north of the little town of Bandi-kir. the Abi Zard, or "Yellow River"--a delightful Just below that town the left branch, called at stream of the coldest and purest water present Abi-Gargar, which has made a possible--becomes known as the Jerahi, and considerable bend to the east, rejoins the carries a large body of water as far as main stream, which thenceforth flows in a Fellahiyeh or Dorak. Near Dorak the waters of single channel. The course of the Kuran from the Jerahi are drawn off into a number of its source to its junction with the Dizful canals, and the river is thus greatly branch, including main windings, is about 210 diminished; but still the stream struggles on, miles. The Dizful. branch rises from two and proceeds by a southerly course towards sources, nearly a degree apart, in lat. 33 deg. the Persian Gulf, which it enters near Gadi in 30'. These streams run respectively south- long. 48 deg. 52'. The course of the Jerahi, east and south-west, a distance of forty miles, exclusively of the smaller windings, is about to their junction near Bahrain, whence their equal in length to that of the Tab or Hindyan. united waters flow in a tortuous course, with In volume, before its dispersion, it is a general direction of south, for above a considerably greater than that river. It has a hundred miles to the outer barrier of Zagros, breadth of about a hundred yards before it which they penetrate near the Diz fort, reaches Babahan, and is navigable for boats through a succession of chasms and gorges. almost from its junction with the Abi Zard. Its The course of the stream from this point is size is, however, greatly reduced in its lower south-west through the hills and across the course, and travelers who skirt the coast plain, past Dizful, to the place where it regard the Tab as the more important river. receives the Beladrud from the west, when it The Kuran is a river very much exceeding in changes and becomes first south and then size both the Tab and the Jerahi. It is formed southeast to its junction with the Shuster by the junction of two large streams--the river near Bandi-kir. The entire course of the Dizful river and the Kuran proper, or river of Dizful stream to this point is probably not less

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than 380 miles. Below Bandi-kir, the Kuran, Shapur, a small tributary of the Dizful stream, now become "a noble river, exceeding in size and ran into the Kuran a little above Ahwaz. the Tigris and Euphrates," meanders across The remains of the old channel are still to be the plain in a general direction of S.S. W., past traced; and its existence explains the the towns of Uris, Ahwaz, and Ismaili, to confusion, observable in ancient times, Sablah, when it turns more to the west, and between the Kerkhah and the Kuran, to each passing Mohammerah, empties itself into the of which streams, in certain parts of their Shat-el-Arab, about 22 miles below Basra. course, we find the name Eulseus applied. The The entire course of the Kuran from its most proper Eulseus was the eastern branch of the remote source, exclusive of the lesser Kerkhah (Choaspes) from Pai Pul to Ahwaz; windings, is not less than 430 miles. but the name was naturally extended both The Kerkhah (anciently the Choaspes) is northwards to the Choaspes above Pai Pul formed by three streams of almost equal and southwards to the Kuran below Ahwaz. magnitude, all of them rising in the most The latter stream was, however, known also, eastern portion of the Zagros range. The both in its upper and its lower course, as the central of the three flows from the southern Pasitigris. flank of Mount Elwand (Orontes), the On the opposite side of the Empire the rivers mountain behind Hamadan (Ecbatana), and were less considerable. Among the most receives on the right, after a course of about important may be mentioned the Sajur, a thirty miles, the northern or Singur branch, tributary of the Euphrates, the Koweik, or and ten miles further on the southern or river of Aleppo, the Orontes, or river of Guran branch, which is known by the name of Antioch, the Litany, or river of Tyre, the the Gamas-ab. The river thus formed flows Barada, or river of Damascus, and the Jordan, westward to Behistun, after which it bonds to with its tributaries, the Jabbok and the the south-west, and then to the south, Hieromax. receiving tributaries on both hands, and The Sajur rises from two principle sources on winding among the mountains as far as the the southern flanks of Amanus, which, after ruined city of Rudbar. Here it bursts through running a short distance, unite a little to the the outer barrier of the great range, and, east of Ain-Tab. The course of the stream receiving the large stream of the Kirrind from from the point of junction is south-east. In the north-west, flows S.S.E. and S.E. along the this direction it flows in a somewhat tortuous foot of the range, between it and the Kebir channel between two ranges of hills for a Kuh, till it meets the stream of the Abi-Zal, distance of about 30 miles to Tel Khalid, a when it finally leaves the hills and flows remarkable conical hill crowned by ruins. through the plain, pursuing a S.S.E. direction Here it receives an important affluent--the to the ruins of Susa, which lie upon its left Keraskat--from the west, and becomes bank, and then turning to the S. S. W., and suitable for boat navigation. At the same time running in that direction to the Shat-el-Arab, its course changes, and runs eastward for which it reaches about five miles below about 12 miles; after which the stream again Kurnur. Its length is estimated at above 500 inclines to the south, and keeping an E.S.E. miles; its width, at some distance above its direction for 14 or 15 miles, enters the junction with the Abi-Zal, is from eighty to a Euphrates by five mouths in about lat. 36 deg. hundred yards. 37'. The course of the river measures The course of the Kerkhah was not always probably about 65 miles. exactly such as is here described. Anciently it The Koweik, or river of Aleppo (the Chalus of appears to have bifurcated at Pai Pul, 18 or 20 Xenophon), rises in the hills south of Ain-Tab. miles N.W. of Susa, and to have sent a branch Springing from two sources, one of which is east of the Susa ruins, which absorbed the

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known as the Baloklu-Su, or "Fish River," it its right bank. It then flows for twenty miles flows at first eastward, as if intending to join nearly due north, after which, on approaching the Euphrates. On reaching the plain of Hama (Hamath), it makes a slight bend to the Aleppo, however, near Sayyadok-Koi, it east round the foot of Jebel Erbayn, and then receives a tributary from the north, which entering the rich pasture country of El-Ghab' gives its course a southern inclination; and runs north-west and north to the "Iron from this point it proceeds in a south and Bridge" (Jisr Hadid), in lat. 36 deg. 11'. Its south-westerly direction, winding along the course thus far has been nearly parallel with shallow bed which it has scooped in the the coast of the Mediterranean, and has lain Aloppo plain, a distance of 60 miles, past between two ranges of mountains, the more Aleppo to Kinnisrin, near the foot of the Jebel- western of which has shut it out from the sea. el-Sis. Here its further progress southward is At Jisr Hadid the western mountains come to barred, and it is forced to turn to the east an end, and the Orontes, sweeping round along the foot of the mountain, which it skirts their base, runs first west and then south- for eight or ten miles, finally entering the west down the broad valley of Antioch, in the small lake or marsh of El Melak, in which it midst of the most lovely scenery, to the coast, loses itself after a source of about 80 miles. which it reaches a little above the 36th The Orontes, the great river of Assyria, rises parallel, in long. 35 deg. 55'. The course of the in the Buka'a--the deep valley known to the Orontes, exclusive of lesser windings, is about ancients as Coele-Syria Proper--springing 200 miles. It is a considerable stream almost from a number of small brooks, which flow from its source. At Hamah, more than a down from the Antilibanus range between lat. hundred miles from its mouth, it is crossed by 34 deg. 5' and lat. 34 deg. 12'. Its most remote a bridge of thirteen arches. At Antioch it is source is near Yunin, about seven mites N.N.E. fifty yards in width, and runs rapidly. The of Baalbek. The stream flows at first N.W. by natives now call it the Nahr-el-Asy, or "Rebel W. into the plain, on reaching which it turns River," either from its running in an opposite at a right-angle to the northeast, and skirts direction to all other streams of the country, the foot of the Antilibanus range as far as or (more probably) from its violence and Lebweh, where, being joined by a larger impetuosity. stream from the southeast,130 it takes its There is one tributary of the Orontes which direction and flows N.W. and then N. across deserves a cursory mention. This is the Kara the plain to the foot of Lebanon. Here it Su, or "Black River," which reaches it from the receives the waters of a much more abundant Aga Denghis, or Bahr-el-Abiyad, about five fountain, which wells out from the roots of miles below Jisr Hadid and four or five above that range, and is regarded by the Orientals as Antioch. This stream brings into the Orontes the true "head of the stream." Thus increased the greater part of the water that is drained the river flows northwards for a short space, from the southern side of Amanus. It is after which it turns to the northeast, and runs formed by a union of two rivers, the upper in a deep cleft along the base of Lebanon, Kara Su and the Afrin, which flow into the Aga pursuing this direction for 15 or 16 miles to a Denghis (White Sea), or Lake of Antioch, from point beyond Ribleh, nearly in lat. 34 deg. 30'. the north-west, the one entering it at its Here the course of the river again changes, northern, the other at its eastern extremity. becoming slightly west of north to the Lake of Both are considerable streams; and the Kara Hems (Buheiret-Hems), which is nine or ten Su on issuing from the lake carries a greater miles below Ribleh. Issuing from the Lake of body of water than the Orontes itself, and Hems about lat. 34 deg. 43', the Orontes once thus adds largely to the volume of that stream more flows to the north east, and in five or six in its lower course from the point of junction miles reaches Hems itself, which it leaves on to the Mediterranean.

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The Litany, or river of Tyre, rises from a romantic glen, running between high cliffs, source at no great distance from the head and cutting through the main ridge of the springs of the Orontes. The almost Antilibanus between the Zebdany plain and imperceptible watershed of the Buka'a runs Suk, the Abila of the ancients. From Suk the between Yunin and Baalbek, a few miles river flows through a narrow but lovely north of the latter; and when it is once valley, in a course which has a general passed, the drainage of the water is direction of south-east, past Ain Fijoh (where southwards. The highest permanent fountain its waters are greatly increased), through a of the southern stream seems to be a small series of gorges and glens, to the point where lake near Tel Hushben, which lies about six the roots of the Antilibanus sink down upon miles to the south-west of the Baalbek ruins. the plain, when it bursts forth from the Springing from this source the Litany flows mountains and scatters. Channels are drawn along the lower Buka'a in a direction which is from it on either side, and its waters are generally a little west of south, receiving on spread far and wide over the Merj, which it either side a number of streamlets and rills covers with fine trees and splendid herbage. from Libanus and Anti-libanus, and giving out One branch passes right through the city, in its turn numerous canals for irrigation, cutting it in half. Others irrigate the gardens which fertilize the thirsty soil. As the stream and orchards both to the north and to the descends with numerous windings, but still south. Beyond the town the tendency to with the same general course, the valley of division still continues. The river, weakened the Buka'a contracts more and more, till greatly through the irrigation, separates into finally it terminates in a gorge, down which three main channels, which flow with thunders the Litany--a gorge a thousand feet divergent courses towards the east, and or more in depth, and so narrow that in one terminate in two large swamps or lakes, the place it is actually bridged over by masses of Bahret-esh-Shurkiyeh and the Bahret-el- rock which have fallen from the jagged sides. Kibli-yeh, at a distance of sixteen or Narrower and deeper grows the gorge, and seventeen miles from the city. The Barada is a the river chafes and foams through it, short stream, its entire course from the plain gradually working itself round to the west, of Zebdany not much exceeding forty miles. and so clearing a way through the very roots The Jordan is commonly regarded as flowing of Lebanon to the low coast tract, across from two sources in the Huleh or plain which it meanders slowly, as if wearied with immediately above Lake Merom, one at its long struggle, before finally emptying itself Banias (the ancient Paneas), the other at Tel- into the sea. The course of the Litany may be el-Kady, which marks the site of Laish or Dan. roughly estimated at from 70 to 75 miles. But the true highest present source of the The Barada, or river of Damascus, rises in the river is the spring near Hasbeiya, called plain of Zebdany--the very centre of the Nebaes-Hasbany, or Eas-en-Neba. This spring Antilibanus. It has its real permanent source rises in the torrent-course known as the in a small nameless lake in the lower part of Wady-el-Teim, which descends from the the plain, about lat. 33 deg. 41'; but in winter north-western flank of Hermon, and runs it is fed by streams flowing from the valley nearly parallel with the great gorge of the above, especially by one which rises in lat. 33 Litany, having a direction from north-east to deg. 46', near the small hamlet of Ain Hawar. south-west. The water wells forth in The course of the Barada from the small lake abundance from the foot of a volcanic bluff, is at first towards the east; but it soon sweeps called Eas-el-Anjah, lying directly north of round and flows-southward for about four Hasbeiya, and is immediately used to turn a miles to the lower end of the plain, after mill. The course of the streamlet is very which it again turns to the east and enters a slightly west of south down the Wady to the

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Huleh plain, where it is joined, and multiplied the plateau of Jaulan. It runs through a fertile sevenfold, by the streams from Banais and country, and has generally a deep course far Tel-el-Kady, becoming at once worthy of the below the surface of the plain; ere falling into name of river. Hence it runs almost due south the Jordan it makes its way through a wild to the Merom lake, which it enters in lat. 33 ravine, between rugged cliffs of basalt, which deg. 7', through a reedy and marshy tract are in places upwards of a hundred feet in which it is difficult to penetrate. Issuing from height. Merom in lat. 33 deg. 3', the Jordan flows at The Zurka, or Jabbok, is a stream of the same first sluggishly southward to "Jacob's Bridge," character with the Hieromax, but of inferior passing which, it proceeds in the same dimensions and importance. It drains a direction, with a much swifter current down considerable portion of the land of Gilead, but the depressed and narrow cleft between has no very remote sources, and in summer Merom and Tiberias, descending at the rate of only carries water through a few miles of its fifty feet in a mile, and becoming (as has been lower course. In winter, on the contrary, it is a said) a sort of "continuous waterfall." Before roaring stream with a strong current, and reaching Tiberias its course bends slightly to sometimes cannot be forded. The ravine the west of south for about two miles, and it through which it flows is narrow, deep, and in pours itself into that "sea" in about lat. 32 deg. some places wild. Throughout nearly its 53'. Quitting the sea in lat. 32 deg. 42', it whole course it is fringed by thickets of cane finally enters the track called the Ghor, the and oleander, while above, its banks are still lower chasm or cleft which intervenes clothed with forests of oak. between Tiberias and the upper end of the The Jordan receives the Hieromax about four Dead Sea. Here the descent of the stream or five miles below the point where it issues becomes comparatively gentle, not much from the Sea of Tiberias, and the Jabbok about exceeding three feet per mile; for though the half-way between that lake and the Dead Sea. direct distance between the two lakes is less Augmented by these streams, and others of than seventy miles, and the entire fall above less importance from the mountains on either 600 feet, which would seem to give a descent side, it becomes a river of considerable size, of nine or ten feet a mile, yet, as the course of being opposite Beth-shan (Beisan) 140 feet the river throughout this part of its career is wide, and three feet deep, and averaging, in tortuous in the extreme, the fall is really not its lower course, a width of ninety with a greater than above indicated. Still it is depth of eight or nine feet. Its entire course, sufficient to produce as many as twenty- from the fountain near Hasbeiya to the Dead seven rapids, or at the rate of one to every Sea, including the passage of the two lakes seven miles. In this part of its course the through which it flows, is, if we exclude Jordan receives two important tributaries, meanders, about 130, if we include them, 360 each of which seems to deserve a few words. miles. It is calculated to pour into the Dead The Jarmuk, or Sheriat-el-Mandhur, anciently Sea 6,090,000 tons of water daily. the Hieromax, drains the water, not only from Besides these rivers the Babylonian territory Gaulonitis or Jaulan, the country immediately comprised a number of important lakes. Of east and south-east of the sea of Tiberias, but these some of the more eastern have been also from almost the whole of the Hauran. At described in a former volume: as the Bahr-i- its mouth it is 130 feet wide, and in the winter Nedjif in Lower Chaldea, and the Lake of it brings down a great body of water into the Khatouniyeh in the tract between the Sinjar Jordan. In summer, however, it shrinks up and the Khabour. It was chiefly, however, into an inconsiderable brook, having no more towards the west that sheets of water remote sources than the perennial springs at abounded: the principal of these were the Mazarib, Dilly, and one or two other places on

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Sabakhah, the Bahr-el-Melak, and the Lake of frequented by aquatic birds-geese, ducks, Antioch in Upper Syria; the Bahr-el-Kades, or flamingoes, and the like. Lake of Hems, in the central region; and the The lakes in the neighborhood of Damascus Damascus lakes, the Lake of Merom, the Sea are three in number, and are all of a very of Galilee or Tiberias, and the Dead Sea, in the similar type. They are indeterminate in size regions lying furthest to the south. Of these and shape, changing with the wetness or the greater number were salt, and of little dryness of the season; and it is possible that value, except as furnishing the salt of sometimes they may be all united in one. The commerce; but four--the Lake of Antioch, the most northern, which is called the Bahret- Bahr-el-Kades, the Lake Merom, and the Sea esh-Shurkiyeh, receives about half the of Galilee-were fresh-water basins lying upon surplus water of the Barada, together with the courses of streams which ran through some streamlets from the outlying ranges of them; and these not only diversified the Antilibanus towards the north. The central scenery by their clear bright aspect, but were one, called the Bahret-el-Kibliyeh, receives of considerable value to the inhabitants, as the rest of the Barada water, which enters it furnishing them with many excellent sorts of by three or four branches on its northern and fish. western sides. The most southern, known as Of the salt lakes the most eastern was the Bahret-Hijaneh, is the receptacle for the Sabakhah. This is a basin of long and narrow stream of the Awaaj, and takes also the water form, lying on and just below the 36th from the northern parts of the Ledjah, or parallel. It is situated on the southern route region of Argob. The three lakes are in the from Balis to Aleppo, and is nearly equally same line--a line which runs from N.N.E. to distant between the two places. Its length is S.S.W. They are, or at least were recently, from twelve to thirteen miles; and its width, separated by tracts of dry land from two to where it is broadest, is about five miles. It four miles broad. Dense thickets of tall reeds receives from the north the waters of the surround them, and in summer almost cover Nahr-el-Dhahab, or "Golden River" (which their surface. Like the Bahr-el-Melak, they are has by some been identified with the Daradax a home for water-fowl, which flock to them in of Xenophon), and from the west two or three enormous numbers. insignificant streams, which empty By far the largest and most important of the themselves into its western extremity. The salt lakes is the Great Lake of the South--the lake produces a large quantity of salt, Bahr Lut ("Sea of Lot"), or Dead Sea. This especially after wet seasons, which is sheet of water, which has always attracted collected and sold by the inhabitants of the the special notice and observation of surrounding country. travelers, has of late years been scientifically The Bahr-el-Molak, the lake which absorbs surveyed by officers of the American navy; the Koweik, or river of Aleppo, is less than and its shape, its size, and even its depth, are twenty miles distant from Lake Sabakhah, thus known with accuracy. The Dead Sea is of which it very much resembles in its general an oblong form, and would be of a very character. Its ordinary length is about nine regular contour, were it not for a remarkable miles, and its width three or four; but in projection from its eastern shore near its winter it is greatly swollen by the rains, and southern extremity. In this place, a long and at that time it spreads out so widely that its low peninsula, shaped like a human foot, circumference sometimes exceeds fifty miles. projects into the lake, filling up two thirds of Much salt is drawn from its bed in the dry its width, and thus dividing the expanse of season, and a large part of Syria is hence water into two portions, which are connected supplied with the commodity. The lake is by a long and somewhat narrow passage. The covered with small islands, and greatly entire length of the sea, from north to south,

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is 46 miles: its greatest width, between its ascertained, is 27 fathoms, or 165 feet. The eastern and its western shores, is 101 miles. Jordan flows into its upper end turbid and The whole area is estimated at 250 muddy, and issues forth at its southern geographical square miles. Of this space 174 extremity clear and pellucid. It receives also square miles belong to the northern portion the waters of a considerable number of small of the lake (the true "Sea"), 29 to the narrow streams and springs, some of which are warm channel, and 46 to the southern portion, and brackish; yet its own water is always which has been called "the back-water," or sweet, cool, and transparent, and, having "the lagoon." everywhere a shelving pebbly beach, has a The most remarkable difference between the bright sparkling appearance. The banks are two portions of the lake is the contrast they lofty, and in general destitute of verdure. present as to depth. While the depth of the What exactly is the amount of depression northern portion is from 600 feet, at a short below the level of the Mediterranean remains distance from the mouth of the Jordan, to 800, still, to some extent, uncertain; but it is 1000, 1200, and even 1300 feet, further probably not much less than 700 feet. Now, as down, the depth of the lagoon is nowhere formerly, the lake produces an abundance of more than 12 or 13 feet; and in places it is so fish, which are pronounced, by those who shallow that it has been found possible, in have partaken of them, to be "delicious." some seasons, to ford the whole way across Nine miles above the Sea of Tiberias, on the from one side to the other. The peculiarities course of the same stream, is the far smaller of the Dead Sea, as compared with other basin known now as the Bahr-el Huleh, and lakes, are its depression below the sea-level, anciently (perhaps) as Merom. This is a its buoyancy, and its extreme saltiness. The mountain tarn, varying in size as the season is degree of the depression is not yet certainly wet or dry, but never apparently more than known; but there is reason to believe that it is about seven miles long, by five or six broad. It at least as much at 1300 feet, whereas no is situated at the lower extremity of the plain other lake is known to be depressed more called Huleh, and is almost entirely than 570 feet. The buoyancy and the saltiness surrounded by flat marshy ground, thickly set are not so wholly unparalleled. The waters of with reeds and canes, which make the lake Lake Urumiyeh are probably as salt and as itself almost unapproachable. The depth of buoyant; those of Lake Elton in the steppe the Huleh is not known. It is a favorite resort east of the Volga, and of certain other Russian of aquatic birds, and is said to contain an lakes, appear to be even saltier. But with abundant supply of fish. these few exceptions (if they are exceptions), The Bahr-el-Kades, or Lake of Hems, lies on the Dead Sea water must be pronounced to be the course of the Orontes, about 139 miles the heaviest and saltiest water known to us. N.N.E. of Merom, and nearly the same More than one fourth of its weight is solid distance south of the Lake of Antioch. It is a matter held in solution. Of this solid matter small sheet of water, not more than six or nearly one third is common salt, which is eight miles long, and only two or three wide, more than twice as much as is contained in running in the same direction with the course the waters of the ocean. of the river, which here turns from north to Of the fresh-water lakes the largest and most north-east. According to Abulfeda and some important is the Sea of Tiberias. This sheet of other writers, it is mainly, if not wholly, water is of an oval shape, with an axis, like artificial, owing its origin to a dam or that of the Dead Sea, very nearly due north embankment across the stream, which is and south. Its greatest length is about from four to five hundred yards in length, and thirteen and its greatest width about six about twelve or fourteen feet high. In miles. Its extreme depth, so far as has been Abulfeda's time the construction of the

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embankment was ascribed to Alexander the ancient Chaldea, Besides Babylon itself, there Great, and the lake consequently was not flourished in the Babylonian period the cities regarded as having had any existence in of Borsippa, Duraba, Sippara or Sepharvaim, Babylonian times; but traditions of this kind Opis, Psittace, Cutha, Orchoe or Erech, and are little to be trusted, and it is quite possible Diridotis or Teredon. The sites of most of that the work above mentioned, constructed those have been described in the first volume; apparently with a view to irrigation, may but it remains to state briefly the positions of really belong to a very much earlier age. some few which were either new creations or Finally, in Northern Syria, 115 miles north of comparatively undistinguished in the earlier the Bahr-el-Kades, and about 60 miles N.N.W. times. of the Bahr-el-Melak, is the Bahr-el-Abyad Opis, a town of sufficient magnitude to attract (White Lake), or Sea of Antioch. This sheet of the attention of Herodotus, was situated on water is a parallelogram, the angles of which the left or east bank of the Tigris, near the face the cardinal points: in its greater point where the Diyaleh or Gyndes joined the diameter it extends somewhat more than ten main river. Its position was south of the miles, while it is about seven miles across. Its Gyndes embouchure, and it might be depth on the western side, where it reckoned as lying upon either river. The true approaches the mountains, is six or eight feet; name of the place--that which it bears in the but elsewhere it is generally more shallow, cuneiform inscriptions--was Hupiya; and its not exceeding three or four feet. It lies in a site is probably marked by the ruins at marshy plain called El-Umk, and is thickly Khafaji, near Baghdad, which place is thought fringed with reeds round the whole of its to retain, in a corrupted form, the original circumference. From the silence of antiquity, appellation. Psittace or Sitace, the town which some writers have imagined that it did not gave name to the province of Sittacene, was in exist in ancient times; but the observations of the near neighborhood of Opis, lying on the scientific travelers are opposed to this theory. same side of the Tigris, but lower down, at The lake abounds with fish of several kinds, least as low as the modern fort of the Zobeid and the fishery attracts and employs a chief. Its exact site has not been as yet considerable number of the natives who discovered. Teredon, or Diriaotis, appears to dwell near it. have been first founded by Nebuchadnezzar. Besides these lakes, there were contained It lay on the coast of the Persian Gulf, a little within the limits of the Empire a number of west of the mouth of the Euphrates, and petty tarns, which do not merit particular protected by a quay, or a breakwater, from description. Such were the Bahr-el-Taka, and the high tides that rolled in from the Indian other small lakes on the right bank of the Ocean. There is great difficulty in identifying middle Orontes, the Birket-el-Limum in the its site, owing to the extreme uncertainty as Lebanon, and the Birket-er-Eam on the to the exact position of the coast-line, and the southern flank of Hermon. It is unnecessary, course of the river, in the time of however, to pursue this subject any further. Nebuchadnezzar. Probably it should be But a few words must be added on the chief sought about Zobair, or a little further inland.. cities of the Empire, before this chapter is The chief provincial cities were Susa and brought to a conclusion. Badaca in Susiana; Anat, Sirki, and Carchemish, on the Middle Euphrates; Sidikan The cities of the Empire may be divided into on the Khabour; Harran on the Bilik; Hamath, those of the dominant country and those of Damascus, and Jerusalem, in Inner Syria; the provinces. Those of the dominant country Tyre, Sidon, Ashdod, Ascalon, and Gaza, upon were, for the most part, identical with the the coast. Of these, Susa was undoubtedly the towns already described as belonging to the most important; indeed, it deserves to be

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regarded as the second city of the Empire. Mediterranean to the power which could Here, between the two arms of the Choaspes, acquire and maintain it. Ashdod was the key on a noble and well-watered plain, backed at of Syria upon the south, being a place of great the distance of twenty-five miles by a lofty strength, and commanding the coast route mountain range, the fresh breezes from between Palestine and Egypt, which was which tempered the summer heats, was the usually pursued by armies. It is scarcely too ancient palace of the Kissian kings, proudly much to say that the possession of Ashdod, placed upon a lofty platform or mound, and Tyre, and Carchemish, involved the lordship commanding a wide prospect of the rich of Syria, which could not be permanently pastures at its base, which extended retained except by the occupation of those northwards to the roots of the hills, and in cities. every other direction as far as the eye could The countries by which the Babylonian reach. Clustered at the foot of the palace Empire was bounded were Persia on the east, mound, more especially on its eastern side, Media and her dependencies on the north, lay the ancient town, the foundation of the Arabia on the south, and Egypt at the extreme traditional Memnon who led an army to the southwest. Directly to the west she had no defense of Troy. The pure and sparkling neighbor, her territory being on that side water of the Choaspes--a drink fit for kings-- washed by the Mediterranean. flowed near, while around grew palms, Of Persia, which must be described at length konars, and lemon-trees, the plain beyond in the next volume, since it was the seat of waving with green grass and golden corn. It Empire during the Fifth Monarchy, no more may be suspected that the Babylonian kings, need be said here than that it was for the who certainly maintained a palace at this most part a rugged and sterile country, apt to place, and sent high officers of their court to produce a brave and hardy race, but "do their business" there, made it their incapable of sustaining a large population. A occasional residence, exchanging, in summer strong barrier separated it from the great and early autumn, the heats and swamps of Mesopotamian lowland; and the Babylonians, Babylon for the comparatively dry and cool by occupying a few easily defensible passes, region at the base of the Lurish hills. But, could readily prevent a Persian army from however, this may have been, at any rate debouching on their fertile plains. On the Susa, long the capital of a kingdom little other hand, the natural strength of the region inferior to Babylon itself, must have been the is so great that in the hands of brave and first of the provincial cities, surpassing all the active men its defense is easy; and the rest at once in size and in magnificence. Babylonians were not likely, if an aggressive Among the other cities, Carchemish on the spirit led to their pressing eastward, to make Upper Euphrates, Tyre upon the Syrian coast, any serious impression in this quarter, or and Ashdod on the borders of Egypt, held the ever greatly to advance their frontier. highest place. Carchemish, which has been wrongly identified with Circesium, lay To Media, the power which bordered her certainly high up the river, and most likely upon the north, Babylonia, on the contrary, occupied a site some distance to the north of lay wholly open. The Medes, possessing Balis, which is in lat. 36 deg. nearly. It was the Assyria and Armenia, with the Upper Tigris key of Syria on the east, commanding the valley, and probably the Mons Masius, could ordinary passage of the Euphrates, and being at any time, with the greatest ease, have the only great city in this quarter. Tyre, which marched armies into the low country, and had by this time surpassed its rival, Sidon, resumed the contest in which Assyria was was the chief of all the maritime towns; and engaged for so many hundred years with the its possession gave the mastery of the Eastern great people of the south. On this side nature

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had set no obstacles; and, if danger attempt anything more serious than a threatened, resistance had to be made by plundering inroad. Babylonia consequently, means of those artificial works which are though open to attack on the side of the south specially suited for flat countries. Long lines as well as on that of the north, had little to of wall, broad dykes, huge reservoirs, by fear from either quarter. The friendliness of means of which large tracts may be laid under her northern neighbor, and the practical water, form the natural resort in such a case; weakness of her southern one, were equal and to such defenses as these alone, in securities against aggression; and thus on her addition to her armies, could Babylonia look two largest and most exposed frontiers the in case of a quarrel with the Medes. On this Empire dreaded no attack. side, however, she for many years felt no fear. But it was otherwise in the far south-west. Political arrangements and family ties Here the Empire bordered upon Egypt, a rich connected her with the Median reigning and populous country, which at all times house, and she looked to her northern covets Syria, and is often strong enough to neighbor as an ally upon whom she might seize and hold it in possession. The natural depend for aid, rather than as a rival whose frontier is moreover weak, no other barrier ambitious designs were to be watched and separating between Africa and Asia than a baffled. narrow desert, which has never yet proved a Babylonia lay open also on the side of Arabia. serious obstacle to an army. From the side of Here, however, the nature of the country is Egypt, if from no other quarter, Babylonia such that population must be always sparse; might expect to have trouble. Here she and the habits of the people are opposed to inherited from her predecessor, Assyria, an that political union which can alone make a old hereditary feud, which might at any time race really formidable to others. Once only in break out into active hostility. Here was an their history, under the excitement of a ancient, powerful, and well-organized religious frenzy, have the Arabs issued forth kingdom upon her borders, with claims upon from the great peninsula on an errand of that portion of her territory which it was conquest. In general they are content to vex most difficult for her to defend effectively. By and harass without seriously alarming their seas and by land equally the strip of Syrian neighbors. The vast space and arid character coast lay open to the arms of Egypt, who was of the peninsula are adverse to the collection free to choose her time, and pour her hosts and the movement of armies; the love of into the country when the attention of independence cherished by the several tribes Babylon was directed to some other quarter. indisposes them to union; the affection for the The physical and political circumstances alike nomadic life, which is strongly felt, disinclines pointed to hostile transactions between them to the occupation of conquests. Arabia, Babylon and her south-western neighbor. as a conterminous power, is troublesome, but Whether destruction would come from this rarely dangerous: one section of the nation quarter, or from some other, it would have may almost always be played off against been impossible to predict. Perhaps, on the another: if "their hand is against every man," whole, it may be said that Babylon might have "every man's hand" is also "against them;" been expected to contend successfully with blood-feuds divide and decimate their tribes, Egypt--that she had little to fear from Arabia-- which are ever turning their swords against that against Persia Proper it might have been each other; their neighbors generally wish anticipated that she would be able to defend them ill, and will fall upon them, if they can herself--but that she lay at the mercy of take them at a disadvantage; it is only under Media. The Babylonian Empire was in truth very peculiar circumstances, such as can very an empire upon sufferance. From the time of rarely exist, that they are likely even to its establishment with the consent of the

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Medes, the Modes might at any time have Detailed accounts of the temperature, and of destroyed it. The dynastic tie alone prevented the climate generally, in the most important this result. When that tie was snapped, and provinces of the Empire, Babylonia and when moreover, by the victories of Cyrus, Mesopotamia Proper, have been already Persian enterprise succeeded to the direction given, and on these points the reader is of Median power, the fate of Babylon was referred to the first volume. With regard to sealed. It was impossible for the long the remaining provinces, it may be noticed, in straggling Empire of the south, lying chiefly in the first place, that the climate of Susiana low, flat, open regions, to resist for any differs but very slightly from that of considerable time the great kingdom of the Babylonia, the region to which it is adjacent. north, of the high plateau, and of the The heat in summer is excessive, the mountain-chains. thermometer, even in the hill country, at an elevation of 5000 feet, standing often at 107 Chapter 2. Climate and Productions deg. Fahr. in the shade. The natives construct The Babylonian Empire, lying as it did for themselves serdaubs, or subterranean between the thirtieth and thirty-seventh apartments, in which they live during the day, parallels of north latitude, and consisting thus somewhat reducing the temperature, but mostly of comparatively low countries, probably never bringing it much below 100 enjoyed a climate which was, upon the whole, degrees. They sleep at night in the open air on considerably warmer than that of Media, and the flat roofs of their houses. So far as there is less subject to extreme variations. In its more any difference of climate at this season southern parts-Susiana, Chaldea (or between Susiana and Babylonia, it is in favor Babylonia Proper), Philistia, and Edom---the of the former. The heat, though scorching, is intensity of the summer heat must have been rarely oppressive; and not infrequently a cool, great; but the winters were mild and of short invigorating breeze sets in from the duration. In the middle regions of Central mountains, which refreshes both mind and Mesopotamia, the Euphrates valley, the body. The winters are exceedingly mild, snow Palmyrene, Coele-Syria, Judaea, and being unknown on the plains, and rare on the Phoenicia, while the winters were somewhat mountains, except at a considerable elevation. colder and longer, the summer warmth was At this time, however--from December to the more tolerable. Towards the north, along the end of March--rain falls in tropical flanks of Masius, Taurus, and Amanus, a abundance; and occasionally there are violent climate more like that of eastern Media hail-storms, which inflict serious injury on prevailed, the summers being little less hot the crops. The spring-time in Susiana is than those of the middle region, while the delightful. Soft airs fan the cheek, laden with winters were of considerable severity. A the scent of flowers; a carpet of verdure is variety of climate thus existed, but a variety spread over the plains; the sky is cloudless, or within somewhat narrow limits. The region overspread with a thin gauzy veil; the heat of was altogether hotter and drier than is usual the sun is not too great; the rivers run with in the same latitude. The close proximity of full banks and fill the numerous canals; the the great Arabian desert, the small size of the crops advance rapidly towards perfection; adjoining seas, the want of mountains within and on every side a rich luxuriant growth the region having any great elevation, and the cheers the eye of the traveler. general absence of timber, combined to On the opposite side of the Empire, in Syria produce an amount of heat and dryness and Palestine, a moister, and on the whole a scarcely known elsewhere outside the cooler climate prevails. In Lebanon and Anti- tropics. Lebanon there is a severe winter, which lasts from October to April; much snow falls, and

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the thermometer often marks twenty or sand, which at once raise the temperature thirty degrees of frost. On the flanks of the and render the air unwholesome to breathe. mountain ranges, and in the highlands of In Syria these winds occur commonly in the Upper and Coele-Syria, of Damascus, Samaria, spring, from February to April; but in Susiana and Judea, the cold is considerably less; but and Babylonia the time for them is the height there are intervals of frost; snow falls, though of summer. They blow from various quarters, it does not often remain long upon the according to the position, with respect to ground; and prolonged chilling rains make Arabia, occupied by the different provinces. the winter and early spring unpleasant. In the In Palestine the worst are from the east, the low regions, on the other hand, in the direction in which the desert is nearest; in _Shephelah_, the plain of Sharon, the Lower Babylonia they are from the south; in Phoenician coast tract, the lower valley of the Susiana from the west or the north-west. Orontes, and again in the plain of Esdraelon During their continuance the air is darkened, and the remarkable depression from the a lurid glow is cast over the earth, the animal Merom lake to the Dead Sea, the winters are world pines and droops, vegetation exceedingly mild; frost and snow are languishes, and, if the traveler cannot obtain unknown; the lowest temperature is shelter, and the wind continues, he may sink produced by cold rains and fogs, which do not and die under its deleterious influence. bring the thermometer much below 40 deg.. The climate of the entire tract included within During the summer these low regions, the limits of the Empire was probably much especially the Jordan valley or Ghor, are the same in ancient times as in our own days. excessively hot, the heat being ordinarily of In the low alluvial plains indeed near the that moist kind which is intolerably Persian Gulf it is probable that vegetation was oppressive. The upland plains and mountain anciently more abundant, the date-palm flanks experience also a high temperature, being cultivated much more extensively then but there the heat is of a drier character, and than at present; and so far it might appear is not greatly complained of; the nights even reasonable to conclude that the climate of in summer are cold, the dews being often that region must have been moister and heavy; cool winds blow occasionally, and cooler than it now is. But if we may judge by though the sky is for months without a cloud, Strabo's account of Susiana, where the the prevailing heat produces no injurious climatic conditions were nearly the same as effects on those who are exposed to it. In in Babylonia, no important change can have Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon the heat is of taken place, for Strabo not only calls the course still less; refreshing breezes blow climate of Susiana "fiery and scorching," but almost constantly; and the numerous streams says that in Susa, during the height of and woods give a sense of coolness beyond summer, if a lizard or a snake tried to cross the markings of the thermometer. the street about noon-day, he was baked to There is one evil, however, to which almost death before accomplishing half the distance. the whole Empire must have been subject. Similarly on the west, though there is reason Alike in the east and in the west, in Syria and to believe that Palestine is now much more Palestine, no less than in Babylonia Proper denuded of timber than it was formerly, and and Susiana, there are times when a fierce its climate should therefore be both warmer and scorching wind prevails for days and drier, yet it has been argued with great together--a wind whose breath withers the force from the identity of the modern with herbage and is unspeakably depressing to the ancient vegetation, that in reality there man. Called in the east the Sherghis, and in can have been no considerable change. If then the west the Khamsin, this fiery sirocco there has been such permanency of climate in comes laden with fine particles of heated the two regions where the greatest alteration

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seems to have taken place in the In the adjoining country of Susiana, or at any circumstances whereby climate is usually rate in the alluvial portion of it, the principal affected, it can scarcely be thought that products of the earth seem to have been elsewhere any serious change has been nearly the same as in Babylonia, while the brought about. fecundity of the soil was but little less. Wheat The chief vegetable productions of Babylonia and barley returned to the sower a hundred Proper in ancient times are thus enumerated or even two hundred fold. The date-palm by Berosus. "The land of the Babylonians," he grew plentifully, more especially in the says, "produces wheat as an indigenous vicinity of the towns. Other trees also were plant," and has also barley, and lentils, and common, as probably konars, acacias, and vetches, and sesame; the banks of the streams poplars, which are still found scattered in and the marshes supply edible roots, called tolerable abundance over the plain country. gongoe, which have the taste of barley-cakes. The neighboring mountains could furnish Palms, too, grow in the country, and apples, good timber of various kinds; but it appears and fruit-trees of various kinds. Wheat, it will that the palm was the tree chiefly used for be observed, and barley are placed first, since building. If we may judge the past by the it was especially as a grain country that present, we may further suppose that Susiana Babylonia was celebrated. The testimonies of produced fruits in abundance; for modern Herodotus, Theophrastus, Strabo, and Pliny travelers tell us that there is not a fruit known as to the enormous returns which the in Persia which does not thrive in the Babylonian farmers obtained from their corn province of Khuzestan. lands have been already cited. No such Along the Euphrates valley to a considerable fertility is known anywhere in modern times; distance--at least as far as Anah (or Hena)-- and, unless the accounts are grossly the character of the country resembles that of exaggerated, we must ascribe it, in part, to the Babylonia and Susiana, and the products extraordinary vigor of a virgin soil, a deep cannot have been very different. About Anah and rich alluvium; in part, perhaps, to a the date-palm begins to fail, and the olive first peculiar adaptation of the soil to the wheat makes its appearance. Further up a chief fruit plant, which the providence of God made to is the mulberry. Still higher, in northern grow spontaneously in this region, and Mesopotamia, the mulberry is comparatively nowhere else, so far as we know, on the rare, but its place is supplied by the walnut, whole face of the earth. the vine, and the pistachio-nut. This district Besides wheat, it appears that barley, millet, produces also good crops of grain, and grows and lentils were cultivated for food, while oranges, pomegranates, and the commoner vetches were grown for beasts, and sesame kinds of fruit abundantly. for the sake of the oil which can be expressed Across the Euphrates, in Northern Syria, the from its seed. All grew luxuriantly, and the country is less suited for grain crops; but returns of the barley in particular are stated trees and shrubs of all kinds grow luxuriantly, at a fabulous amount. But the production of the pasture is excellent, and much of the land first necessity in Babylonia was the date- is well adapted for the growth of cotton. The palm, which flourished in great abundance Assyrian kings cut timber frequently in this throughout the region, and probably tract; and here are found at the present day furnished the chief food of the greater portion enormous planes, thick forests of oak, pine, of the inhabitants. The various uses to which and ilex, walnuts, willows, poplars, ash-trees, it was applied have been stated in the first birches, larches, and the carob or locust tree. volume, where a representation of its mode of Among wild shrubs are the oleander with its growth has been also given. ruddy blossoms, the myrtle, the bay, the arbutus, the clematis, the juniper, and the

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honeysuckle; among cultivated fruit-trees, the was furnished in great abundance by the orange, the pomegranate, the pistachio-nut, springs at Hit or Is, which were celebrated in the vine, the mulberry, and the olive. The adis, the days of Herodotus; it was also procured an excellent pea, and the Lycoperdon, or wild from Ardericca (Kir-Ab), and probably from potato, grow in the neighborhood of Aleppo. Earn Ormuz, in Susiana, and likewise from the The castor-oil plant is cultivated in the plain Dead Sea. Salt was obtainable from the of Edlib. Melons, cucumbers, and most of the various lakes which had no outlet, as ordinary vegetables are produced in especially from the Sabakhab, the Bahr-el- abundance and of good quality everywhere. Melak, the Dead Sea, and a small lake near In Southern Syria and Palestine most of the Tadmor or Palmyra. The Dead Sea gave also same forms of vegetation occur, with several most probably both sulphur and niter, but the others of quite a new character. These are latter only in small quantities. Copper and due either to the change of latitude, or to the iron seem to have been yielded by the hills of tropical heat of the Jordan and Dead Sea Palestine. Silver was perhaps a product of the valley, or finally to the high elevation of Anti-Lebanon. Hermon, Lebanon, and Anti-Lebanon. The It may be doubted whether any gems were date-palm fringes the Syrian shore as high as really found in Babylonia itself, which, being Beirut, and formerly flourished in the Jordan purely alluvial, possesses no stone of any valley, where, however, it is not now seen, kind. Most likely the sorts known as except in a few dwarfed specimens near the Babylonian came from the neighboring Tiberias lake. The banana accompanies the Susiana, whose unexplored mountains may date along the coast, and even grows as far possess many rich treasures. According to north as Tripoli. The prickly pear, introduced Dionysius, the bed of the Choaspes produced from America, has completely neutralized numerous agates, and it may well be that itself, and is in general request for hedging. from the same quarter came that "beryl more The fig mulberry (or true sycamore), another precious than gold," and those "highly southern form, is also common, and grows to reputed sard," which Babylon seems to have a considerable size. Other denizens of warm exported to other countries. The western climes, unknown in Northern Syria, are the provinces may, however, very probably have jujube, the tamarisk, the elasagnus or wild furnished the gems which are ascribed to olive, the gum-styrax plant (_Styrax them, as amethysts, which are said to have officinalis_), the egg-plant, the Egyptian been found in the neighborhood of Petra, papyrus, the sugar-cane, the scarlet mistletoe, alabaster, which came from near Damascus, the solanum that produces the "Dead Sea and the cyanus, a kind of lapis-lazuli, which apple" (_Solanum Sodomceum_), the yellow- was a production of Phoenicia. No doubt the flowered acacia, and the liquorice plant. Babylonian love of gems caused the provinces Among the forms due to high elevation are to be carefully searched for stones; and it is the famous Lebanon cedar, several oaks and not improbable that they yielded besides the juniper, the maple, berberry, jasmine, ivy, varieties already named, and the other butcher's broom, a rhododendron, and the unknown kinds mentioned by Pliny, many, if gum-tragacanth plant. The fruits additional to not most, of the materials which we find to those of the north are dates, lemons, almonds, have been used for seals by the ancient shaddocks, and limes. people. These are, cornelian, rock-crystal, The chief mineral products of the Empire chalcedony, onyx, jasper, quartz, serpentine, seem to have been bitumen, with its sienite, hematite, green feldspar, pyrites, concomitants, naphtha and petroleum, salt, loadstone, and amazon-stone. sulphur, niter, copper, iron, perhaps silver, Stone for building was absent from Babylonia and several sorts of precious stones. Bitumen Proper and the alluvial tracts of Susiana, but

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in the other provinces it abounded. The rats, mice, and jerboas. The ratel, sable, and Euphrates valley could furnish stone at genet belong only to the north; the beaver is almost any point above Hit; the mountain found nowhere but in the Khabour and regions of Susiana could supply it in whatever middle Euphrates; the alligator, if a denizen of quantity might be required; and in the the region at all exists only in the Euphrates. western provinces it was only too plentiful. The chief birds of the region are eagles, Near to Babylonia the most common kind was vultures, falcons, owls, hawks, many kinds of limestone; but about Had-disah on the crows, magpies, jackdaws, thrushes, Euphrates there was also a gritty, silicious blackbirds, nightingales, larks, sparrows, rock alternating with iron-stone, and in the goldfinches, swallows, doves of fourteen Arabian Desert were sandstone and granite. kinds, francolins, rock partridges, gray Such stone as was used in Babylon itself, and partridges, black partridges, quails, in the other cities of the low country, pheasants, capercailzies, bustards, probably either came down the Euphrates, or flamingoes, pelicans, cormorants, storks, was brought by canals from the adjacent part herons, cranes, wild-geese, ducks, teal, of Arabia. The quantity, however, thus kingfishers, snipes, woodcocks, the sand- consumed was small, the Babylonians being grouse, the hoopoe, the green parrot, the content for most uses with the brick, of which becafico, the locust-bird, the humming-bird their own territory gave them a supply (?), and the bee-eater. The eagle, pheasant, practically inexhaustible. capercailzie, quail, parrot, locust-bird, The principal wild animals known to have becafico, and humming-bird are rare; the inhabited the Empire in ancient times are the remainder are all tolerably common. Besides following: the lion, the panther or large these, we know that in ancient times leopard, the hunting leopard, the bear, the ostriches wore found within the limits of the hyena, the wild ox, the buffalo (?), the wild Empire, though now they have retreated ass, the stag, the antelope, the ibex or wild further south into the Great Desert of Arabia. goat, the wild sheep, the wild boar, the wolf, Perhaps bitterns may also formerly have the jackal, the fox, the hare, and the rabbit. Of frequented some of the countries belonging these, the lion, leopard, bear, stag, wolf, to it, though they are not mentioned among jackal, and fox seem to have been very widely the birds of the region by modern writers. diffused, while the remainder were rarer, and, There is a bird of the heron species, or rather generally speaking, confined to certain of a species between the heron and the stork, localities. The wild ass was met with only in which seems to deserve a few words of the dry parts of Mesopotamia, and perhaps of special description. It is found chiefly in Syria, the buffalo and wild boar only in moist Northern Syria, in the plain of Aleppo and the regions, along the banks of rivers or among districts watered by the Koweik and Sajur marshes. The wild ox was altogether scarce; rivers. The Arabs call it Tair-el-Raouf, or "the the wild sheep, the rabbit, and the hare, were magnificent." This bird is of a grayish-white, probably not common. the breast white, the joints of the wings To this list may be added as present denizens tipped with scarlet, and the under part of the of the region, and therefore probably beak scarlet, the upper part being of a belonging to it in ancient times, the lynx, the blackish-gray. The beak is nearly five inches wildcat, the ratel, the sable, the genet, the long, and two thirds of an inch thick. The badger, the otter, the beaver, the polecat, the circumference of the eye is red; the feet are of jerboa, the rat, the mouse, the marmot, the a deep yellow; and the bird in its general form porcupine, the squirrel, and perhaps the strongly resembles the stork; but its color is alligator. Of these the commonest at the darker. It is four feet high, and covers a present day are porcupines, badgers, otters, breadth of nine feet when the wings are

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spread. The birds of this species are wont to increase so as to ruin utterly the various collect in large flocks on the North Syrian regions exposed to their ravages. rivers, and to arrange themselves in several The domestic animals employed in the rows across the streams where they are countries which composed the Empire were, shallowest. Here they squat side by side, as camels, horses, mules, asses, buffaloes, cows close to one another as possible, and spread and oxen, goats, sheep, and dogs. Mules as out their tails against the current, thus well as horses seem to have been anciently forming a temporary dam. The water drains used in war by the people of the more off below them, and when it has reached its southern regions-by the Susianians at any lowest point, at a signal from one of their rate, if not also by the Babylonians. number who from the bank watches the Sometimes they were ridden; sometimes they proceedings, they rise and swoop upon the were employed to draw carts or chariots. fish, frogs, etc., which the lowering of the They were spirited and active animals, water has exposed to view. evidently of a fine breed, such as that for Fish are abundant in the Chaldean marshes, which Khuzestan is famous at the present and in almost all the fresh-water lakes and day. The asses from which these mules were rivers. The Tigris and Euphrates yield chiefly produced must also have been of superior barbel and carp; but the former stream has quality, like the breed for which Baghdad is also eels, trout, chub, shad-fish, siluruses, and even now famous, The Babylonian horses are many kinds which have no English names. not likely to have been nearly so good; for this The Koweik contains the Aleppo eel animal does not flourish in a climate which is (_Ophidium masbacambahis_), a very rare at once moist and hot. Still, at any rate under variety; and in other streams of Northern the Persians, Babylonia seems to have been a Syria are found lampreys, bream, dace, and great breeding-place for horses, since the the black-fish (_Macroptero-notus niger_), stud of a single satrap consisted of 800 besides carp, trout, chub, and barbel. Chub, stallions and 16,000 mares. If we may judge bream, and the silurus are taken in the Sea of of the character of Babylonian from that of Galilee. The black-fish is extremely abundant Susianian steeds, we may consider the breed in the Bahr-el-Taka and the Lake of Antioch. to have, been strong and large limbed, but not Among reptiles may be noticed, besides very handsome, the head being too large and snakes, lizards, and frogs, which are the legs too short for beauty. numerous, the following less common The Babylonians were also from very early species--iguanas, tortoises of two kinds, times famous for their breed of dogs. The chameleons, and monitors. Bats also were tablet engraved in a former volume, which common in Babylonia Proper, where they gives a representation of a Babylonian hound, grew to a great size. Of insects the most is probably of a high antiquity, not later than remarkable are scorpions, tarantulas, and the period or the Empire. Dogs are also not locusts. These last come suddenly in infrequently represented on ancient countless myriads with the wind, and, settling Babylonian stones and cylinders. It would on the crops, rapidly destroy all the hopes of seem that, as in Assyria, there were two the husbandman, after which they strip the principal breeds, one somewhat clumsy and shrubs and trees of their leaves, reducing rich heavy, of a character not unlike that of our districts in an incredibly short space of time mastiff, the other of a much lighter make, to the condition of howling wildernesses. If it nearly resembling our greyhound. The former were not for the locust-bird, which is kind is probably the breed known as Indian, constantly keeping down their numbers, which was kept up by continual importations these destructive insects would probably from the country whence it was originally derived.

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We have no evidence that camels were descended--the Chaldeans of the First employed in the time of the Empire, either by Empire--possessed this character to a the Babylonians themselves or by their considerable extent, since they united Cusbite neighbors, the Susianians; but in Upper with Turanian blood, and contained Mesopotamia, in Syria, and in Palestine they moreover a slight Semitic and probably a had been in use from a very early date. The slight Arian element. But the Babylonians of Amalekitos and the Midianites found them later times--the Chaldeans of the Hebrew serviceable in war; and the latter people prophets--must have been very much more a employed them also as beasts of burden in mixed race than their earlier namesakes-- their caravan trade. The Syrians of Upper partly in consequence of the policy of Mesopotamia rode upon them in their colonization pursued systematically by the journeys. It appears that they were also later Assyrian kings, partly from the direct sometimes yoked to chariots, though from influence exerted upon them by conquerors. their size and clumsiness they would be but Whatever may have been the case with the ill fitted for beasts of draught. Arab dynasty, which bore sway in the country Buffaloes were, it is probable, domesticated from about B.C. 1546 till B.C. 1300, it is by the Babylonians at an early date. The certain that the Assyrians conquered Babylon animal seems to have been indigenous in the about B.C. 1300, and almost certain that they country, and it is far better suited for the established an Assyrian family upon the marshy regions of Lower Babylonia and throne of Nimrod, which held for some Susiana than cattle of the ordinary kind. It is considerable time the actual sovereignty of perhaps a buffalo which is represented on an the country. It was natural that under a ancient tablet already referred to, where a dynasty of Semites, Semitic blood should flow lion is disturbed in the middle of his feast off freely into the lower region, Semitic usages a prostrate animal by a man armed with a and modes of thought become prevalent, and hatchet. Cows and oxen, however, of the the spoken language of the country pass from common kind are occasionally represented a Turanian or Turano-Cushite to a Semitic on the cylinders , where they seem sometimes type. The previous Chaldean race blended, to represent animals about to be offered to apparently, with the new comers, and people the gods. Goats also appear frequently in this was produced in which the three elements-- capacity; and they were probably more the Semitic, the Turanian, and the Cushite-- common than sheep, at any rate in the more held about equal shares. The colonization of southern districts. Of Babylonian sheep we the Sargonid kings added probably other have no representations at all on the elements in small proportions, and the result monuments; but it is scarcely likely that a was that among all the nations inhabiting country which used wool so largely was Western Asia there can have been none so content to be without them. At any rate they thoroughly deserving the title of a "mingled abounded in the provinces, forming the chief people" as the Babylonians of the later wealth of the more northern nations. Empire. In mixtures of this kind it is almost always Chapter 3. The People found that some one element practically "The Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty preponderates, and assumes to itself the right nation."--Habakkuk. 1. 6. of fashioning and forming the general The Babylonians, who, under Nabopolassar character of the race. It is not at all necessary and Nebuchadnezzar, held the second place that this formative element should be larger among the nations of the East, were than any other; on the contrary, it may be and emphatically a mixed race. The ancient sometimes is extremely small; for it does not people from whom they were in the main work by its mass, but by its innate force and

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strong vital energy. In Babylonia, the element the Babylonians were as brawny and massive which showed itself to possess this superior as those of the Assyrians themselves, while in vitality, which practically asserted its pre- feature there was not much difference eminence and proceeded to mold the national between the nations. Foreheads straight but character, was the Semitic. There is abundant not high, noses well formed but somewhat evidence that by the time of the later Empire depressed, full lips, and a well-marked the Babylonians had become thoroughly rounded chin, constitute the physiognomy of Semitized; so much so, that ordinary the Babylonians as it appears upon the observers scarcely distinguished them from sculptures of their neighbors. This their purely Semitic neighbors, the Assyrians. representation is not contradicted by the few No doubt there were differences which a specimens of actual sculpture left by Hippocrates or an Aristotle could have themselves. In these the type approaches detected--differences resulting from mixed nearly to the Assyrian, while there is still, descent, as well as differences arising from such an amount of difference as renders it climate and physical geography; but, speaking tolerably easy to distinguish between the broadly, it must be said that the Semitic productions of the two nations. The eye is element, introduced into Babylonia from the larger, and not so decidedly almond-shaped; north, had so prevailed by the time of the the nose is shorter, and its depression is still establishment of the Empire that the race was more marked; while the general expression of no longer one sui generis, but was a mere the countenance is altogether more variety of the well-known and widely spread commonplace. Semitic type. These differences may be probably referred We possess but few notices, and fewer to the influence which was exercised upon assured representations, from which to form the physical form of the race by the primitive an opinion of the physical characteristics of or Proto-Chaldean element, an influence the Babylonians. Except upon the cylinders, which appears to have been considerable. there are extant only three or four This element, as has been already observed, representations of the human forms by was predominantly Cushite; and there is Babylonian artists, and in the few cases reason to believe that the Cushite race was where this form occurs we cannot always feel connected not very remotely with the negro. at all certain that the intention is to portray a In Susiana, where the Cushite blood was human being. A few Assyrian bas-reliefs maintained in tolerable purity--Elymseans probably represent campaigns in Babylonia; and Kissians existing side by side, instead of but the Assyrians vary their human type so blending together--there was, if we may trust little that these sculptures must not be the Assyrian remains, a very decided regarded as conveying to us very exact prevalence of a negro type of countenance, as information. Though cylinders are too rudely the accompanying specimens, carefully executed to be of much service, and they copied from the sculptures, will render seem to preserve an archaic type which evident. The head was covered with short originated with the Proto-Chaldeans. If we crisp curls; the eye was large, the nose and might trust the figures upon them as at all mouth nearly in the same line, the lips thick. nearly representing the truth, we should have Such a physiognomy as the Babylonian to regard the Babylonians as of much slighter appears to have been would naturally arise and sparer frames than their northern from an intermixture of a race like the neighbors, of a physique in fact approaching Assyrian with one resembling that which the to meagerness. The Assyrian sculptures, later sculptures represent as the main race however, are far from bearing out this idea; inhabiting Susiana. from them it would seem that the frames of

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Herodotus remarks that the Babylonians to some extent Ethiopians by descent, and wore their hair long; and this remark is inhabiting a region which lies four degrees confirmed to some extent by the native nearer to the tropics than Assyria. The Cha'ab remains. These in general represent the hair Arabs, the present possessors of the more as forming a single stiff and heavy curl at the southern parts of Babylonia, are nearly black; back of the head (No. 3). Sometimes, and the "black Syrians," of whom Strabo however, they make it take the shape of long speaks, seem intended to represent the flowing locks, which depend over the back Babylonians. (No. 1), or over the back and shoulders (No. Among the moral and mental characteristics 4), reaching nearly to the waist. Occasionally, of the people, the first place is due to their in lieu of these commoner types, to have one intellectual ability. Inheriting a legacy of which closely resembles the Assyrian, the scientific knowledge, astronomical and hair forming a round mass behind the head arithmetical, from the Proto-Chaldeans, they (No. 2), on which we can sometimes trace seem to have not only maintained but indications of a slight wave. The national considerably advanced these sciences by fashion, that to which Herodotus alludes, their own efforts. Their "wisdom and seems to be represented by the three learning" are celebrated by the Jewish commoner modes. Where the round mass is prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel; the worn, we have probably an Assyrian fashion, Father of History records their valuable which the Babylonians aped during the time inventions; and an Aristotle was not ashamed of that people's pre-eminence. to be beholden to them for scientific data. Besides their flowing hair, the Babylonians They were good observers of astronomical are represented frequently with a large phenomena, careful recorders of such beard. This is generally longer than the observations, and mathematicians of no small Assyrian, descending nearly to the waist. repute. Unfortunately, they mixed with their Sometimes it curls crisply upon the face, but really scientific studies those occult pursuits below the chin depends over the breast in which, in ages and countries where the limits long, straight locks. At other times it droops of true science are not known, are always apt perpendicularly from the cheeks and the to seduce students from the right path, having under lip.15 Frequently, however, the beard attractions against which few men are proof, is shaven off, and the whole face is smooth so long as it is believed that they can really and hairless. accomplish the end that they propose to The Chaldean females, as represented by the themselves. The Babylonians were Assyrians, are tall and large-limbed. Their astrologers no less than astronomers; they physiognomy is Assyrian, their hair not very professed to cast nativities, to expound abundant. The Babylonian cylinders, on the dreams, and to foretell events by means of the other hand, make the hair long and stars; and though there were always a certain conspicuous, while the forms are quite as number who kept within the legitimate spare and meager as those of the men. bounds of science, and repudiated the astrological pretensions of their brethren, yet On the whole, it is most probable that the on the whole it must be allowed that their physical type of the later Babylonians was astronomy was fatally tinged with a mystic nearly that of their northern neighbors. A and unscientific element. somewhat sparer form, longer and more flowing hair, and features less stern and In close connection with the intellectual strong, may perhaps have characterized ability of the Babylonians was the spirit of them. They were also, it is probable, of a enterprise which led them to engage in traffic darker complexion than the Assyrians, being and to adventure themselves upon the ocean in ships. In a future chapter we shall have to

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consider the extent and probable direction of luxuriousness of living, and in respect of this commerce. It is sufficient to observe in softness and self-indulgence they certainly the present place that the same turn of mind did not fall short of any nation of antiquity. which made the Phoenicians anciently the There was, however, a harder and sterner great carriers between the East and West, and side to the Babylonian character. Despite which in modern times has rendered the Jews their love of luxury, they were at all times so successful in various branches of trade, brave and skilful in war; and, during the seems to have characterized the Semitized period of their greatest strength, they were Babylonians, whose land was emphatically "a one of the most formidable of all the nations land of traffic," and their chief city "a city of of the East. Habakkuk describes them, merchants." drawing evidently from the life, as "bitter and The trading spirit which was thus strongly hasty," and again as "terrible and dreadful-- developed in the Babylonian people led their horses' hoofs swifter than the leopard's, naturally to the two somewhat opposite vices and more fierce than the evening wolves." of avarice and over-luxuriousness. Not Hence they "smote the people in wrath with a content with honorable gains, the continual stroke"--they "made the earth to Babylonians "coveted an evil covetousness," tremble, and did shake kingdoms"--they as we learn both from Habakkuk and carried all before them in their great Jeremiah. The "shameful custom" mentioned enterprises, seldom allowing themselves to by Herodotus, which required as a religious be foiled by resistance, or turned from their duty that every Babylonian woman, rich or course by pity. Exercised for centuries in long poor, highborn or humble, should once in her and fierce wars with the well-armed and well- life prostitute herself in the temple of Beltis, disciplined Assyrians, they were no sooner was probably based on the desire of quit of this enemy, and able to take an attracting strangers to the capital, who would aggressive attitude, than they showed either bring with them valuable commodities themselves no unworthy successors of that or purchase the productions of the country. long-dominant nation, so far as energy, valor, The public auction of marriageable virgins and military skill constitute desert. They had most likely a similar intention. If we may carried their victorious arms from the shores believe Curtius, strangers might at any time of the Persian Gulf to the banks of the Nile; purchase the gratification of any passion they wherever they went, they rapidly established might feel, from the avarice of parents or their power, crushing all resistance, and fully husbands. meriting the remarkable title, which they The luxury of the Babylonians is a constant seem to have received from those who had theme with both sacred and profane writers. felt their attacks, of "the hammer of the whole The "daughter of the Chaldeans" was "tender earth." and delicate," "given to pleasures," apt to The military successes of the Babylonians "dwell carelessly." Her young men made were accompanied with needless violence, themselves "as princes to look at--exceeding and with outrages not unusual in the East, in dyed attire upon their heads,"--painting which the historian must nevertheless regard their faces, wearing earrings, and clothing as at once crimes and follies. The themselves in robes of soft and rich material. transplantation of conquered races--a part of Extensive polygamy prevailed. The pleasures the policy of Assyria which the Chaldeans of the table were carried to excess. adopted--may perhaps have been morally Drunkenness was common. Rich unguents defensible, notwithstanding the sufferings were invented. The tables groaned under the which it involved. But the mutilations of weight of gold and silver plate. In every prisoners, the weary imprisonments, the possible way the Babylonians practiced massacre of non-combatants, the refinement

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of cruelty shown in the execution of children when, walking in the palace of his kingdom, before the eyes of their fathers--these and and surveying the magnificent buildings similar atrocities, which are recorded of the which he had raided on every side from the Babylonians, are wholly without excuse, since plunder of the conquered nations, and by the they did not so much terrify as exasperate the labor of their captive bands, he exclaimed, "Is conquered nations, and thus rather not the great Babylon which I have built by endangered than added strength or security the might of my power and for the honor of to the empire. A savage and inhuman temper my majesty?"--was rife in the people is betrayed by these harsh punishments--a generally, who, naturally enough, believed temper common in Asiatics, but none the less themselves superior to every other nation reprehensible on that account--one that led upon the earth. "I am, and there is none else its possessors to sacrifice interest to beside me," was the thought, if not the vengeance, and the peace of a kingdom to a speech, of the people, whose arrogance was tiger-like thirst for blood. Nor was this cruel perhaps somewhat less offensive than that of temper shown only towards the subject the Assyrians, but was quite as intense and as nations and captives taken in war. Babylonian deep-seated. nobles trembled for their heads if they The Babylonians, notwithstanding their pride, incurred by a slight fault the displeasure of their cruelty, their covetousness, and their the monarch; and even the most powerful love of luxury, must be pronounced to have class in the kingdom, the learned and been, according to their lights, a religious venerable "Chaldeans," ran on one occasion people. The temple in Babylonia is not a mere the risk of being exterminated, because they adjunct of the palace, but has almost the same could not expound a dream which the king pre-eminence over other buildings which it had forgotten. If a monarch displeased his claims in Egypt. The vast mass of the Birs-i- court, and was regarded as having a bad Nimrud is sufficient to show that an disposition, it was not thought enough simply enormous amount of labor was expended in to make away with him, but he was put to the erection of sacred edifices; and the costly death by torture. Among recognized ornamentation lavished on such buildings is, punishments were cutting to pieces and as we shall hereafter find, even more casting into a heated furnace. The houses of remarkable than their size. Vast sums wore offenders were pulled down and made into also expended on images of the gods, dunghills. These practices imply a "violence" necessary adjuncts of the religion; and the and cruelty beyond the ordinary Oriental whole paraphernalia of worship exhibited a limit; and we cannot be surprised that when rare splendor and magnificence. The final judgment was denounced against monarchs were devout worshippers of the Babylon, it was declared to be sent, in a great various deities, and gave much of their measure, "because of men's blood, and for the attention to the building and repair of violence of the land-of the city, and all that temples, the erection of images, and the like. dwelt therein." They bestowed on their children names It is scarcely necessary to add that the indicative of religious feeling, and implying Babylonians were a proud people. Pride is real faith in the power of the gods to protect unfortunately the invariable accompaniment their votaries. The people generally affected of success, in the nation, if not in the similar names--names containing, in almost individual; and the sudden elevation of every case, a god's name as one of their Babylon from a subject to a dominant power elements. The seals or signets which formed must have been peculiarly trying, more almost a necessary part of each man's especially to the Oriental temperament. The costume were, except in rare instances, of a spirit which culminated in Nebuchadnezzar, religious character. Even in banquets, where

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we might have expected that thoughts of sixth and seventh centuries before our era religion would be laid aside, it seems to have had attained to an equal power of restraining been the practice during the drinking to the expression of feeling. But real gentleness, rehearse the praises of the deities. meekness, and placability were certainly not We are told by Nicolas of Damascus that the the attributes of a people who were so fierce Babylonians cultivated two virtues especially, in their wars and so cruel in their honesty and calmness. Honesty is the natural, punishments. almost the necessary virtue of traders, who Chapter 4. The Capital soon find that it is the best policy to be fair and just in their dealings. We may well Babylon, the capital of the Fourth Monarchy, believe that this intelligent people had the was probably the largest and most wisdom to see their true interests, and to magnificent city of the ancient world. A dim understand that trade can never prosper tradition current in the East gave, it is true, a unless conducted with integrity and greater extent, if not a greater splendor, to straightforwardness. The very fact that their the metropolis of Assyria; but this tradition trade did prosper, that their goods were first appears in ages subsequent to the everywhere in request, is sufficient proof of complete destruction of the more northern their commercial honesty, and of their city; and it is contradicted by the testimony of superiority to those tricks which speedily facts. The walls of Nineveh have been ruin a commerce. completely traced, and indicate a city three miles in length, by less than a mile and a half Calmness is not a common Oriental virtue. It in breadth, containing an area of about 1800 is not even in general very highly appreciated, English acres. Of this area less than one tenth being apt to strike the lively, sensitive, and is occupied by ruins of any pretension. On the passionate Eastern as mere dullness and admitted site of Babylon striking masses of apathy. In China, however, it is a point of ruin cover a space considerably larger than honor that the outward demeanor should be that which at Nineveh constitutes the whole calm and placid under any amount of area of the town. Beyond this space in every provocation; and indignation, fierceness, even direction, north, east, south and west, are haste, are regarded as signs of incomplete detached mounds indicating the former civilization, which the disciples of Confucius existence of edifices of some size, while the love to note in their would-be rivals of the intermediate ground between these mounds West. and the main ruins shows distinct traces of its We may conceive that some similar notion having been built upon in former days. was entertained by the proud Babylonians, Of the actual size of the town, modern who no doubt regarded themselves as research gives us no clear and definite notion. infinitely superior in manners and culture, no One explorer only has come away from the less than in scientific attainments, to the country with an idea that the general position "barbarians" of Persia and Greece. While rage of the detached mounds, by which the plain boiled in their hearts, and commands to around Hillah is dotted, enables him to draw torture and destroy fell from their tongues, the lines of the ancient walls, and mark out etiquette may have required that the the exact position of the city. But the very countenance should be unmoved, the eye maps and plans which are put forward in serene, the voice low and gentle. Such support of this view show that it rests mainly contrasts are not uncommonly seen in the on hypothesis; nor is complete confidence polite Mandarin, whose apparent calmness placed in the surveys on which the maps and drives his European antagonist to despair; plans have been constructed. The English and it may well be that the Babylonians of the surveys, which have been unfortunately lost,

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are said not to have placed the detached enclosed an area as large as that of the mounds in any such decided lines as M. Landgraviate of Hesse-Homburg. Oppert believes them to occupy, and the It is difficult to suppose that the real city--the general impression of the British officers who streets and squares--can at any time have were employed on the service is that "no occupied one half of this enormous area, A vestige of the walls of Babylon has been as yet clear space, we are told, was left for a discovered." considerable distance inside the wall--like the For the size and plan of the city we are thus of _pomaerium_ of the Romans--upon which no necessity thrown back upon the reports of houses were allowed to be built. When ancient authors. It is not pretended that such houses began, they were far from being reports are in this, or in any other case, continuous; gardens, orchards, even fields, deserving of implicit credence. The ancient were interspersed among the buildings; and historians, even the more trustworthy of it was supposed that the inhabitants, when them, are in the habit of exaggerating in their besieged, could grow sufficient corn for their numbers; and on such subjects as own consumption within the walls. Still the measurements they were apt to take on trust whole area was laid out with straight streets, the declarations of their native guides, who or perhaps one should say with roads (for the would be sure to make over-statements. Still houses cannot have been continuous along in this instance we have so many distinct them), which cut one another everywhere at authorities--eyewitnesses of the facts--and right angles, like the streets of some German some of them belonging to times when towns. The wall of the town was pierced with scientific accuracy had begun to be a hundred gates, twenty-five (we may appreciated, that we must be very in suppose) in each face, and the roads led credulous if we do not accept their witness, so straight to these portals, the whole area being far as it is consentient, and not intrinsically thus cut up into square blocks. The houses very improbable. were in general lofty, being three or even four According to Herodotus, an eye-witness, and stories high. They are said to have had the earliest authority on the subject the vaulted roofs, which were not protected _enceinte_ of Babylon was a square, 120 externally with any tiling, since the climate stades (about 14 miles) each way--the entire was so dry as to render such a protection circuit of the wall being thus 56 miles, and the unnecessary. The beams used in the houses area enclosed within them falling little short were of palm-wood, all other timber being of 200 square miles. Ctesias, also an scarce in the country; and such pillars as the eyewitness, and the next writer on the houses could boast were of the same material. subject, reduced the circuit of the walls to 360 The construction of these last was very rude. stades, or 41 miles, and made the area Around posts of palm-wood were twisted consequently little more than 100 square wisps of rushes, which were covered with miles. These two estimates are respectively plaster, and then colored according the taste the greatest and the least that have come of the owner. down to us. The historians of Alexander, The Euphrates ran through the town, dividing while conforming nearly to the statements of it nearly in half. Its banks were lined Ctesias, a little enlarge his dimensions, throughout with quays of brick laid in making the circuit 365, 368, or 385 stades. bitumen, and were further guarded by two The differences here are inconsiderable; and walls of brick, which skirted them along their it seems to be established, on a weight of whole length. In each of these walls were testimony which we rarely possess in such a twenty-five gates, corresponding to the matter, that the walls of this great town were number of the streets which gave upon the about forty miles in circumference, and river; and outside each gate was a sloped

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landing place, by which you could descend to only 480 feet high; and it is very questionable the water's edge, if you had occasion to cross whether any Babylonian building ever the river. Boats were kept ready at these equaled it. About half-way up the ascent was landing-places to convey passengers from a resting-place with seats, where persons side to side; while for those who disliked this commonly sat a while on their way to the method of conveyance a bridge was provided summit. The shrine which crowned the of a somewhat peculiar construction. A edifice was large and rich. In the time of number of stone piers were erected in the Herodotus it contained no image; but only a bed of the stream, firmly clamped together golden table and a large couch, covered with a with fastenings of iron and lead; wooden handsome drapery. This, however, was after drawbridges connected pier with pier during the Persian conquest and the plunder of its the day, and on these passengers passed over; principal treasures. Previously, if we may but at night they were withdrawn, in order believe Diodorus, the shrine was occupied by that the bridge might not be used during the three colossal images of gold--one of Bel, one dark. Diodorus declares that besides this of Beltis, and the third of Rhea or Ishtar. bridge, to which he assigns a length of five Before the image of Beltis were two golden stades (about 1000 yards) and a breadth of lions, and near them two enormous serpents 30 feet, the two sides of the river were joined of silver, each thirty talents in weight. The together by a tunnel, which was fifteen feet golden table--forty feet long and fifteen wide and twelve high to the spring of its broad--was in front of these statues, and upon arched roof. it stood two huge drinking-cups, of the same The most remarkable buildings which the city weight as the serpents. The shrine also contained were the two palaces, one on either contained two enormous censers and three side of the river, and the great temple of golden bowls, one for each of the three Belus. Herodotus describes the great temple deities. as contained within a square enclosure, two At the base of the tower was a second shrine stades (nearly a quarter of a mile) both in or chapel, which in the time of Herodotus length and breadth. Its chief feature was the contained a sitting image of Bel, made of gold, _ziggurat_ or tower, a huge solid mass of with a golden table in front of it, and a stand brick-work, built (like all Babylonian temple- for the image, of the same precious metal. towers) in stages, square being emplaced on Here, too, Persian avarice had been busy; for square, and a sort of rude pyramid being thus anciently this shrine had possessed a second formed, at the top of which was the main statue, which was a human figure twelve shrine of the god. The basement platform of cubits high, made of solid gold. The shrine the Belus tower was, Herodotus tells us, a was also rich in private offerings. Outside the stade, or rather more than 200 yards, each building, but within the sacred enclosure, way. The number of stages was eight. The were two altars, a smaller one of gold, on ascent to the highest stage, which contained which it was customary to offer sucklings, the shrine of the god, was on the outside, and and a larger one, probably of stone, where the consisted either of steps, or of an inclined worshippers sacrificed full-grown victims. plane, carried round the four sides of the The great palace was a building of still larger building, and in this way conducting to the dimensions than the great temple. According top. According to Strabo the tower was a to Diodorus, it was situated within a triple stade (606 feet 9 inches) in height; but this enclosure, the innermost wall being twenty estimate, if it is anything more than a stades, the second forty stades, and the conjecture, must represent rather the length outermost sixty stades (nearly seven miles), of the winding ascent than the real altitude of in circumference. The outer wall was built the building. The great pyramid itself was entirely of plain baked brick. The middle and

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inner walls were of the same material, from their coolness. There was also a fronted with enameled bricks representing chamber within the structure containing the hunting scenes. The figures, according to this machinery by which the water was raised. author, were larger than the life, and Of the smaller palace, which was opposite to consisted chiefly of a great variety of animal the larger one, on the other side the river, but forms. There were not wanting, however, a few details have come down to us. Like the certain number of human forms to enliven larger palace, it was guarded by a triple the scene; and among these were two--a man enclosure, the entire circuit of which thrusting his spear through a lion, and a measured (it is said) thirty stades. It woman on horseback aiming at a leopard contained a number of bronze statues, which with her javelin--which the later Greeks the Greeks believed to represent the god believed to represent the mythic Ninus and Belus, and the sovereigns Ninus and Semiramis. Of the character of the apartments Semiramis, together with their officers. The we hear nothing; but we are told that the walls were covered with battle scenes and palace had three gates, two of which were of hunting scenes, vividly represented by means bronze, and that these had to be opened and of bricks painted and enameled. shut by a machine. Such was the general character of the town But the main glory of the palace was its and its chief edifices, if we may believe the pleasure-ground--the "Hanging Gardens," descriptions of eye-witnesses. The walls which the Greeks regarded as one of the which enclosed and guarded the whole--or seven wonders of the world. This which, perhaps one should rather say, extraordinary construction, which owed its guarded the district within which Babylon erection to the whim of a woman, was a was placed--have been already mentioned as square, each side of which measured 400 remarkable for their great extent, but cannot Greek feet. It was supported upon several be dismissed without a more special and tiers of open arches, built one over the other, minute description. Like the "Hanging like the walls of a classic theatre, and Gardens," they were included among the sustaining at each stage, or story, a solid "world's seven wonders," and, according to platform, from which the piers of the next tier every account given of them, their magnitude of arches rose. The building towered into the and construction were remarkable. air to the height of at least seventy-five feet, It has been already noticed that, according to and was covered at the top with a great mass the lowest of the ancient estimates, the entire of earth, in which there grew not merely length of the walls was 360 stades, or more flowers and shrubs, but tress also of the than forty-one miles. With respect to the largest size. Water was supplied from the width we have two very different statements, Euphrates through pipes, and was raised (it is one by Herodotus and the other by Clitarchus said) by a screw, working on the principal of and Strabo. Herodotus makes the width 50 Archimedes. To prevent the moisture from royal cubits, or about 85 English feet, Strabo penetrating into the brick-work and gradually and Q. Curtius reduced the estimate to 32 destroying the building, there were feet. There is still greater discrepancy with interposed between the bricks and the mass respect to the height of the walls. Herodotus of soil, first a layer of reeds mixed with says that the height was 200 royal cubits, or bitumen, then a double layer of burnt brick 300 royal feet (about 335 English feet); cemented with gypsum, and thirdly a coating Ctesias made it 50 fathoms, or 300 ordinary of sheet lead. The ascent to the garden was by Greek feet; Pliny and Solinus, substituting feet steps. On the way up, among the arches which for the royal cubits of Herodotus, made the sustained the building, were stately altitude 235 feet; Philostratus and Q. Curtius, apartments, which, must have been pleasant

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following perhaps some one of Alexander's thickness, which were such as to render historians, gave for the height 150 feet; finally scaling and mining equally hopeless. Clitarchus, as reported by Diodorus Siculus, Such was Babylon, according to the and Strabo, who probably followed him, have descriptions of the ancients--a great city, built left us the very moderate estimate of 75 feet. on a very regular plan, surrounded by It is impossible to reconcile these numbers. populous suburbs interspersed among fields The supposition that some of them belong and gardens, the whole being included within properly to the outer, and others to the inner a large square strongly fortified enceinte. wall, will not explain the discrepancies--for When we turn from this picture of the past to the measurements cannot by any ingenuity be contemplate the present condition of the reduced to two sets of dimensions. The only localities, we are at first struck with conclusion which it seems possible to draw astonishment at the small traces which from the conflicting testimony is that the remain of so vast and wonderful a metropolis. numbers were either rough guesses made by "The broad walls of Babylon" are "utterly very unskillful travelers, or else were (in most broken" down, and her "high gates burned cases) intentional exaggerations palmed upon with fire." "The golden city hath ceased." God them by the native ciceroni. Still the broad has "swept it with the bosom of destruction." facts remain--first, that the walls enclosed an "The glory of the kingdoms, the beauty of the enormous space, which was very partially Chaldees' excellency," is become "as when occupied by buildings; secondly, that they God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah." The were of great and unusual thickness; and traveler who passes through the land is at thirdly, that they were of a vast height-- first inclined to say that there are no ruins, no seventy or eighty feet at least in the time of remains, of the mighty city which once lorded Alexander, after the wear and tear of it over the earth. By and by, however, he centuries and the violence of at least three begins to see that though ruins, in the conquerors. common acceptation of the term, scarcely The general character of the construction is exist--though there are no arches, no pillars, open to but little doubt. The wall was made of but one or two appearances of masonry even bricks, either baked in kilns, or (more yet the whole country is covered with traces probably) dried in the sun, and laid in a of exactly that kind which it was prophesied cement of bitumen, with occasional layers of Babylon should leave. Vast "heaps" or reeds between the courses. Externally it was mounds, shapeless and unsightly, are protected by a wide and deep moat. On the scattered at intervals over the entire region summit were low towers, rising above the where it is certain that Babylon anciently wall to the height of some ten or fifteen feet, stood, and between the "heaps" the soil is in and probably serving as guardrooms for the many places composed of fragments of defenders. These towers are said to have pottery and bricks, and deeply impregnated been 250 in number; they were least with niter, infallible indications of its having numerous on the western face of the city, once been covered with buildings. As the where the wall ran along the marshes. They traveler descends southward from Baghdad were probably angular, not round; and he finds these indications increase, until, on instead of extending through the whole nearing the Euphrates, a few miles beyond thickness of the wall, they were placed along Mohawil, he notes that they have become its outer and inner edge, tower facing tower, continuous, and finds himself in a region of with a wide space between them--"enough," mounds, some of which are of enormous size. Herodotus says, "for a four-horse chariot to These mounds begin about five miles above turn in." The wall did not depend on them for Hillah, and extend for a distance of about its strength, but on its own height and three miles from north to south along the

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course of the river, lying principally on its left of the southern, and of the lower part of the or eastern bank. The ruins on this side consist western line. chiefly of three great masses of building. The Below the Babil mound, which stands isolated most northern, to which the Arabs of the from the rest of the ruins, are two principal present day apply the name of BABIL--the masses--the more northern known to the true native appellation of the ancient cities--is Arabs as EL KASR, "the Palace," and the more a vast pile of brick-work of an irregular southern as "the mound of Amran," from the quadrilateral shape, with precipitous sides tomb of a reputed prophet Amran-ibn-Ali, furrowed by ravines, and with a flat top. Of which crowns its summit. The Kasr mound is the four faces of the ruin the southern seems an oblong square, about 700 yards long by to be the most perfect. It extends a distance of 600 broad, with the sides facing the cardinal about 200 yards, or almost exactly a stade, points. Its height above the plain is 70 feet. and runs nearly in a straight line from west to Its longer direction is from north to south. As east. At its eastern extremity it forms a right far as it has been penetrated, it consists angle with the east face, which runs nearly mainly of rubbish-loose bricks, tiles, and due north for about 180 yards, also almost in fragments of stone. In a few places only are a straight line. The western and northern there undisturbed remains of building. One faces are apparently much worn away. Here such relic is a subterranean passage, seven are the chief ravines, and here is the greatest feet in height, floored and walled with baked seeming deviation from the original lines of brick, and covered in at the top with great the building. The greatest height of the Babil blocks of sandstone, which may either have mound is 130 or 140 feet. It is mainly been a secret exit or more probably an composed of sun-dried brick, but shows signs enormous drain. Another is the Kasr, or of having been faced with fire-burnt brick, "palace" proper, whence the mound has its carefully cemented with an excellent white name. This is a fragment of excellent brick mortar. The bricks of this outer facing bear masonry in a wonderful state of preservation, the name and titles of Nebuchadnezzar. A consisting of walls, piers, and buttresses, and very small portion of the original structure in places ornamented with pilasters, but of has been laid bare enough however to show too fragmentary a character to furnish the that the lines of the building did not slope like modern inquirer with any clue to the original those of a pyramid, but were perpendicular, plan of the building. The bricks are of a pale and that the side walls had, at intervals, the yellow color and of the best possible quality, support of buttresses. nearly resembling our fire-bricks. They are This vast building, whatever it was, stood stamped, one and all, with the name and titles within a square enclosure, two sides of which, of Nebuchadnezzar. The mortar in which they the northern and eastern, are still very are laid is a fine lime cement, which adheres distinctly marked. A long low line of rampart so closely to the bricks that it is difficult to runs for 400 yards parallel to the east face of obtain a specimen entire. In the dust at the the building, at a distance of 120 or 130 foot of the walls are numerous fragments of yards, and a similar but somewhat longer line brick, painted, and covered with a thick of mound runs parallel to the north face at enamel or glaze. Here, too, have been found a rather a greater distance from it. On the west few fragments of sculptured stone, and slabs a third line could be traced in the early part of containing an account of the erection of a the present century; but it appears to be now palatial edifice by Nebuchadnezzar. Near the obliterated. Here and on the south are the northern edge of the mound, and about remains of an ancient canal, the construction midway in its breadth, is a colossal figure of a of which may have caused the disappearance lion, rudely carved in black basalt, standing over the prostrate figure of a man with arms

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outstretched. A single tree grows on the huge single line of rampart to the north-east, ruin, which the Arabs declare to be of a traceable for about two miles, the direction of species not known elsewhere, and regard as a which is nearly from north-west to south- remnant of the hanging garden of Bokht-i- east, and a double line of rampart to the nazar. It is a tamarisk of no rare kind, but of south-east, traceable for a mile and a half, very great ago, in consequence of which, and with a direction from northeast to south- of its exposed position, the growth and foliage west. The two lines in this last case are from are somewhat peculiar. 600 to 700 yards apart, and diverge from one South of the Kasr mound, at the distance of another as they run out to the north-east. The about 800 yards, is the remaining great mass inner of the two meets the north-eastern of ruins, the mound of Jumjuma, or of Amran. rampart nearly at a right angle, and is clearly The general shape of this mound is a part of the same work. It is questioned, triangular,107 but it is very irregular and ill- however, whether this line of fortification is defined, so as scarcely to admit of accurate ancient, and not rather a construction description. Its three sides face respectively a belonging to Parthian times. little east of north, a little south of east, and a A low line of mounds is traceable between the little south of west. The south-western side, western face of the Amran and Kasr hills, and which runs nearly parallel with the the present eastern bank of the river, Euphrates, and seems to have been once bounding a sort of narrow valley, in which washed by the river, is longer than either of either the main stream of the Euphrates, or at the others, extending a distance of above a any rate a branch from it, seems anciently to thousand yards, while the south-eastern may have flowed. be 800 yards, and the north-eastern 700. On the right bank of the stream the chief Innumerable ravines traverse the mound on remains are of the same kind. West of the every side, penetrating it nearly to its centre. river, a rampart, twenty feet high, runs for The surface is a series of undulations. Neither nearly a mile parallel with the general line of masonry nor sculpture is anywhere apparent. the Amran mound, at the distance of about All that meets the eye is a mass of debris; and 1000 yards from the old course of the stream. the researches hitherto made have failed to At either extremity the line of the rampart bring to light any distinct traces of building. turns at a right angle, running down towards Occasionally bricks are found, generally of the river, and being traceable towards the poor material, and bearing the names and north for 400 yards and towards the south for titles of some of the earlier Babylonian fifty or sixty. It is evident that there was once, monarchs; but the trenches opened in the pile before the stream flowed in its present have in no case laid bare even the smallest channel, a rectangular enclosure, a mile long fragment of a wall. and 1000 yards broad, opposite to the Amran Besides the remains which have been already mound; and there are indications that within described, the most remarkable are certain this _enceinte_ was at least one important long lines of rampart on both sides of the building, which was situated near the south- river, which lie outside of the other ruins, east angle of the enclosure, on the banks of enclosing them all, except the mound of Babil. the old course of the river. The bricks found On the left bank of the stream there is to be at this point bear the name of Neriglissar. traced, in the first place, a double line of wall There are also, besides the ramparts and the or rampart, having a direction nearly due great masses of ruin above described, a vast north and south, which lies east of the Kasr number of scattered and irregular heaps of and Amran mounds, at the distance from hillocks on both sides of the river, chiefly, them of about 1000 yards. Beyond this is a however, upon the eastern bank. Of these one

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only seems to deserve distinct mention. This hundred without some indications of ancient is the mound called El Homeira, "the Red," buildings upon its surface. The case is not like which lies due east of the Kasr, distant from it that of Nineveh, where outside the walls the about 800 yards--a mound said to be 300 country is for a considerable distance yards long by 100 wide, and to attain an singularly bare of ruins. The mass of elevation of 60 or 70 feet. It is composed of Babylonian remains extending from Babil to baked brick of a bright red color, and must Amran does not correspond to the whole have been a building of a very considerable _enceinte_ of Nineveh, but to the mound of height resting upon a somewhat confined Koyunjik. It has every appearance of being, base. Its bricks are inscribed along their not the city, but "the heart of the city"--the edges, not (as is the usual practice) on their "Royal quarter" outside of which were the lower face. streets and squares, and still further off, the The only other ancient work of any vanished walls. It may seem strange that the importance of which some remains are still to southern capital should have so greatly be traced is a brick embankment on the left exceeded the dimensions of the northern one. bank of the stream between the Kasr and the But, if we follow the indications presented by Babil mounds, extending for a distance of a the respective sites, we are obliged to thousand yards in a line which has a slight conclude that there was really this curve and a general direction of S.S.W. The remarkable difference. bricks of this embankment are of a bright red It has to be considered in conclusion how far color, and of great hardness. They are laid we can identify the various ruins above wholly in bitumen. The legend which they described with the known buildings of the bear shows that the quay was constructed by ancient capital, and to what extent it is Nabonidus. possible to reconstruct upon the existing Such then are the ruins of Babylon--the whole remains the true plan of the city. Fancy, if it that can now with certainty be assigned to the discards the guidance of fact, may of course "beauty of the Chaldees' excellency"--the with the greatest ease compose plans of a "great Babylon" of Nebuchadnezzar. Within a charming completeness. A rigid adherence to space little more than three miles long and a existing data will produce, it is to be feared, a mile and three quarters broad are contained somewhat meager and fragmentary result; all the undoubted remains of the greatest city but most persons will feel that this is one of of the old world. These remains, however, do the cases where the maxim of Hesiod applies- not serve in any way to define the ancient -"the half is preferable to the whole." limits of the place. They are surrounded on The one identification which may be made every side by nitrous soil, and by low heaps upon certain and indeed indisputable which it has not been thought worth while to evidence is that of the Kasr mound with the excavate, but which the best judges assign to palace built by Nebuchadnezzar. The the same era as the great mounds, and believe tradition which has attached the name of Kasr to mark the sites of the lesser temples and the or "Palace" to this heap is confirmed by other public buildings of the ancient city. inscriptions upon slabs found on the spot, Masses of this kind are most frequent to the wherein Nebuchadnezzar declares the north and east. Sometimes they are almost building to be his "Grand Palace." The bricks continuous for miles; and if we take the Kasr of that part of the ruin which remains mound as a centre, and mark about it an area uncovered bear, one and all, the name of this extending five miles in each direction (which king; and it is thus clear that here stood in would give a city of the size described by ancient times the great work of which Ctesias and the historians of Alexander), we Berosus speaks as remarkable for its height shall scarcely find a single square mile of the and splendor. If a confirmation of the fact

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were needed after evidence of so decisive a to the larger one, according to that writer, by character, it would be found in the a bridge and a tunnel. This edifice, built or at correspondence between the remains found any rate repaired by Neriglissar, lay directly on the mound and the description left us of opposite the more ancient part of the eastern the "greater palace" by Diodorus. Diodorus palace, being separated from it by the river, relates that the walls of this edifice were which anciently flowed along the western adorned with colored representations of face of the Kasr and Amran mounds. The hunting scenes; and modern explorers find exact position of the bridge cannot be fixed. that the whole soil of the mound, and With regard to the tunnel, it is extremely especially the part on which the fragment of unlikely that any such construction was ever ruin stands, is full of broken pieces of made. The "Father of History" is wholly silent enameled brick, varied in hue, and evidently on the subject, while he carefully describes containing portions of human and animal the bridge, a work far less extraordinary. The forms. tunnel rests on the authority of two writers But if the Kasr represents the palace built by only--Diodorus and Philostratus--who both Nebuchadnezzar, as is generally allowed by wrote after Babylon was completely ruined. It those who have devoted their attention to the was probably one of the imaginations of the subject, it seems to follow almost as a inventive Ctesias, from whom Diodorus certainty that the Amran mound is the site of evidently derived all the main points of his that old palatial edifice to which the erection description. of Nebuchadnezzar was an addition. Berosus Thus far there is no great difficulty in expressly states that Nebuchadnezzar's identifying the existing remains with building "adjoined upon" the former palace, a buildings mentioned by ancient authors; but, description which is fairly applicable to the at the point to which we are now come, the Amran mound by means of a certain latitude subject grows exceedingly obscure, and it is of interpretation, but which is wholly impossible to offer more than reasonable inapplicable to any of the other ruins. This conjectures upon the true character of the argument would be conclusive, even if it remaining ruins. The descriptions of ancient stood alone. It has, however, received an writers would lead us to expect that we important corroboration in the course of should find among the ruins unmistakable recent researches. From the Amran mound, traces of the great temple of Belus, and at and from this part of Babylon only, have least some indication of the position occupied monuments been recovered of an earlier date by the Hanging Gardens. These two famous than Nebuchadnezzar. Here and here alone constructions can scarcely, one would think, did the early kings leave memorials of their have wholly perished. More especially, the presence in Babylon; and here consequently, Belus temple, which was a stade square, and we may presume, stood the ancient royal (according to some) a stade in height, must residence. almost of necessity have a representative If, then, all the principal ruins on the east among the existing remains. This, indeed, is bank of the river, with the exception of the admitted on all hands; and the controversy is Babil mound and the long lines marking walls thereby narrowed to the question, which of or embankments, be accepted as representing two great ruins--the only two entitled by their the "great palace" or "citadel" of the classical size and situation to attention--has the better writers we must recognize in the remains right to be regarded as the great and west of the ancient course of the river-the celebrated sanctuary of the ancient Babylon. oblong square enclosure and the important That the mound of Babil is the _ziggurat_ or building at its south-east angle--the second or tower of a Babylonian temple scarcely admits "smaller palace" of Ctesias, which was joined of a doubt. Its square shape, its solid

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construction, its isolated grandeur, its careful tongues and general dispersion of the sons of emplacement with the sides facing the Adam. cardinal points, and its close resemblance to With this latter identification we are not in other known Babylonian temple-towers, the present place concerned. With respect to sufficiently mark it for a building of this the view that the Birs is the sanctuary of character, or at any rate raise a presumption Belus, it may be observed in the first place which it would require very strong reasons that the size of the building is very much indeed to overcome. Its size moreover smaller than that ascribed to the Belus corresponds well with the accounts which temple; secondly, that it was dedicated to have come down to us of the dimensions of Kebo, who cannot be identified with Bel; and the Belus temple, and its name and proximity thirdly, that it is not really any part of the to the other main ruins show that it belonged remains of the ancient capital, but belongs to certainly to the ancient capital. Against its an entirely distinct town. The cylinders found claim to be regarded as the remains of the in the ruin by Sir Henry Rawlinson declare temple of Bolus two objections only can be the building to have been "the wonder of argued: these are the absence of any Borsippa;" and Borsippa, according to all the appearance of stages, or even of a pyramidical ancient authorities, was a town by itself--an shape, from the present ruin, and its position entirely distinct place from Babylon. To on the same side of the Euphrates with the include Borsippa within the outer wall of palace. Herodotus expressly declares that the Babylon is to run counter to all the temple of Belus and the royal palace were authorities on the subject, the inscriptions, upon opposite sides of the river, and states, the native writer, Berosus, and the classical moreover, that the temple was built in stages, geographers generally. Nor is the position which rose one above the other to the thus assigned to the Belus temple in harmony number of eight. Now these two with the statement of Herodotus, which alone circumstances, which do not belong at causes explorers to seek for the temple on the present to the Babil mound, attach to a ruin west side of the river. For, though the distant from it about eleven or twelve miles-- expression which this writer uses does not a ruin which is certainly one of the most necessarily mean that the temple was in the remarkable in the whole country, and which, exact centre of one of the two divisions of the if Babylon had really been of the size asserted town, it certainly implies that it lay towards by Herodotus, might possibly have been the middle of one division--well within it--and included within the walls. The Birs-i-Nimrud not upon its outskirts. It is indeed had certainly seven, probably eight stages, inconceivable that the main sanctuary of the and it is the only ruin on the present western place, where the kings constantly offered bank of the Euphrates which is at once their worship, should have been nine or ten sufficiently grand to answer to the miles from the palace! The distance between descriptions of the Belus temple, and the Amran mound and Babil, which is about sufficiently near to the other ruin to make its two miles, is quite as great as probability will original inclusion within the walls not allow us to believe existed between the old absolutely impossible. Hence, ever since the residence of the kings and the sacred shrine attention of scholars was first directed to the to which they were in the constant habit of subject of Babylonian topography, opinion resorting. has been divided on the question before us, Still there remain as objections to the and there have not been wanting persons to identification of the great temple with the maintain that the Birs-i-Nimrud is the true Babil mound the two arguments already temple of Belus, if not also the actual tower of noticed. The Babil mound has no appearance Babel, whose erection led to the confusion of of stages such as the Birs presents, nor has it

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even a pyramidical shape. It is a huge in ruins, and that the palace of Nerig-lissar on platform with a nearly level top, and sinks, the west bank of the stream was that of which rather than rises, in the centre. What has he spoke. It is at any rate remarkable, become, it is asked, of the seven upper stages considering how his authority is quoted as of the great Belus tower, if this ruin fixing the site of the Belus tower to the west represents it? Whither have they vanished? bank, that, in the only place where he gives us How is it that in crumbling down they have any intimation of the side of the river on not left something like a heap towards the which he would have placed the tower, it is middle? To this it may be replied that the the east and not the west bank to which his destruction of the Belus tower has not been words point. He makes those who saw the the mere work of the elements--it was treachery of Zopyrus at the Belian and Kissian violently broken down either by Xerxes, or by gates, which must have been to the east of the some later king, who may have completely city, at once take refuge in the famous removed all the upper stages. Again, it has sanctuary, which he implies was in the served as a quarry to the hunters after bricks vicinity. for more than twenty centuries; so that it is On the whole, therefore, it seems best to only surprising that it still retains so much of regard the Babil mound as the ziggurat of the its original shape. Further, when Alexander great temple of Bel (called by some "the tomb entered Babylon more than 2000 years ago of Belus") which the Persians destroyed and 10,000 men were employed for several weeks which Alexander intended to restore. With in clearing away the rubbish and laying bare regard to the "hanging gardens," as they were the foundations of the building. It is quite an erection of less than half the size of the possible that a conical mass of crumbled brick tower, it is not so necessary to suppose that may have been removed from the top of the distinct traces must remain of them. Their mound at this time. debris may be confused with those of the The difficulty remains that the Babil mound is Kasr mound, on which one writer places on the same side of the Euphrates with the them. Or they may have stood between the ruins of the Great Palace, whereas Herodotus Kasr and Amran ruins, where are now some makes the two buildings balance each other, mounds of no great height. Or, possibly, their one on the right and the other on the left bank true site is in the modern El Homeira, the of the stream. Now here it is in the first place remarkable red mound which lies east of the to be observed that Herodotus is the only Kasr at the distance of about 800 yards, and writer who does this. No other ancient author attains an elevation of sixty-five feet. Though tells us anything of the relative situation of this building is not situated upon the banks of the two buildings. We have thus nothing to the Euphrates, where Strabo and Diodorus explain but the bald statement of a single place the gardens, it abuts upon a long low writer--a writer no doubt of great authority, valley into which the Euphrates water seems but still one not wholly infallible. We might formerly to have been introduced, and which say, then, that Herodotus probably made a may therefore have been given the name of mistake--that his memory failed him in this the river. This identification is, however, it instance, or that he mistook his notes on the must be allowed, very doubtful. subject. Or we may explain his error by The two lines of mounds which enclose the supposing that he confounded a canal from long low valley above mentioned are the Euphrates, which seems to have anciently probably the remains of an embankment passed between the Babil mound and the which here confined the waters of a great Kasr (called Shebil by Nebuchadnezzar) with reservoir. Nebuchadnezzar relates that he the main stream. Or, finally, we may conceive constructed a large reservoir, which he calls that at the time of his visit the old palace lay the Yapur-Shapu, in Babylon, and led water

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into it by means of an "eastern canal"--the writers commonly parallel them with the Shebil. The Shebil canal, it is probable, left the Egyptians; and though, from their habit of Euphrates at some point between Babil and confusing Babylon with Assyria, it is not the Kasr, and ran across with a course nearly always quite certain that the inhabitants of from west to east to the top of the Yapur- the more southern country--the real Shapu. This reservoir seems to have been a Babylonians--are meant, still there is long and somewhat narrow parallelogram, sufficient reason to believe that, in the running nearly from north to south, which estimation of the Greeks and Romans, the shut in the great palace on the east and people of the lower Euphrates were regarded protected it like a huge moat. Most likely it as at least equally advanced in civilization communicated with the Euphrates towards with those of the Nile valley and the Delta. the south by a second canal, the exact line of The branches of knowledge wherein by which cannot be determined. Thus the general consent the Babylonians principally palatial residence of the Babylonian kings excelled were architecture and astronomy. Of looked in both directions upon broad sheets their architectural works two at least were of water, an agreeable prospect in so hot a reckoned among the "Seven Wonders," while climate; while, at the same time, by the others, not elevated to this exalted rank, were assignment of a double channel to the yet considered to be among the most curious Euphrates, its floods were the more readily and admirable of Oriental constructions. In controlled, and the city was preserved from astronomical science they were thought to those terrible inundations which in modern have far excelled all other nations, and the times have often threatened the existence of first Greeks who made much progress in the Baghdad. subject confessed themselves the humble The other lines of mound upon the east side disciples of Babylonian teachers. of the river may either be Parthian works, or In the account, which it is proposed to give, in (possibly) they may be the remains of some of this place, of Babylonian art and science, so those lofty walls whereby, according to far as they are respectively known to us, the Diodorus, the greater palace was surrounded priority will be assigned to art, which is an and defended. The fragments of them which earlier product of the human mind than remain are so placed that if the lines were science; and among the arts the first place produced they would include all the principal will be given to architecture, as at once the ruins on the left bank except the Babil tower. most fundamental of all the fine arts, and the They may therefore be the old defenses of the one in which the Babylonians attained their Eastern palace; though, if so, it is strange that greatest excellence. It is as builders that the they run in lines which are neither straight primitive Chaldean people, the progenitors of nor parallel to those of the buildings enclosed the Babylonians, first appear before us in by them. The irregularity of these ramparts is history; and it was on his buildings that the certainly a very strong argument in favor of great king of the later Empire, their having been the work of a people Nebuchadnezzar, specially prided himself. considerably more barbarous and ignorant When Herodotus visited Babylon he was than the Babylonians. struck chiefly by its extraordinary edifices; and it is the account which the Greek writers Chapter 5. Arts and Sciences gave of these erections that has, more than That the Babylonians were among the most anything else, procured for the Babylonians ingenious of all the nations of antiquity, and the fame that they possess and the position had made considerable progress in the arts that they hold among the six or seven leading and sciences before their conquest by the nations of the old world. Persians, is generally admitted. The classical

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The architecture of the Babylonians seems to said that the temple-towers were used not have culminated in the Temple. While their merely for religious purposes but also as palaces, their bridges, their walls, even their observatories, a use with a view to which this private houses were remarkable, their arrangement of their position would have grandest works, their most elaborate efforts, been serviceable. were dedicated to the honor and service, not Besides the shrine at the summit of the of man, but of God. The Temple takes in temple-tower or ziggurat, there was Babylonia the same sort of rank which it has commonly at the base of the tower, or at any in Egypt and in Greece. It is not, as in Assyria, rate somewhere within the enclosure, a a mere adjunct of the palace. It stands by second shrine or chapel, in which the itself, in proud independence, as the great ordinary worshipper, who wished to spare building of a city, or a part of a city; it is, if not himself the long ascent, made his offerings. absolutely larger, at any rate loftier and more Here again the ornamentation was most conspicuous than any other edifice: it often costly, lavish use being made of the precious boasts a magnificent adornment: the value of metals for images and other furniture. Altars the offerings which are deposited in it is of different sizes were placed in the open air enormous: in every respect it rivals the in the vicinity of this lower shrine, on which palace, while in some it has a decided were sacrificed different classes of victims, preeminence. It draws all eyes by its superior gold being used occasionally as the material height and sometimes by its costly of the altar. ornamentation; it inspires awe by the The general appearance of a Babylonian religious associations which belong to it; temple, or at any rate of its chief feature, the finally, it is a stronghold as well as a place of tower or _ziggurat_, will be best gathered worship, and may furnish a refuge to from a more particular description of a single thousands in the time of danger. building of the kind; and the building which it A Babylonian temple seems to have stood will be most convenient to take for that commonly within a walled enclosure. In the purpose is that remarkable edifice which case of the great temple of Belus at Babylon, strikes moderns with more admiration than the enclosure is said to have been a square of any other now existing in the country, and two stades each way, or, in other words, to which has also been more completely and have contained an area of thirty acres. The more carefully examined than any other temple itself ordinarily consisted of two Babylonian ruins--the Birs-i-Nimrud, or parts. Its most essential feature was a ancient temple of Nebo at Borsippa. The plan _ziggurat_, or tower, which was either square, of this tower has been almost completely or at any rate rectangular, and built in stages, made out from data still existing on the spot; the smallest number of such stages being two, and a restoration of the original building may and the largest known number seven. At the be given with a near approach to certainty. summit of the tower was probably in every Upon a platform of crude brick, raised a few case a shrine, or chapel, of greater or less size, feet above the level of the alluvial plain, was containing altars and images. The ascent to built the first or basement stage of the great this was on the outside of the towers, which edifice, an exact square, 272 feet each way, were entirely solid; and it generally wound and probably twenty-six feet in perpendicular round the different faces of the towers, height. On this was erected a second stage of ascending them either by means of steps or exactly the same height, but a square of only by an inclined plane. Special care was taken 230 feet; which however was not placed with regard to the emplacement of the tower, exactly in the middle of the first, but further either its sides or its angles being made from its northeastern than its south-western exactly to confront the cardinal points. It is

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edge, twelve feet only from the one and thirty stage, assigned to the Sun, appears to have feet from the other. The third stage, which been actually covered with thin plates of gold; was imposed in the same way upon the the fifth, the stage of Venus, received a pale second, was also twenty-six feet high, and yellow tint from the employment of bricks of was a square of 188 feet. Thus far the plan that hue; the sixth, the sphere of Mercury, had been uniform and without any variety; was given an azure tint by vitrification, the but at this point an alteration took place. The whole stage having been subjected to an height of the fourth stage, instead of being intense heat after it was erected, whereby the twenty-six, was only fifteen feet. In other bricks composing it were converted into a respects however the old numbers were mass of blue slag; the seventh stage, that of maintained; the fourth stage was diminished the Moon, was probably, like the fourth, equally with the others, and was coated with actual plates of metal. Thus the consequently a square of 146 feet. It was building rose up in stripes of varied color, emplaced upon the stage below it exactly as arranged almost as nature's cunning arranges the former stages had been. The remaining hues in the rainbow, tones of red coming first, stages probably followed the same rule of succeeded by a broad stripe of yellow, the diminution--the fifth being a square of 104, yellow being followed by blue. Above this the the sixth one of 24, and the seventh one of 20 glowing silvery summit melted into the bright feet. Each of these stages had a height of sheen of the sky. fifteen feet. Upon the seventh or final stage The faces of the various stages were, as a was erected the shrine or tabernacle, which general rule, flat and unbroken, unless it were was probably also fifteen feet high, and about by a stair or ascent, of which however there the same length and breadth. Thus the entire has been found no trace. But there were two height of the building, allowing three feet for exceptions to this general plainness. The the crude brick platform, was 150 feet. basement stage was indented with a number The ornamentation of the edifice was chiefly of shallow squared recesses, which seem to by means of color. The seven stages have been intended for a decoration. The face represented the Seven Spheres, in which of the third stage was weak on account of its moved (according to ancient Chaldean material, which was brick but half-burnt. astronomy) the seven planets. To each planet Here then the builders, not for ornament's fancy, partly grounding itself upon fact, had sake, but to strengthen their work, gave to the from of old assigned a peculiar tint or hue. wall the support of a number of shallow The Sun was golden, the Moon silver; the buttresses. They also departed from their distant Saturn, almost beyond the region of usual practice, by substituting for the rigid light, was black; Jupiter was orange the fiery perpendicular of the other faces a slight slope Mars was red; Venus was a pale Naples outwards for some distance from the base. yellow; Mercury a deep blue. The seven These arrangements, which are apparently stages of the tower, like the seven walls of part of the original work, and not remedies Ecbatana, gave a visible embodiment to these applied subsequently, imply considerable fancies. The basement stage, assigned to knowledge of architectural principles on the Saturn, was blackened by means of a coating part of the builders, and no little ingenuity in of bitumen spread over the face of the turning architectural resources to account. masonry; the second stage, assigned to With respect to the shrine which was Jupiter, obtained the appropriate orange emplaced upon the topmost, or silver stage, color by means of a facing of burnt bricks of little is definitely known. It appears to have that hue; the third stage, that of Mars, was been of brick; and we may perhaps conclude made blood-red by the use of half-burnt from the analogy of the old Chaldean shrines bricks formed of a bright red clay; the fourth at the summits of towers, as well as from that

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of the Belus shrine at Babylon, that it was think of restoring the plan or elevation of this richly ornamented both within and without; part of the temple. but it is impossible to state anything as to the From the temples of the Babylonians we may exact character of the ornamentation. now pass to their palaces--constructions The tower is to be regarded as fronting to the inferior in height and grandeur, but covering north-east, the coolest side and that least a greater space, involving a larger amount of exposed to the sun's rays from the time that labor, and admitting of more architectural they become oppressive in Babylonia. On this variety. Unfortunately the palaces have side was the ascent, which consisted probably suffered from the ravages of time even more of abroad staircase extending along the whole than the temples, and in considering their front of the building. The side platforms plan and character we obtain little help from (those towards the south-east and north- the existing remains. Still, something may be west)--at any rate of the first and second learnt of them from this source, and where it stages, probably of all--were occupied by a fails we may perhaps be allowed to eke out series of chambers abutting upon the the scantiness of our materials by drawing perpendicular wall, as the priests' chambers from the elaborate descriptions of Diodorus of Solomon's temple abutted upon the side such points as have probability in their favor. walls of that building. In these were doubtless The Babylonian palace, like the Assyrian, and lodged the priests and other attendants upon the Susianian, stood upon a lofty mound or the temple service. The side chambers seem platform. This arrangement provided at once sometimes to have communicated with for safety, for enjoyment, and for health. It vaulted apartments within the solid mass of secured a pure air, freedom from the the structure, like those of which we hear in molestation of insects, and a position only the structure supporting the "hanging assailable at a few points. The ordinary shape gardens." It is possible that there may have of the palace mound appears to have been been internal stair-cases, connecting the square; its elevation was probably not less vaulted apartments of one stage with those of than fifty or sixty feet. It was composed another; but the ruin has not yet been mainly of sun-dried bricks, which however sufficiently explored for us to determine were almost certainly enclosed externally by whether or not there was such a facing of burnt brick, and may have been communication. further strengthened within by walls of the The great Tower is thought to have been same material, which perhaps traversed the approached through a vestibule of whole mound. The entire mass seems to have considerable size. Towards the north-east the been carefully drained, and the collected existing ruin is prolonged in an irregular waters were conveyed through subterranean manner and it is imagined that this channels to the level of the plain at the prolongation marks the site of a vestibule or mound's base. The summit of the platform propylaeum, originally distinct from the was no doubt paved, either with stone or tower, but now, through the crumbling down burnt brick--mainly, it is probable, with the of both buildings, confused with its ruins. As latter; since the former material was scarce, no scientific examination has been made of and though a certain number of stone this part of the mound, the above supposition pavement slabs have been found, they are too can only be regarded as a conjecture. Possibly rare and scattered to imply anything like the the excrescence does not so much mark a general use of stone paving. Upon the vestibule as a second shrine, like that which is platform, most likely towards the centre, rose said to have existed at the foot of the Belus the actual palace, not built (like the Assyrian Tower at Babylon. Till, however, additional palaces) of crude brick faced with a better researches have been made, it is in vain to material, but constructed wholly of the finest

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and hardest burnt brick laid in a mortar of of the walls adjoining the ceiling. Altogether, extreme tenacity, with walls of enormous such evidence as exists favors the notion that thickness, parallel to the sides of the mound, the Babylonian palace, in its character and and meeting each other at right angles. general arrangements, resembled the Neither the ground-plan nor the elevation of a Assyrian, with only the two differences, that Babylonian palace can be given; nor can even Babylonian was wholly constructed of burnt a conjectural restoration of such a building be brick, while in the Assyrian the sun-dried made, since the small fragment of material was employed to a large extent; and, Nebuchadnezzar's palace which remains has further, that in Babylonia the decoration of defied all attempts to reduce it to system. We the walls was made, not by slabs of alabaster, can only say that the lines of the building which did not exist in the country, but were straight; that the walls rose, at any rate mainly--almost entirely--by colored to a considerable height, without windows; representations upon the brickwork. and that the flatness of the straight line was Among the adjuncts of the principal palace at broken by numerous buttresses and pilasters. Babylon was the remarkable construction We have also evidence that occasionally there known to the Greeks and Romans as "the was an ornamentation of the building, either Hanging Garden." The accounts which, within or without, by means of sculptured Diodorus, Strabo, and Q. Curtius give of this stone slabs, on which were represented structure are not perhaps altogether figures of a small size, carefully wrought. The trustworthy; still, it is probable that they are general ornamentation, however, external as in the main at least founded on fact. We may well as internal, we may well believe to have safely believe that a lofty structure was raised been such as Diodorus states, colored at Babylon on several tiers of arches, which representations on brick of war-scenes, and supported at the top a mass of earth, wherein hunting-scenes, the counterparts in a certain grew, not merely flowers and shrubs, but sense of those magnificent bas-reliefs which trees of a considerable size. The Assyrians everywhere clothed the walls of palaces in had been in the habit of erecting structures of Assyria. It has been already noticed that a somewhat similar kind, artificial elevations abundant remains of such representations to support a growth of trees and shrubs; but have been found upon the Kasr mound. They they were content to place their garden at the seem to have alternated with cuneiform summit of a single row of pillars or arches, inscriptions, in white on a blue ground, or and thus to give it a very moderate height. At else with a patterning of rosettes in the same Babylon the object was to produce an colors. artificial imitation of a mountain. For this Of the general arrangement of the royal purpose several tiers of arches were palaces, of their height, their number of necessary; and these appear to have been stories, their roofing, and their lighting, we constructed in the manner of a Roman know absolutely nothing. The statement amphitheatre, one directly over another so made by Herodotus, that many of the private that the outer wall formed from summit to houses in the town had three or four stories, base a single perpendicular line. Of the height would naturally lead us to suppose that the of the structure various accounts are given, palaces were built similarly; but no ancient while no writer reports the number of the author tells us that this was so. The fact that tiers of arches. Hence there are no sufficient the walls which exist, though of considerable data for a reconstruction of the edifice. height, show no traces of windows, would Of the walls and bridge of Babylon, and of the seem to imply that the lighting, as in Assyria, ordinary houses of the people, little more is was from the top of the apartment, either known than has been already reported in the from the ceiling, or from apertures in the part general description of the capital. It does not

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appear that they possessed any very great however, there was a departure from this architectural merit. Some skill was shown in practice. Rows of bricks were placed constructing the piers of the bridge, which vertically, separated from one another by presented an angle to the current and then a single horizontal layers. This arrangement curved line, along which the water slid gently. seems to have been regarded as conducing to The loftiness of the houses, which were of strength, since it occurs only where there is three or four stories, is certainly surprising, an evident intention of supporting a weak since Oriental houses have very rarely more construction by the use of special than two stories. Their construction, architectural expedients. however, seems to have been rude; and the The Babylonian builders made use of three pillars especially--posts of palm, surrounded different kinds of cement. The most with wisps of rushes, and then plastered and indifferent was crude clay, or mud, which was painted--indicate a low condition of taste and mixed with chopped straw, to give it greater a poor and coarse style of domestic tenacity, and was applied in layers of architecture. extraordinary thickness. This was (it is The material used by the Babylonians in their probable) employed only where it was constructions seems to have been almost requisite that the face of the building should entirely brick. Like the early Chaldeans, they have a certain color. A cement superior to employed bricks of two kinds, both the ruder clay, but not of any very high value, unless as sun-dried sort, and the very superior kiln- a preventive against damp, was bitumen, baked article. The former, however, was only which was very generally used in basements applied to platforms, and to the interior of and in other structures exposed to the action palace mounds and of very thick walls, and of water. Mortar, however, or lime cement was never made by the later people the sole was far more commonly employed than material of a building. In every case there was either of the others, and was of very excellent at least a revetment of kiln-dried brick, while quality, equal indeed to the best Roman the grander buildings were wholly material. constructed of it. The baked bricks used were There can be no doubt that the general effect of several different qualities, and (within of the more ambitious efforts of the rather narrow limits) of different sizes. The Babylonian architects was grand and finest quality of brick was yellow, imposing. Even now, in their desolation and approaching to our Stourbridge or fire-brick; ruin, their great size renders them another very hard kind was blue, approaching impressive; and there are times and states of to black; the commoner and coarser sorts atmosphere under which they fill the were pink or red, and these were sometimes, beholder with a sort of admiring awe, akin to though rarely, but half-baked, in which case the feeling which is called forth by the they were weak and friable. The shape was contemplation of the great works of nature. always square; and the dimensions varied Rude and inartificial in their idea and general between twelve and fourteen inches for the construction, without architectural length and breadth, and between three and embellishment, without variety, without any four inches for the thickness. At the corners beauty of form, they yet affect men by their of buildings, half-bricks were used in the mere mass, producing a direct impression of alternate rows, since otherwise the joining sublimity, and at the same time arousing a must have been all one exactly over another. sentiment of wonder at the indomitable The bricks were always made with a mold, perseverance which from materials so and were commonly stamped on one face unpromising could produce such gigantic with an inscription. They were, of course, results. In their original condition, when they ordinarily laid horizontally. Sometimes, were adorned with color, with a lavish

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display of the precious metals, with pictured seems to show that, while the general form of representations of human life, and perhaps the animal was tolerably well hit off, the with statuary of a rough kind, they must have proportions were in some respects added to the impression produced by size a misconceived, and the details not only rudely sense of richness and barbaric magnificence. but incorrectly rendered. The extreme The African spirit, which loves gaudy hues shortness of the legs and the extreme and costly ornament, was still strong among thickness of the tail are the most prominent the Babylonians, even after they had been errors; there is also great awkwardness in the Semitized; and by the side of Assyria, her whole representation of the beast's shoulder. colder and more correct northern sister, The head is so mutilated that it is impossible Babylonia showed herself a true child of the to do more than conjecture its contour. Still south--rich, glowing, careless of the laws of the whole figure is not without a certain air of taste, bent on provoking admiration by the grandeur and majesty. dazzling brilliancy of her appearance. The human appears to be inferior to the It is difficult to form a decided opinion as to animal form. The prostrate man is altogether the character of Babylonian mimetic art. The shapeless, and can never, it would seem, have specimens discovered are so few, so been very much better than it is at the fragmentary, and in some instances so worn present time. by time and exposure, that we have scarcely Modeled figures in clay are of rare the means of doing justice to the people in occurrence. The best is one figured by Ker respect of this portion of their civilization. Porter, which represents a mother with a Setting aside the intaglios on seals and gems, child in her arms. The mother is seated in a which have such a general character of natural and not ungraceful attitude on a quaintness and grotesqueness, or at any rate rough square pedestal. She is naked except of formality, that we can scarcely look upon for a hood, or mantilla, which covers the head, many of them as the serious efforts of artists shoulders, and back, and a narrow apron doing their best, we possess not half a dozen which hangs down in front. She wears specimens of the mimetic art of the people in earrings and a bracelet. The child, which question. We have one sculpture in the round, sleeps on her left shoulder, wears a shirt open one or two modeled clay figures, a few bas- in front, and a short but full tunic, which is reliefs, one figure of a king engraved on stone, gathered into plaits. Both figures are in and a few animal forms represented the same simple and natural taste, but the limbs of the material. Nothing more has reached us but infant are somewhat too thin and delicate. fragments of pictorial representations too The statuette is about three inches and a half small for criticism to pronounce upon, and high, and shows signs of having been covered descriptions of ancient writers too with a tinted glaze. incomplete to be of any great value. The single figure of a king which we possess The single Babylonian sculpture in the round is clumsy and ungraceful. It is chiefly which has come down to our times is the remarkable for the elaborate ornamentation colossal lion standing over the prostrate of the head-dress and the robes, which have a figure of a man, which is still to be seen on the finish equal to that of the best Assyrian Kasr mound, as has been already mentioned. specimens. The general proportions are not The accounts of travelers uniformly state that bad; but the form is stiff, and the drawing of it is a work of no merit--either barbarously the right hand is peculiarly faulty, since it executed, or left unfinished by the sculptor-- would be scarcely possible to hold arrows in and probably much worn by exposure to the the manner represented. weather. A sketch made by a recent visitor and kindly communicated to the author,

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The engraved animal forms have a certain It is a drawing in two portions. The upper line amount of merit. The figure of a dog sitting, of figures represents a procession of which is common on the "black stones," is worshippers who bear in solemn state their drawn with spirit; and a bird, sometimes offerings to a god. In the lower line this regarded as a cock, but more resembling a occupation is turned to a jest. Nondescript bustard, is touched with a delicate hand, and animals bring with a serio-comic air offerings may be pronounced superior to any Assyrian which consist chiefly of game, while a man in representation of the feathered tribe. The a mask seeks to steal away the sacred tree hound on a bas-relief, given in the first from the temple wherein the scene is enacted. volume of this work, is also good; and the It is probable that the most elaborate and cylinders exhibit figures of goats, cows, deer, most artistic of the Babylonian works of art and even monkeys, which are truthful and were of a kind which has almost wholly meritorious. perished. What bas-relief was to the Assyrian, It has been observed that the main what painting is to moderns, that enameling characteristic of the engravings on gems and upon brick appears to have been to the cylinders, considered as works of mimetic art, people of Babylon. The mimetic power, which is their quaintness and grotesqueness. A few delights in representing to itself the forms specimens, taken almost at random from the and actions of men, found a vent in this admirable collection of M. Felix Lajard, will curious byway of the graphic art; and the sufficiently illustrate this feature. In one the images of the Chaldeans, portrayed upon the central position is occupied by a human wall, with vermilion, and other hues, formed figure whose left arm has two elbow-joints, the favorite adornment of palaces and public while towards the right two sitting figures buildings, at once employing the artist, threaten one another with their fists, in the gratifying the taste of the native connoisseur, upper quarter, and in the lower two and attracting the admiration of the foreigner. nondescript animals do the same with their The artistic merit of these works can only be jaws. The entire drawing of this design seems conjectured. The admiration of the Jews, or to be intentionally rude. The faces of the main even that of Diodorus, who must be viewed figures are evidently intended to be here as the echo of Ctesias, is no sure test; for ridiculous; and the heads of the two animals the Jews were a people very devoid of true are extravagantly grotesque. On another artistic appreciation; and Ctesias was bent on cylinder three nondescript animals play the exaggerating the wonders of foreign principal part. One of them is on the point of countries to the Greeks. The fact of the taking into his mouth the head of a man who excellence of Assyrian art at a somewhat vainly tries to escape by flight. Another, with earlier date lends however support to the the head of a pike, tries to devour the third, view that the wall-painting of the Babylonians which has the head of a bird and the body of a had some real artistic excellence. We can goat. This kind intention seems to be disputed scarcely suppose that there was any very by a naked man with a long beard, who seizes material difference, in respect of taste and the fish-headed monster with his right hand, aesthetic power, between the two cognate and at the same time administers from nations, or that the Babylonians under behind a severe kick with his right foot. The Nebuchadnezzar fell very greatly short of the heads of the three main monsters, the tail and Assyrians under Asshur-bani-pal. It is evident trousers of the principal one, and the whole of that the same subjects--war scenes and the small figure in front of the flying man, are hunting scenes--approved themselves to both exceedingly quaint, and remind one of the people; and it is likely that their treatment pencil of Fuseli. The third of the designs was not very different. Even in the matter of approaches nearly to the modern caricature. color, the contrast was not sharp nor strong;

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for the Assyrians partially colored their bas- It is conjectured that the bricks were not reliefs. modeled singly and separately. A large mass Though tints chiefly employed by the of clay was (it is thought) taken, sufficient to Babylonians in their colored representations contain a whole subject, or at any rate a were white, blue, yellow, brown, and black. considerable portion of a subject. On this the The blue was of different shades, sometimes modeler made out his design in low relief. bright and deep, sometimes exceedingly pale. The mass of clay was then cut up into bricks, The yellow was somewhat dull, resembling and each brick was taken and painted our yellow ochre. The brown was this same separately with the proper colors, after which hue darkened. In comparatively rare they were all placed in the furnace and baked. instances the Babylonians made use of a red, When baked, they were restored to their which they probably obtained with some original places in the design, a thin layer of difficulty. Objects were colored, as nearly as the finest mortar serving to keep them in possible, according to their natural tints-- place. water a light blue, ground yellow, the shafts From the mimetic art of the Babylonians, and of spears black, lions a tawny brown, etc. No the branches of knowledge connected with it, attempt was made to shade the figures or the we may now pass to the purely mechanical landscape, much less to produce any general arts--as the art by which hard stones were effect by means of _chiaroscuro_; but the cut, and those of agriculture, metallurgy, artist trusted for his effect to a careful pottery, weaving, carpet-making, embroidery, delineation of forms, and a judicious and the like. arrangement of simple hues. The stones shaped, bored, and engraved by Considerable metallurgic knowledge and skill Babylonian artisans were not merely the were shown in the composition of the softer and more easily worked kinds, as pigments, and the preparation and alabaster, serpentine, and lapis-lazuli, but application of the glaze wherewith they are also the harder sorts-cornelian, agate, quartz, covered. The red used was a sub-oxide of jasper, sienite, loadstone, and green feldspar copper; the yellow was sometimes oxide of or amazon-stone. These can certainly not iron, sometimes antimonite of lead--the have been cut without emery, and scarcely Naples yellow of modern artists; the blue was without such devices as rapidly revolving either cobalt or oxide of copper; the white points, or discs, of the kind used by modern was oxide of tin. Oxide of load was added in lapidaries. Though the devices are in general some cases, not as a coloring matter, but as a rude, the work is sometimes exceedingly flux, to facilitate the fusion of the glaze. In delicate, and implies a complete mastery over other cases the pigment used was covered tools and materials, as well as a good deal of with a vitreous coat of an alkaline silicate of artistic power. As far as the mechanical part alumina. of the art goes, the Babylonians may The pigments were not applied to an entirely challenge comparison with the most flat surface. Prior to the reception of the advanced of the nations of antiquity; they coloring matter and the glaze, each brick was decidedly excel the Egyptians, and fall little, if modeled by the hand, the figures being at all, short of the Greeks and Romans. carefully traced out, and a slight elevation The extreme minuteness of the work in some given to the more important objects. A very of the Babylonian seals and gems raises a low bas-relief was thus produced, to which suspicion that they must have been engraved the colors were subsequently applied, and the by the help of a powerful magnifying-glass. A brick was then baked in the furnace. lens has been found in Assyria; and there is much reason to believe that the convenience

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was at least as well known in the lower The metal-work of personal ornaments, such country. Glass was certainly in use, and was as bracelets and armlets, and again that of cut into such shapes as were required. It is at dagger handles, seems to have resembled the any rate exceedingly likely that magnifying- work of the Assyrians. glasses, which were undoubtedly known to Small figures in bronze were occasionally cast the Greeks in the time of Aristophanes, were by the Babylonians, which were sometimes employed by the artisans of Babylon during probably used as amulets, while perhaps the most flourishing period of the Empire. more generally they wore mere ornaments of Of Babylonian metal-work we have scarcely houses, furniture, and the like. Among these any direct means of judging. The accounts of may be noticed figures of dogs in a sitting ancient authors imply that the Babylonians posture, much resembling the dog dealt freely with the material, using gold and represented among the constellations, figures silver for statues, furniture, and utensils, of men, grotesque in character, and figures of bronze for gates and images, and iron monsters. An interesting specimen, which sometimes for the latter. We may assume that combines a man and a monster, was found by they likewise employed bronze and iron for Sir R. Ker Porter at Babylon. tools and weapons, since those metals were The pottery of the Babylonians was of certainly so used by the Assyrians. Lead was excellent quality, and is scarcely to be made of service in building; where iron was distinguished from the Assyrian, which it also employed, if great strength was needed. resembles alike in form and in material. The The golden images are said to have been bricks of the best period were on the whole sometimes solid, in which case we must better than any used in the sister country, and suppose them to have been cast in a mold; but may compare for hardness and fineness with undoubtedly in most cases the gold was a the best Roman. The earthenware is of a fine mere external covering, and was applied in terra-cotta, generally of a light red color, and plates, which were hammered into shape slightly baked, but occasionally of a yellow upon some cheaper substance below. Silver hue, with a tinge of green. It consists of cups, was no doubt used also in plates, more jars, vases, and other vessels. They appear to especially when applied externally to walls, have been made upon the wheel, and are in or internally to the woodwork of palaces; but general unornamented. From representations the silver images, ornamental figures, and upon the cylinders, it appears that the shapes utensils of which we hear, were most were often elegant. Long and narrow vases probably solid. The bronze works must have with thin necks seem to have been used for been remarkable. We are told that both the water vessels; these had rounded or pointed town and the palace gates were of this bases, and required therefore the support of a material, and it is implied that the latter were stand. Thin jugs were also in use, with slight too heavy to be opened in the ordinary elegant handles. It is conjectured that manner. Castings on an enormous scale sometimes modeled figures may have been would be requisite for such purposes; and the introduced at the sides as handles to the Babylonians must thus have possessed the art vases; but neither the cylinders nor the extant of running into a single mold vast masses of remains confirm this supposition. The only metal. Probably the gates here mentioned ornamentation hitherto observed consists in were solid; but occasionally, it would seem, a double band which seems to have been the Babylonians had gates of a different kind, carried round some of the vases in an composed of a number of perpendicular bars, incomplete spiral. The vases sometimes have united by horizontal ones above and below . two handles; but they are plain and small, They had also, it would appear, metal adding nothing to the beauty of the vessels. gateways of a similar character.

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Occasionally the whole vessel is glazed with a linen cloth, the principal seat of the rich blue color. manufacture being Borsippa. This material The Babylonians certainly employed glass for was produced, it is probable, chiefly for home vessels for a small size. They appear not to consumption, long linen robes being have been very skilful blowers, since their generally worn by the people. bottles are not infrequently misshapen. They From the arts of the Babylonians we may now generally stained their glass with, some pass to their science--an obscure subject, but coloring matter, and occasionally ornamented one which possesses more than common it with a ribbing. Whether they were able to interest. If the classical writers were correct form masses of glass of any considerable size, in their belief that Chaldea was the birthplace whether they used it, like the Egyptians, for of Astronomy, and that their own beads and bugles, or for mosaics, is uncertain. astronomical science was derived mainly If we suppose a foundation in fact for Pliny's from this quarter, it must be well worth story of the great emerald (?) presented by a inquiry what the amount of knowledge was king of Babylon to an Egyptian Pharaoh, we which the Babylonians attained on the must conclude that very considerable masses subject, and what were the means whereby of glass were produced by the Babylonians, at they made their discoveries. least occasionally; for the said emerald, which On the broad flat plains of Chaldea, where the can scarcely have been of any other material, entire celestial hemisphere is continually was four cubits (or six feet) long and three visible to every eye, and the clear transparent cubits (or four and a half feet) broad. atmosphere shows night after night the Of all the productions of the Babylonians heavens gemmed with countless stars, each none obtained such, high repute in ancient shining with a brilliancy unknown in our times as their textile fabrics. Their carpets moist northern climes, the attention of man especially were of great celebrity, and were was naturally turned earlier than elsewhere largely exported to foreign countries. They to these luminous bodies, and attempts were were dyed of various colors, and represented made to grasp, and reduce to scientific form, objects similar to those found on the gems, as the array of facts which nature presented to griffins and such like monsters. Their position the eye in a confused and tangled mass. It in the ancient world may be compared to that required no very long course of observation which is now borne by the fabrics of Turkey to acquaint men with a truth, which at first and Persia, which are deservedly preferred to sight none would have suspected--namely, those of all other countries. that the luminous points whereof the sky was Next to their carpets, the highest, character full were of two kinds, some always was borne by their muslins. Formed of the maintaining the same position relatively to finest cotton, and dyed of the most brilliant one another, while others were constantly colors, they seemed to the Oriental the very changing their places, and as it were best possible material for dress. The Persian wandering about the sky. It is certain that the kings preferred them for their own wear; and Babylonians at a very early date distinguished they had an early fame in foreign countries at from the fixed stars those remarkable five, a considerable distance from Babylonia. It is which, from their wandering propensities, the probable that they were sometimes Greeks called the "planets," and which are the embroidered with delicate patterns, such as only erratic stars that the naked eye, or that those which may be seen on the garments of even the telescope, except at a very high the early Babylonian kings. power, can discern. With these five they were soon led to class the Moon, which was easily Besides woolen and cotton fabrics, the observed to be a wandering luminary, Babylonians also manufactured a good deal of changing her place among the fixed stars with

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remarkable rapidity. Ultimately, it came to be constellations or asterisms. The very system perceived that the Sun too rose and set at of uranography which maintains itself to the different parts of the year in the present day on our celestial globes and maps, neighborhood of different constellations, and and which is still acknowledged--albeit under that consequently the great luminary was protest--in the nomenclature of scientific itself also a wanderer, having a path in the astronomers, came in all probability from this sky which it was possible, by means of careful source, reaching us from the Arabians, who observation, to mark out. took it from the Greeks who derived it from But to do this, to mark out with accuracy the the Babylonians. The Zodiacal constellations courses of the Sun and Moon among the fixed at any rate, or those through which the sun's stars, it was necessary, or at least convenient, course lies would seem to have had this to arrange the stars themselves into groups. origin; and many of them may be distinctly Thus, too, and thus only, was it possible to recognized on Babylonian monuments which give form and order to the chaotic confusion are plainly of a stellar character. The in which the stars seem at first sight to lie, accompanying representation, taken from a owing to the irregularity of their intervals, the conical black stone in the British Museum , difference in their magnitude, and their and belonging to the twelfth century before apparent countlessness. The most our era, is not perhaps, strictly speaking, a uneducated eye, when raised to the starry zodiac, but it is almost certainly an heavens on a clear night, fixes here and there arrangement of constellations according to upon groups of stars: in the north, Cassiopeia, the forms assigned them in Babylonian the Great Bear, the Pleiades--below the uranography. The Ram, the Bull, the Scorpion, Equator, the Southern Cross--must at all the Serpent, the Dog, the Arrow, the Eagle or times have impressed those who beheld them Vulture may all be detected on the stone in with a certain sense of unity. Thus the idea of question, as may similar forms variously a "constellation" is formed; and this once arranged on other similar monuments. done, the mind naturally progresses in the The Babylonians called the Zodiacal same direction, and little by little the whole constellations the "Houses of the Sun," and sky is mapped out into certain portions or distinguished from them another set of districts to which names are given--names asterisms, which they denominated the taken from some resemblance, real or "Houses of the Moon." As the Sun and Moon fancied, between the shapes of the several both move through the sky in nearly the same groups and objects familiar to the early plane, the path of the Moon merely crossing observers. This branch of practical astronomy and recrossing that of the Sun, but never is termed "uranography" by moderns; its diverging from it further than a few degrees, utility is very considerable; thus and thus it would seem that these "Houses of the only can we particularize the individual stars Moon," or lunar asterisms, must have been a of which we wish to speak; thus and thus only division of the Zodiacal stars different from can we retain in our memory the general that employed with respect to the sun, either arrangement of the stars and their positions in the number of the "Houses," or in the point relatively to each other. There is reason to of separation between "House" and "House." believe that in the early Babylonian The Babylonians observed and calculated astronomy the subject of uranography eclipses; but their power of calculation does occupied a prominent place. The Chaldean not seem to have been based on scientific astronomers not only seized on and named knowledge, nor to have necessarily implied those natural groups which force themselves sound views as to the nature of eclipses or as upon the eye, but artificially arranged the to the size, distance, and real motions of the whole heavens into a certain number of heavenly bodies. The knowledge which they

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possessed was empirical. Their habits of and a quarter, nearly. They noticed comets, observation led them to discover the period which they believed to be permanent bodies, of 223 lunations or 18 years 10 days, after revolving in orbits like those of the planets, which eclipses--especially those of the moon-- only greater. They ascribed eclipses of the recur again in the same order. Their sun to the interposition of the moon between acquaintance with this cycle would enable the sun and the earth. They had notions not them to predict lunar eclipses with accuracy far from the truth with respect to the relative for many ages, and solar eclipses without distance from the earth of the sun, moon, and much inaccuracy for the next cycle or two. planets. Adopting, as was natural, a That the Babylonians carefully noted and geocentric system, they decided that the recorded eclipses is witnessed by Ptolemy, Moon occupied the position nearest to the who had access to a continuous series of such earth; that beyond the Moon was Mercury, observations reaching back from his own beyond Mercury Venus, beyond Venus Mars, time to B.C. 747. Five of these--all eclipses of beyond Mars Jupiter, and beyond Jupiter, in the moon--were described by Hipparchus the remotest position of all, Saturn. This from Babylonian sources, and are found to arrangement was probably based upon a answer all the requirements of modern knowledge, more or less exact, of the periodic science. They belong to the years B.C. 721, times which the several bodies occupy in 720, 621, and 523. One of them, that of B.C. their (real or apparent) revolutions. From the 721, was total at Babylon. The others were difference in the times the Babylonians partial, the portion of the moon obscured assumed a corresponding difference in the varying from one digit to seven. size of the orbits, and consequently a greater or less distance from the common centre. There is no reason to think that the observation of eclipses by the Babylonians Thus far the astronomical achievements of commenced with Nabonassar. Ptolemy the Babylonians rest upon the express indeed implies that the series extant in his testimony of ancient writers--a testimony day went no higher; but this is to be confirmed in many respects by the accounted for by the fact, which Berosus monuments already deciphered. It is mentioned, that Nabonassar destroyed, as far suspected that, when the astronomical tablets as he was able, the previously existing which exist by hundreds in the British observations, in order that exact chronology Museum come to be thoroughly understood, might commence with his own reign. it will be found that the acquaintance of the Chaldean sages with astronomical Other astronomical achievements of the phenomena, if not also with astronomical Babylonians were the following. They laws, went considerably beyond the point at accomplished a catalogue of the fixed stars, of which we should place it upon the testimony which the Greeks made use in compiling their of the Greek and Roman writers. There is said stellar tables. They observed and recorded to be distinct evidence that they observed the their observations upon occultations of the four satellites of Jupiter, and strong reason to planets by the sun and moon. They invented believe that they were acquainted likewise the _gnomon_ and the _polos_, two kinds of with the seven satellites of Saturn. Moreover, sundial, by means of which they were able to the general laws of the movements of the measure time during the day, and to fix the heavenly bodies seem to have been so far true length of the solar day, with sufficient known to them that they could state by accuracy. They determined correctly within a anticipation the position of the various small fraction the length of the synodic planets throughout the year. revolution of the moon. They knew that the true length of the solar year was 365 days In order to attain the astronomical knowledge which they seem to have possessed, the

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Babylonians must undoubtedly have not only upon the seasons, but upon the lives employed a certain number of instruments. and actions of men--an influence which it was The invention of sun-dials, as already possible to discover and to foretell by observed, is distinctly assigned to them. prolonged and careful observation. The Besides these contrivances for measuring ancient writers, Biblical and other, state this time during the day, it is almost certain that fact in the strongest way; and the extant they must have possessed means of astronomical remains distinctly confirm it. measuring time during the night. The The great majority of the tablets are of an clepsydra, or water-clock, which was in astrological character, recording the common use among the Greeks as early as the supposed influence of the heavenly bodies, fifth century before our era, was probably singly, in conjunction, or in opposition, upon introduced into Greece from the East, and is all sublunary affairs, from the fate of empires likely to have been a Babylonian invention. to the washing of hands or the paring of nails. The astrolabe, an instrument for measuring The modern prophetical almanac is the the altitude of stars above the horizon, which legitimate descendant and the sufficient was known to Ptolemy, may also reasonably representative of the ancient Chaldee be assigned to them. It has generally been Ephemeris, which was just as silly, just as assumed that they were wholly ignorant of pretentious, and just as worthless. the telescope. But if the satellites of Saturn The Chaldee astrology primarily inquired are really mentioned, as it is thought that they under what aspect of the heavens persons are, upon some of the tablets, it will follow-- were born, or conceived, and, from the strange as it may seem to us--that the position of the celestial bodies at one or other Babylonians possessed optical instruments of of these moments, it professed to deduce the the nature of telescopes, since it is impossible, whole life and fortunes of the individual. even in the clear and vapor-loss sky of According to Diodorus, it was believed that a Chaldea, to discern the faint moons of that particular star or constellation presided over distant planet without lenses. A lens, it must the birth of each person, and thenceforward be remembered, with a fair magnifying exercised over his life a special malign or power, has been discovered among the benignant influence. But his lot depended, not Mesopotamian ruins. A people ingenious on this star alone, but on the entire aspect of enough to discover the magnifying-glass the heavens at a certain moment. To cast the would be naturally led on to the invention of horoscope was to reproduce this aspect, and its opposite. When once lenses of the two then to read by means of it the individual's contrary kinds existed, the elements of a future. telescope were in being. We could not assume The Chaldeans professed to predict from the from these data that the discovery was made; stars such things as the changes of the but if it shall ultimately be substantiated that weather, high winds and storms, great heats, bodies invisible to the naked eye were the appearance of comets, eclipses, observed by the Babylonians, we need feel no earthquakes, and the like. They published difficulty in ascribing to them the possession lists of luck and unlucky days, and tables of some telescopic instrument. showing what aspect of the heavens The astronomical zeal of the Babylonians was portended good or evil to particular in general, it must be confessed, no simple countries. Curiously enough, it appears that and pure love of an abstract science. A school they regarded their art as locally limited to of pure astronomers existed among them; but the regions inhabited by themselves and their the bulk of those who engaged in the study kinsmen, so that while they could boldly undoubtedly pursued it in the belief that the predict storm, tempest, failing or abundant heavenly bodies had a mysterious influence, crops, war, famine, and the like, for Syria,

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Babylonia, and Susiana, they could venture on Boeotians. Their hair they allowed to grow no prophecies with respect to other long, but confined it by a head-band or a neighboring lands, as Persia, Media, Armenia. turban; and they always carried a walking- A certain amount of real meteorological stick with a carving of some kind on the knowledge was probably mixed up with the handle. This portraiture, it is probable, Chaldean astrology. Their calendars, like applies to the richer inhabitants of the capital, modern almanacs, boldly predicted the and represents the Babylonian gentleman of weather for fixed days in the year. They must the fifth century before our era, as he made also have been mathematicians to no his appearance in the streets of the inconsiderable extent, since their methods metropolis. appear to have been geometrical. It is said The cylinders seem to show that the ordinary that the Greek mathematicians often quoted Babylonian dress was less complicated. The with approval the works of their Chaldean worshipper who brings an offering to a god is predecessors, Ciden, Naburianus, and frequently represented with a bare head, and Sudinus. Of the nature and extent of their wears apparently but one garment, a tunic mathematical acquirements, no account, generally ornamented with a diagonal fringe, however, can be given, since the writers who and reaching from the shoulder to a little mention them enter into no details on the above the knee. The tunic is confined round subject. the waist by a belt. Richer worshippers, who commonly present a goat, have a fillet or Chapter 6. Manners and Customs headband, not a turban, round the head. They "Girded with girdles upon their loins, wear generally the same sort of tunic as the exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all others; but over it they have a long robe, of them princes to look to, after the manner of shaped like a modern dressing-gown, except the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their that it has no sleeves, and does not cover the nativity."--Ezek. xxiii. 15. right shoulder. In a few instances only we see The manners and customs of the Babylonians, underneath this open gown a long inner dress though not admitting of that copious or robe, such as that described by Herodotus. illustration from ancient monuments which A cape or tippet of the kind which he was found possible in the case of Assyria, are describes is worn sometimes by a god, but is yet sufficiently known to us, either from the never seen, it is believed, in any extant remains or from the accounts of representation of a mortal. ancient writers of authority, to furnish The short tunic, worn by the poorer materials for a short chapter. Herodotus, worshippers, is seen also in a representation Strabo, Diodorus, and Nicolas of Damascus, (hereafter to be given) of hunters attacking a present us with many interesting traits of this lion. A similar garment is worn by the man-- somewhat singular people; the sacred writers probably a slave--who accompanies the dog, contemporary with the acme of the nation supposed to represent an Indian hound; and add numerous touches; while the remains, also by a warrior, who appears on one of the though scanty, put distinctly and vividly cylinders conducting six foreign captives. before our eyes a certain number of curious There is consequently much reason to believe details. that such a tunic formed the ordinary Herodotus describes with some elaboration costume of the common people, as it does at the costume of the Babylonians in his day. He present of the common Arab inhabitants of tells us that they wore a long linen gown the country. It left the arms and right reaching down to their feet, a woolen gown or shoulder bare, covering only the left. Below tunic above this, a short cloak or cape of a the belt it was not made like a frock but white color, and shoes like those of the lapped over in front, being in fact not so much

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a garment as a piece of cloth wrapped round vest, and in war the monarch carried also two the body. Occasionally it is represented as cross-belts, which perhaps supported his patterned; but this is somewhat unusual. quiver. The upper vest was, like the under In lieu of the long robe reaching to the feet, one, richly adorned with embroidery. From it, which seems to have been the ordinary or from the girdle, depended in front a single costume of the higher classes, we observe heavy tassel attached by a cord, similar to sometimes a shorter, but still a similar that worn by the early kings of Assyria. garment--a sort of coat without sleeves, Though tiara of the monarch was very fringed down both sides, and reaching only a remarkable. It was of great height, nearly little below the knee. The worshippers who cylindrical, but with a slight tendency to swell wear this robe have in most cases the head out toward the crown, which was adorned with a fillet. ornamented with a row of feathers round its It is unusual to find any trace of boots or entire circumference. The space below was shoes in the representations of Babylonians. patterned with rosettes, sacred trees, and A shoe patterned with a sort of check work mythological figures. From the centre of the was worn by the king; and soldiers seem to crown there rose above the feathers a have worn a low boot in their expeditions. projection resembling in some degree the But with rare exceptions the Babylonians are projection which distinguishes the tiara of the represented with bare feet on the Assyrian kings, the rounded, and not squared, monuments; and if they commonly wore at top. This head-dress, which has a heavy shoes in the time of Herodotus, we may appearance, was worn low on the brow, and conjecture that they had adopted the practice covered nearly all the back of the head. It can from the example of the Medes and Persians. scarcely have been composed of a heaver A low boot, laced in front, was worn by the material than cloth or felt. Probably it was chiefs of the Susianians. Perhaps the "peculiar brilliantly colored. shoe" of the Babylonians was not very The monarch wore bracelets, but different. (apparently) neither necklaces nor earrings. The girdle was an essential feature of Those last are assigned by Nicolas of Babylonian costume, common to high and Damascus to a Babylonian governor; and they low, to the king and to the peasant. It was a were so commonly used by the Assyrians that broad belt, probably of leather, and encircled we can scarcely suppose them unknown to the waist rather high up. The warrior carried their kindred and neighbors. The Babylonian his daggers in it; to the common man it monuments, however, contain no traces of served the purpose of keeping in place the earrings as worn by men, and only a few cloth which he wore round his body. doubtful ones of collars or necklaces; whence According to Herodotus, it was also universal we may at any rate conclude that neither in Babylonia to carry a seal and a walking- were worn at all generally. The bracelets stick. which encircle the royal wrist resemble the most common bracelet of the Assyrians, Special costumes, differing considerably from consisting of a plain band, probably of metal, those hitherto described, distinguished the with a rosette in the centre. king and the priests. The king wore a long gown, somewhat scantily made, but reaching The dress of the priests was a long robe or down to the ankles, elaborately patterned and gown, flounced and striped, over which they fringed. Over this, apparently, he had a close- seem to have worn an open jacket of a similar fitting sleeved vest, which came down to the character. A long scarf or ribbon depended knees, and terminated in a set of heavy from behind down their backs. They carried tassels. The girdle was worn outside the outer on their heads an elaborate crown or mitre,

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which is assigned also to many of the gods. In terminate curiously with a large ornament lieu of this mitre, we find sometimes, though resembling a spearhead. It is difficult to see rarely, a horned cap; and, in one or two the object of this appendage, which must have instances, a mitre of a different kind. In all formed no inconsiderable addition to the sacrificial and ceremonial acts the priests weight of the quiver. seem to have worn their heads covered. Babylonian daggers were short, and shaped On the subject of the Babylonian military like the Assyrian; but their handles were less costume our information is scanty and elegant and less elaborately ornamented. imperfect. In the time of Herodotus the They were worn in the girdle (as they are at Chaldeans seem to have had the same the present day in all eastern countries) armature as the Assyrians--namely, bronze either in pairs or singly. helmets, linen breastplates, shields, spears, Other weapons of the Babylonians, which we daggers, and maces or clubs; and, at a may be sure they used in war, though the considerably earlier date, we find in Scripture monuments do not furnish any proof of the much the same arms, offensive and defensive, fact, were the spear and the bill or axe. These assigned them. There is, however, one weapons are exhibited in combination upon remarkable difference between the Biblical one of the most curious of the cylinders, account and that given by Herodotus. The where a lion is disturbed in his meal off an ox Greek historian says nothing of the use of by two rustics, one of whom attacks him in bows by the Chaldeans; while in Scripture the front with a spear, while the other seizes his bow appears as their favorite weapon, that tail and assails him in the rear with an axe. which principally renders them formidable. With the axe here represented may be The monuments are on this point thoroughly compared another, which is found on a clay in accordance with Scripture. The Babylonian tablet brought from Sinkara, and supposed to king already represented carries a bow and belong to the early Chaldean period.30 The two arrows. The soldier conducting captives Sinkara axe has a simple square blade: the has a bow an arrow, and a quiver. A axe upon the cylinder has a blade with long monument of an earlier date, which is curved sides and a curved edge; while, to perhaps rather Proto-Chaldean than pure balance the weight of the blade, it has on the Babylonian, yet which has certain Babylonian lower side three sharp spikes. The difference characteristics, makes the arms of a king a between the two implements marks the bow and arrow, a club (?), and a dagger. In advance of mechanical art in the country the marsh fights of the Assyrians, where their between the time of the first and that of the enemies are probably Chaldeans of the low fourth monarchy. country, the bow is the sole weapon which we Babylonian armies seem to have been see in use. composed, like Assyrian, of three elements-- The Babylonian bow nearly resembles the infantry, cavalry, and chariots. Of the chariots ordinary curved bow of the Assyrians. It has a we appear to have one or two knob at either extremity, over which the representations upon the cylinders, but they string passes, and is thicker towards the are too rudely carved to be of much value. It middle than at the two ends; the bend is is not likely that the chariots differed much slight, the length when strung less than four either in shape or equipment from the feet. The length of the arrow is about three Assyrian, unless they were, like those of feet. It is carefully notched and feathered, and Susiana, ordinarily drawn by mules. A has a barbed point. The quiver, as peculiar car, four-wheeled, and drawn by four represented in the Assyrian sculptures, has horses, with an elevated platform in front and nothing remarkable about it; but the single a seat behind for the driver, which the extant Babylonian representation makes it

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cylinders occasionally exhibit, is probably not with battering-rams; against the stronger, a war-chariot, but a sacred vehicle, like the mounds were raised, reaching nearly to the tensa or thensa of the Romans. top of the walls, which were then easily The Prophet Habakkuk evidently considered scaled or broken down. A determined the cavalry of the Babylonians to be their persistence in sieges seems to have most formidable arm. "They are terrible and characterized this people, who did not take dreadful," he said; "from them shall proceed Jerusalem till the third, nor Tyre till the judgment and captivity; their horses also are fourteenth year. swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce In expeditions it sometimes happened that a than the evening wolves; and their horsemen question arose as to the people or country shall spread themselves, and their horsemen next to be attacked. In such cases it appears shall come from far; they shall fly, as the eagle that recourse was had to divination, and the that hasteth to eat." Similarly Ezekiel spoke of omens which were obtained decided whither the "desirable young men, captains and the next effort of the invader should be rulers, great lords and renowned; all of them directed. Priests doubtless accompanied the riding upon horses," Jeremiah couples the expeditions to superintend the sacrifices and horses with the chariots, as if he doubted interpret them on such occasions. According whether the chariot force or the cavalry were to Diodorus, the priests in Babylonia were a the more to be dreaded. "Behold, he shall caste, devoted to the service of the native come up as clouds, and his chariot shall be as deities and the pursuits of philosophy, and a whirlwind; his horses are swifter than held in high honor by the people. It was their eagles. Woe unto us! for we are spoiled." In business to guard the temples and serve at the army of Xerxes the Babylonians seem to the altars of the gods, to explain dreams and have served only on foot, which would imply prodigies, to understand omens, to read the that they were not considered in that king's warnings of the stars, and to instruct men time to furnish such good cavalry as the how to escape the evils threatened in those Persians, Medes, Cissians, Indians, and others, various ways, by purifications, incantations, who sent contingents of horse. Darius, and sacrifices. They possessed a traditional however, in the Behistun inscription, speaks knowledge which had come down from father of Babylonian horsemen; and the armies to son, and which none thought of which overran Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, questioning. The laity looked up to them as seem to have consisted mainly of horse. The the sole possessors of a recondite wisdom of Babylonian armies, like the Persian, were vast the last importance to humanity. hosts, poorly disciplined, composed not only With these statements of the lively but of native troops, but of contingents from the inaccurate Sicilian those of the Book of Daniel subject nations, Cissians, Elamites, Shuhites, are very fairly, if not entirely, in accordance. A Assyrians, and others. They marched with class of "wise men" is described as existing at vast noise and tumult, spreading themselves Babylon, foremost among whom are the far and wide over the country which they Chaldeans; they have a special "learning," and were invading, plundering and destroying on (as it would seem) a special "tongue;" their all sides. If their enemy would consent to a business is to expound dreams and prodigies; pitched battle, they were glad to engage with they are in high favor with the monarch, and him; but, more usually, their contests are often consulted by him. This body of "wise resolved themselves into a succession of men" is subdivided into four classes-- sieges, the bulk of the population attacked "Chaldeans, magicians, astrologers, and retreating to their strongholds, and offering soothsayers"--a subdivision which seems to behind walls a more or less protracted be based upon difference of occupation. It is resistance. The weaker towns were assaulted not distinctly stated that they are priests; nor

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does it seem that they were a caste; for Jews certain special seats of learning, are enrolled among their number, and Daniel corresponding perhaps in some sort to our himself is made chief of the entire body. But universities, the most famous of which were they form a very distinct order, and constitute Erech or Orchoe (Warka), and Borsippa, the a considerable power in the state; they have town represented by the modern Birs-i- direct communication with the monarch, and Nimrud. They were diligent students, not they are believed to possess, not merely wanting in ingenuity, and not content merely human learning, but a supernatural power of to hand down the wisdom of their ancestors. predicting future events. High civil office is Schools arose among them; and a boldness of enjoyed by some of their number. speculation developed itself akin to that Notices agreeing with these, but of less which we find among the Greeks. Astronomy, importance, are contained in Herodotus and in particular, was cultivated with a good deal Strabo. Herodotus speaks of the Chaldeans as of success; and stores were accumulated of "priests;" Strabo says that they were which the Greeks in later times understood "philosophers," who occupied themselves and acknowledged the value. principally in astronomy. The latter writer In social position the priest class stood high. mentions that they were divided into sects, They had access to the monarch: they were who differed one from another in their feared and respected by the people; the doctrines. He gives the names of several offerings of the faithful made them wealthy; Chaldeans whom the Greek mathematicians their position as interpreters of the divine were in the habit of quoting. Among them is a will secured them influence. Being regarded Seleucus, who by his name should be a Greek. as capable of civil employment, they naturally From these various authorities we may enough obtained frequently important offices, assume that there was in Babylon, as in which added to their wealth and Egypt, and in later Persia, a distinct priest consideration. class, which enjoyed high consideration. It The mass of the people in Babylonia were was not, strictly speaking, a caste. Priests may employed in the two pursuits of commerce have generally brought up their sons to the and agriculture. The commerce was both occupation; but other persons, even foreign and domestic. Great numbers of the foreigners (and if foreigners, then _a fortiori_ Babylonians were engaged in the natives), could be enrolled in the order, and manufacture of those textile fabrics, attain its highest privileges. It was at once a particularly carpets and muslins, which sacerdotal and a learned body. It had a Babylonia produced not only for her own use, literature, written in peculiar language, which but also for the consumption of foreign its members were bound to study. This countries. Many more must have been language and this literature were probably a employed as lapidaries in the execution of legacy from the old times of the first (Turano- those delicate engravings on hard stone, Cushite) kingdom, since even in Assyria it is wherewith the seal, which every Babylonian found that the literature was in the main carried, was as a matter of course adorned. Turanian, down to the very close of the The ordinary trades and handicrafts practiced empire. Astronomy, astrology, and mythology in the East no doubt flourished in the country. were no doubt the chief subjects which the A brisk import and export trade was priests studied; but history, chronology, constantly kept up, and promoted a healthful grammar, law, and natural science most likely activity throughout the entire body politic. occupied some part of their attention. Babylonia is called "a land of traffic" by Conducting everywhere the worship of the Ezekiel, and Babylon "a city of merchants." gods, they were of course scattered far and Isaiah says "theory of the Chaldeans" was "in wide through the country; but they had their ships." The monuments show that from

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very early times the people of the low country occupations of agriculture. Babylonia was, on the borders of the Persian Gulf were before all things, a grain-producing country-- addicted to maritime pursuits, and navigated noted for a fertility unexampled elsewhere, the gulf freely, if they did not even venture on and to moderns almost incredible. The soil the open ocean. And Aeschylus is a witness was a deep and rich alluvium, and was that the nautical character still attached to cultivated with the utmost care. It grew the people after their conquest by the chiefly wheat, barley millet, and sesame, Persians; for he calls the Babylonians in the which all nourished with wonderful army of Xerxes "navigators of ships." luxuriance. By a skilful management of the The Babylonian import trade, so far as it was natural water supply, the indispensable fluid carried on by themselves, seems to have been was utilized to the utmost, and conveyed to chiefly with Arabia, with the islands in the every part of the country. Date-groves spread Persian Gulf, and directly or indirectly with widely over the land, and produced India. From Arabia they must have imported abundance of an excellent fruit. the frankincense which they used largely in For the cultivation of the date nothing was their religious ceremonies; from the Persian needed but a proper water supply, and a little Gulf they appear to have derived pearls, attention at the time of fructification. The cotton, and wood for walking sticks from male and female palm are distinct trees, and India they obtained dogs and several kinds of the female cannot produce fruit unless the gems. If we may believe Strabo, they had a pollen from the male comes in contact with colony called Gerrha, most favorably situated its blossoms. If the male and the female trees on the Arabian coast of the gulf, which was a are grown in proper proximity, natural causes great emporium, and conducted not only the will always produce a certain amount of trade between Babylonia and the regions to impregnation. But to obtain a good crop, art the south, but also that which passed through may be serviceably applied. According to Babylonia into the more northern districts. Herodotus, the Babylonians were accustomed The products of the various countries of to tie the branches of the male to those of the Western Asia flowed into Babylonia down the female palm. This was doubtless done at the courses of the rivers. From Armenia, or rather blossoming time, when it would have the Upper Mesopotamia, came wine, gems, effect he mentions, preventing the fruit of the emery, and perhaps stone for building; from female, or date-producing palms, from falling Phoenicia, by way of Palmyra and Thapsaeus, off. came tin, perhaps copper, probably musical The date palm was multiplied in Babylonia by instruments, and other objects of luxury; artificial means. It was commonly grown from from Media and the countries towards the seed, several stones being planted together east came fine wool, lapis-lazuli, perhaps silk, for greater security; But occasionally it was and probably gold and ivory. But these raised from suckers or cuttings. It was imports seem to have been brought to important to plant the seeds and cuttings in a Babylonia by foreign merchants rather than sandy soil; and if nature had not sufficiently imported by the exertions of native traders. impregnated the ground with saline particles, The Armenians, the Phoenicians, and perhaps salt had to be applied artificially to the soil the Greeks, used for the conveyance of their around as a dressing. The young plants goods the route of the Euphrates. The needed a good deal of attention. Plentiful Assyrians, the Paretaceni, and the Medes watering was required; and transplantation probably floated theirs down the Tigris and was desirable at the end of both the first and its tributaries. second year. The Babylonians are said to have A large-probably the largest-portion of the transplanted their young trees in the height people must have been engaged in the

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of summer; other nations preferred the generally ended in drunkenness; they were springtime. not, however, mere scenes of coarse For the cultivation of grain the Babylonians indulgence, but had a certain refinement, broke up their land with the plough; to draw which distinguishes them from the riotous which they seem to have employed two oxen, drinking-bouts of the less civilized Modes. placed one before the other, in the mode still Music was in Babylonia a recognized common in many parts of England. The accompaniment of the feast; and bands of plough had two handles, which the performers, entering with the wine, ploughman guided with his two hands. It was entertained the guests with concerted pieces. apparently of somewhat slight construction. A rich odor of perfume floated around, for the The tail rose from the lower part of one of the Babylonians were connoisseurs in unguents. handles, and was of unusual length. The eye was delighted with a display of gold and silver plate. The splendid dresses of the It is certain that dates formed the main food guests, the exquisite carpets and hangings, of the inhabitants, The dried fruit, being to the numerous attendants, gave an air of them the staff of life, was regarded by the grandeur to the scene, and seemed half to Greeks as their "bread." It was perhaps excuse the excess of which too many were pressed into cakes, as is the common practice guilty. in the country at the present day. On this and goat's milk, which we know to have been in A love of music appears to have characterized use, the poorer class, it is probable, almost both the Babylonians and their near entirely subsisted. Palm-wine, the fermented neighbors and kinsmen, the Susianians. In the sap of the tree, was an esteemed, but no sculptured representations of Assyria, the doubt only an occasional beverage. It was Susianians are shown to have possessed pleasant to the taste, but apt to leave a numerous instruments, and to have headache behind it. Such vegetables as organized large bands of performers. The gourds, melons, and cucumbers, must have Prophet Daniel and the historian Ctesias been cheap, and may have entered into the similarly witness to the musical taste of the diet of the common people. They were also Babylonians, which had much the same probably the consumers of the "pickled bats," character. Ctesias said that Annarus (or which (according to Strabo) were eaten by Nannarus), a Babylonian noble, entertained the Babylonians. his guests at a banquet with music performed by a company of 150 women. Of these a part In the marshy regions of the south there were sang, while the rest played upon instruments, certain tribes whose sole, or at any rate some using the pipe, others the harp, and a whose chief, food was fish. Fish abound in certain number the psaltery. These same these districts, and are readily taken either instruments are assigned to the Babylonians with the hook or in nets. The mode of by the prophet Daniel, who, however, adds to preparing this food was to dry it in the sun, to them three more--viz., the horn, the sambuca, pound it fine, strain it through a sieve, and and an instrument called the sumphonia, or then make it up into cakes, or into a kind of "symphony." It is uncertain whether the horn bread. intended was straight, like the Assyrian, or The diet of the richer classes was no doubt curved, like the Roman cornu and lituus. The varied and luxurious. Wheaten bread, meats pipe was probably the double instrument, of various kinds, luscious fruits, fish, game, played at the end, which was familiar to the loaded the board; and wine, imported from Susianians and Assyrians. The harp would abroad was the usual beverage. The wealthy seem to have resembled the later harp of the Babylonians were fond of drinking to excess; Assyrians; but it had fewer strings, if we may their banquets were magnificent, but judge from a representation upon a cylinder.

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Like the Assyrian, it was carried under one ancient world, and especially rare in Asia. The arm, and was played by both hands, one on stories of Semiramis and Nitocris may have in either side of the strings. them no great amount of truth; but they The character of the remaining instruments is sufficiently indicate the belief of the Greeks as more doubtful. The sambuca seems to have to the comparative publicity allowed to their been a large harp, which rested on the women by the Babylonians. ground, like the harps of the Egyptians. The The monuments accord with the view of psaltery was also a stringed instrument, and, Babylonian manners thus opened to us. The if its legitimate descendant is the modern female form is not eschewed by the Chaldean santour, we may presume that it is artists. Besides images of a goddess (Beltis or represented in the hands of a Susianian Ish-tar) suckling a child, which are frequent, musician on the monument which is our chief we find on the cylinders numerous authority for the Oriental music of the period. representations of women, engaged in The symphonia is thought by some to be the various employments. Sometimes they are bagpipe, which is called sampogna by the represented in a procession, visiting the modern Italians: by others it is regarded as a shrine of a goddess, to whom they offer their sort of organ. petitions, by the mouth of one of their The Babylonians used music, not merely in number, or to whom they bring their children their private entertainments, but also in their for the purpose, probably, of placing them religious ceremonies. Daniel's account of under her protection , sometimes they may be their instruments occurs casually in his seen amusing themselves among birds and mention of Nebuchadnezzar's dedication of a flowers in a garden, plucking the fruit from colossal idol of gold. The worshippers were to dwarf palms, and politely handing it to one prostrate themselves before the idol as soon another. Their attire is in every case nearly as they heard the music commence, and were the same; they wear a long but scanty robe, probably to continue in the attitude of reaching to the ankles, ornamented at the worship until the sound ceased. bottom with a fringe and apparently opening in front. The upper part of the dress passes The seclusion of women seems scarcely to over only one shoulder. It is trimmed round have been practiced in Babylonia with as the top with a fringe which runs diagonally much strictness as in most Oriental countries. across the chest, and a similar fringe edges The two peculiar customs on which the dress down the front where it opens. A Herodotus descants at length--the public band or fillet is worn round the head, auction of the marriageable virgins in all the confining the hair, which is turned back towns of the empire, and the religious behind the head, and tied by a ribbon, or else prostitution authorized in the worship of held up by the fillet. Beltis--were wholly incompatible with the restraints to which the sex has commonly Female ornaments are not perceptible on the submitted in the Eastern world. Much small figures of the cylinders; but from the modesty can scarcely have belonged to those modeled image in clay, of which a whose virgin charms were originally offered representation has been already given, we in the public market to the best bidder, and learn that bracelets and earrings of a simple who were required by their religion, at least character were worn by Babylonian women, once in their lives, openly to submit to the if they were not by the men. On the whole, embraces of a man other than their husband. however, female dress seems to have been It would certainly seem that the sex had in plain and wanting in variety, though we may Babylonia a freedom--and not only a freedom, perhaps suspect that the artists do not but also a consideration--unusual in the trouble themselves to represent very

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accurately such diversities of apparel as advance of corruption with respect to priestly actually existed. impostures and popular religious customs From a single representation of a priestess it might probably have been noticed; but would seem that women of that class wore otherwise the religion of Nabonidus and nothing but a petticoat, thus exposing not Belshazzar was that of Urukh and Ilgi, alike in only the arms, but the whole of the body as the objects and the mode of worship, in the far as the waist. theological notions entertained and the ceremonial observances taught and practiced. The monuments throw a little further light on the daily life of the Babylonians. A few of their The identity of the gods worshipped during implements, as saws and hatchets, are the entire period is sufficiently proved by the represented. ; and from the stools, the chairs, repair and restoration of the ancient temples the tables, and stands for holding water-jars under Nebuchadnezzar, and their re- which occur occasionally on the cylinders, we dedication (as a general rule) to the same may gather that the fashion of their furniture deities. It appears also from the names of the much resembled that of their northern later kings and nobles, which embrace among neighbors, the Assyrians. It is needless to their elements the old divine appellations. dwell on this subject, which presents no novel Still, together with this general uniformity, we features, and has been anticipated by the seem to see a certain amount of fluctuation--a discussion on Assyrian furniture in the first sort of fashion in the religion, whereby volume. The only touch that can be added to particular gods were at different times what was there said is that in Babylonia, the exalted to a higher rank in the Pantheon, and chief--almost the sole-material employed for were sometimes even confounded with other furniture was the wood of the palm-tree, a deities commonly regarded as wholly distinct soft and light fabric which could be easily from them. Thus Nebuchadnezzar devoted worked, and which had considerable himself in an especial way to Merodach, and strength, but did not admit of a high finish. not only assigned him titles of honor which implied his supremacy over all the remaining Chapter 7. Religion gods, but even identified him with the great The Religion of the later Babylonians differed Bel, the ancient tutelary god of the capital. in so few respects from that of the early Nabonidus, on the other hand, seems to have Chaldeans, their predecessors in the same restored Bel to his old position, re- country, that it will be unnecessary to detain establishing the distinction between him and the reader with many observations on the Merodach, and preferring to devote himself to subject. The same gods were worshipped in the former. the same temples and with the same rites-- A similar confusion occurs between the the same cosmogony was taught and held-- goddesses Beltis and Nana or Ishtar, though the same symbols were objects of religious this is not peculiar to the later kingdom. It regard--even the very dress of the priests was may perhaps be suspected from such maintained unaltered; and, could Urukh or instances of connection and quasi- Chedorlaomer have risen from the grave and convertibility, that an esoteric doctrine, revisited the shrines wherein they sacrificed known to the priests and communicated by fourteen centuries earlier, they would have them to the kings, taught the real identity of found but little to distinguish the ceremonies the several gods and goddesses, who may of their own day from those in vogue under have been understood by the better the successors of Nabopolassar. Some instructed to represent, not distinct and additional splendor in the buildings, the idols, separate beings, but the several phases of the and perhaps the offerings, some increased Divine Nature. Ancient polytheism had, it may use of music as a part of the ceremonial, some be surmised, to a great extent this origin, the

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various names and titles of the Supreme, site, the deities in question held the foremost which designated His different attributes or place each in his own town. There especially the different spheres of His operation, coming was worship offered to them; there was the by degrees to be misunderstood, and to pass, most magnificent of their shrines. Out of his first with the vulgar, and at last with all but own city a god was not greatly respected, the most enlightened, for the appellations of a unless by those who regarded him as their number of gods. special personal protector. The chief objects of Babylonian worship were The Babylonians worshipped their gods Bel, Merodach, and Nebo. Nebo, the special indirectly, through images. Each shrine had at deity of Borsippa, seems to have been least one idol, which was held in the most regarded as a sort of powerful patron-saint pious reverence, and was in the minds of the under whose protection it was important to vulgar identified with the god. It seems to place individuals. During the period of the have been believed by some that the actual later kingdom, no divine element is so idol ate and drank the offerings. Others common in names. Of the seven kings who distinguished between the idol and the god, form the entire list, three certainly, four regarding the latter as only occasionally probably, had appellations composed with it. visiting the shrine where he was worshipped. The usage extended from the royal house to Even these last, however, held gross the courtiers; and such names as Nebu-zar- anthropomorphic views, since they adan, Samgar-Nebo, and Nebushazban, show considered the god to descend from heaven in the respect which the upper class of citizens order to hold commerce with the chief paid to this god. It may even be suspected priestess. Such notions were encouraged by that when Nebuchadnezzar's Master of the the priests, who furnished the inner shrine in Eunuchs had to give Babylonian names to the the temple of Bel with a magnificent couch young Jewish princes whom he was and a golden table, and made the principal educating, he designed to secure for one of priestess pass the night in the shrine on them this powerful patron, and consequently certain occasions. called him Abed-Nebo--the servant of Nebo--a The images of the gods were of various name which the later Jews, either disdaining materials. Some were of wood, others of or not understanding, have corrupted into the stone, others again of metal; and these last Abed-nogo of the existing text. were either solid or plated. The metals Another god held in peculiar honor by the employed were gold, silver, brass, or rather Babylonians was Nergal. Worshipped at bronze, and iron. Occasionally the metal was Cutha as the tutelary divinity of the town, he laid over a clay model. Sometimes images of was also held in repute by the people one metal were overlaid with plates of generally. No name is more common on the another, as was the case with one of the great cylinder seals. It is sometimes, though not images of Bel, which was originally of silver often, an element in the names of men, as in but was coated with gold by Nebuchadnezzar. "Nergal-shar-ezer, the Eab-mag," and (if he be The worship of the Babylonians appears to a different person) in Neriglissar, the king. have been conducted with much pomp and Altogether, there was a strong local element magnificence. A description has been already in the religion of the Babylonians. Bel and given of their temples. Attached to these Merodach were in a peculiar way the gods of imposing structures was, in every case, a Babylon, Nebo of Borsippa, Nergal of Cutha, body of priests; to whom the conduct of the the Moon of Ur or Hur, Beltis of Niffer, Hea or ceremonies and the custody of the treasures Hoa of Hit, Ana of Erech, the Sun of Sippara. were entrusted. The priests were married, Without being exclusively honored at a single and lived with their wives and children,

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either in the sacred structure itself, or in its a goodly train of attendants, and there take immediate neighborhood. They were their station. But the larger number seat supported either by lands belonging to the themselves within the holy enclosure with temple, or by the offerings of the faithful. wreaths of string about their heads--and here These consisted in general of animals, chiefly there is always a great crowd, some coming oxen and goats; but other valuables were no and others going. Lines of cord mark out doubt received when tendered. The priest paths in all directions among the woman; and always intervened between the worshipper the strangers pass along them to make their and the deities, presenting him to them and choice. A women who has once taken her seat interceding with uplifted hands on his behalf. is not allowed to return home till one of the In the temple of Bel at Babylon, and probably strangers throws a silver coin into her lap, in most of the other temples both there and and takes her with him beyond the holy elsewhere throughout the country, a great ground. When he throws the coin, he says festival was celebrated once in the course of these words--'The goddess Mylitta (Beltis) each year. We know little of the ceremonies prosper thee.' The silver coin may be of any with which these festivals were accompanied; size; it cannot be refused; for that is forbidden but we may presume from the analogy of by the law, since once thrown it is sacred. The other nations that there were magnificent woman goes with the first man who throws processions on these occasions, accompanied her money, and rejects no one. When she has probably with music and dancing. The images gone with him, and so satisfied the goddess, of the gods were perhaps exhibited either on she returns home; and from that time forth frames or on sacred vehicles. Numerous no gift, however great, will prevail with her. victims were sacrificed; and at Babylon it was Such of the women as are tall and beautiful customary to burn on the great altar in the are soon released; but others, who are ugly, precinct of Bel a thousand talents' weight of have to stay a long time before they can fulfill frankincense. The priests no doubt wore their the law. Some have even waited three or four most splendid dresses; the multitude was in years in the precinct." The demoralizing holiday costume; the city was given up to tendency of this religious prostitution can merry-making. Everywhere banquets were scarcely be overrated. held. In the palace the king entertained his Notions of legal cleanliness and uncleanliness, lords; in private houses there was dancing akin to those prevalent among the Jews, are and reveling. Wine was freely drunk; passion found to some extent in the religious system Was excited; and the day, it must be feared, of the Babylonians. The consummation of the too often terminated in wild orgies, wherein marriage rite made both the man and the the sanctions of religion were claimed for the woman impure, as did every subsequent act free indulgence of the worst sensual of the same kind. The impurity was appetites. In the temples of one deity excesses communicated to any vessel that either might of this description, instead of being confined touch. To remove it, the pair were required to rare occasions, seem to have been of every- first to sit down before a censer of burning day occurrence. Each woman was required incense, and then to wash themselves once in her life to visit a shrine of Beltis, and thoroughly. Thus only could they re-enter there remain till some stranger cast money in into the state of legal cleanness. A similar her lap and took her away with him. impurity attached to those who came into Herodotus, who seems to have visited the contact with a human corpse. The disgraceful scene, describes it as follows. Babylonians are remarkable for the extent to "Many women of the wealthier sort, who are which they affected symbolism in religion. In too proud to mix with the others, drive in the first place they attached to each god a covered carriages to the precinct, followed by special mystic number, which is used as his

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emblem and may even stand for his name in same place as Bit-Ulmis, that of Nebo at an inscription. To the gods of the First Triad- Borsippa as Bit-Tsida, etc. It is seldom that Ami, Bel, and Hea or Hoa--were assigned these names admit of explanation. They had respectively the numbers 60, 50, and 40; to come down apparently from the old Chaldean those of the Second Triad--the Moon, the Sun times, and belonged to the ancient (Turanian) and the Atmosphere--were given the other form of speech; which is still almost integers, 30, 20, and 10 (or perhaps six). To unintelligible. The Babylonians themselves Beltis was attached the number 15, to Nergal probably in few cases understood their 12, to Bar or Nin (apparently) 40, as to Hoa; meaning. They used the words simply as but this is perhaps doubtful. It is probable proper names, without regarding them as that every god, or at any rate all the principle significant. deities, had in a similar way some numerical emblem. Many of these are, however, as yet Chapter 8. History and Chronology undiscovered. The history of the Babylonian Empire Further, each god seems to have had one or commences with Nabopolassar, who appears more emblematic signs by which he could be to have mounted the throne in the year B.C. pictorially symbolized. The cylinders are full 625; but to understand the true character of of such forms, which are often crowded into the kingdom which he set up, its traditions every vacant space where room could be and its national spirit, we must begin at a far found for them. A certain number can be earlier date. We must examine, in however assigned definitely to particular divinities. incomplete and cursory a manner, the middle Thus a circle, plain or crossed, designates the period of Babylonian history, the time of Sun-god, San or Shamas; a six-rayed or eight- obscurity and comparative insignificance, rayed star the Sun-goddess, Gula or Anunit; a when the country was as a general rule, double or triple thunderbolt the Atmospheric subject to Assyria, or at any rate played but a god, Vul; a serpent probably Hoa; a naked secondary part in the affairs of the East. We female form Nana or Ishtar; a fish Bar or Nin- shall thus prepare the way for our proper ip. But besides these assignable symbols, subject, while at the same time we shall link there are a vast number with regard to which on the history of the Fourth to that of the we are still wholly in the dark. Among these First Monarchy, and obtain a second line of may continuous narrative, connecting the brilliant era of Cyaxares and Nebuchadnezzar with the tree, an ox, a bee, a spearhead. A study of the obscure period of the first Cushite kings. inscribed cylinders shows these emblems to have no reference to the god or goddess It has been observed that the original named in the inscription upon them. Each, Chaldean monarchy lasted, under various apparently, represents a distinct deity; and dynasties from about B.C. 2400 to B.C. 1300, the object of placing them upon a cylinder is when it was destroyed by the Assyrians, who to imply the devotion of the man whose seal it became masters of Babylonia under the first is to other deities besides those whose special Tiglathi-Nin, and governed it for a short time servant he considers himself. A single from their own capital. Unable, however, to cylinder sometimes contains as many as eight maintain this unity very long, they appear to or ten such emblems. The principal temples have set up in the country an Assyrian of the gods had special sacred appellations. dynasty, over which they claimed and The great temple of Bel at Babylon was sometimes exercised a kind of suzerainty, but known as Bit-Saggath, that of the same god at which was practically independent and Niffer as Kharris-Nipra. that of Beltis at managed both the external and internal Warka (Erech) as Bit-Ana, that of the sun at affairs of the kingdom at its pleasure. The first Sippara as Bit-Parra, that of Anunit at the king of this dynasty concerning whom we

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have any information is a Nebuchadnezzar, flourishing; but as our knowledge of its who was contemporary with the Assyrian condition comes to us almost entirely through monarch Asshur-ris-ilim, and made two the records of the sister country, which here attacks upon his territories. The first of these fail us, we can only obtain a dim and was by the way of the Diyaleh and the indistinct vision of the greatness now outlying Zagros hills, the line taken by the achieved by the southern kingdom. A notice great Persian military road in later times. The of Asshur-izir-pal's seems to imply that second was directly across the plain. If we are Babylon, during the period in question, to believe the Assyrian historian who gives an enlarged her territories at the expense of account of the campaigns, both attacks were Assyria, and another in Macrobius, makes it repulsed, and after his second failure the probable that she held communications with Babylonian monarch fled away into his own Egypt. Perhaps these two powers, fearing the country hastily. We may perhaps suspect that growing strength of Assyria, united against a Babylonian writer would have told a her, and so checked for a while that different story. At any rate Asshur-ris-ilim development of her resources which they was content to defend his own territories and justly dreaded. did not attempt to retaliate upon his assailant. However, after two centuries of comparative It was not till late in the reign of his son and depression, Assyria once more started successor, Tiglath-Pileser I., that any attempt forward, and Babylonia was among the first was made to punish the Babylonians for their of her neighbors whom she proceeded to audacity. Then, however, that monarch chastise and despoil. About the year B.C. 880 invaded the southern kingdom, which had Asshur-izir-pal led an expedition to the south- passed into the hands of a king named east and recovered the territory which, had Merodach-iddin-akhi, probably a son of been occupied by the Babylonians during the Nebuchadnezzar. After two years of fighting, period of weakness. Thirty years later, his in which he took Eurri-Galzu (Akkerkuf), the son, the Black-Obelisk king, made the power two Sipparas, Opis, and even Babylon itself, of Assyria still more sensibly felt. Taking Tiglath-Pileser retired, satisfied apparently advantage of the circumstance that a civil war with his victories; but the Babylonian was raging in Babylonia between the monarch was neither subdued nor daunted. legitimate monarch Merodach-sum-adin, and Hanging on the rear of the retreating force, he his young brother, he marched into the harassed it by cutting off its baggage, and in country, took a number of the towns, and this way he became possessed of certain having defeated and slain the pretender, was Assyrian idols, which he carried away as admitted into Babylon itself. From thence he trophies to Babylon. War continued between proceeded to overrun Chaldea, or the district the two countries during the ensuing reigns upon the coast, which appears at this time to of Merodach-shapik-ziri in Babylon and have been independent of Babylon, and Asshur-bil-kala in Assyria, but with no governed by a number of petty kings. The important successes, so far as appears, on Babylonian monarch probably admitted the either side. suzerainty of the invader, but was not put to The century during which these wars took any tribute. The Chaldean chiefs, however, place between Assyria and Babylonia, which had to submit to this indignity. The Assyrian corresponds with the period of the later monarch returned to his capital, having Judges in Israel, is followed by an obscure "struck terror as far as the sea." Thus interval, during which but little is known of Assyrian influence was once more extended either country. Assyria seems to have been at over the whole of the southern country, and this time in a state of great depression. Babylonia resumed her position of a Babylonia, it may be suspected, was

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secondary power, dependent on the great certainly made it an era from which to date monarchy of the north. their later history. Perhaps, however, they But she was not long allowed to retain even had not much choice in this matter. the shadow of an autonomous rule. In or Nabonassar was a man of energy and about the year B.C. 821 the son and successor determination. Bent probably on obliterating of the Black-Obelisk king, apparently without the memory of the preceding period of any pretext, made a fresh invasion of the subjugation, he "destroyed the acts of the country. Mero-dach-belatzu-ikm, the kings who had preceded him;" and the result Babylonian monarch, boldly met him in the was that the war of his accession became field, but was defeated in two pitched battles almost necessarily the era from which (in the latter of which he had the assistance of subsequent events had to be dated. powerful allies) and was forced to submit to Nabonassar appears to have lived on friendly his antagonist. Babylon, it is probable, terms with Tiglath-Pileser, the contemporary became at once an Assyrian tributary, and in monarch of Assyria, who early in his reign this condition she remained till the troubles invaded the southern country, reduced which came upon Assyria towards the middle several princes of the districts about Babylon of the eighth century B.C. gave an opportunity to subjection, and forced Merodach-Baladan, for shaking off the hated yoke. Perhaps the who had succeeded his father, Yakin, in the first successes were obtained by Pul, who, low region, to become his tributary. No war taking advantage of Assyria's weakness under seems to have been waged between Tiglath- Asshur-dayan III. (ab. B.C. 770), seems to Pileser and Nabonassar. The king of Babylon have established a dominion over the may have seen with satisfaction the Euphrates valley and Western Mesopotamia, humiliation of his immediate neighbors and from which he proceeded to carry his arms rivals, and may have felt that their into Syria and Palestine. Or perhaps Pul's subjugation rather improved than weakened efforts merely, by still further weakening his own position. At any rate it tended to Assyria, paved the way for Babylon to revolt, place him before the nation as their only hope and Nabonassar, who became king of Babylon and champion--the sole barrier which in B.C. 747, is to be regarded as the re- protected their country from a return of the establisher of her independence. In either old servitude. case it is apparent that the recovery of Nabonassar held the throne of Babylon for independence was accompanied, or rapidly fourteen years, from B.C. 747 to B.C. 733. It followed, by a disintegration of the country, has generally been supposed that this period which was of evil omen for its future is the same with that regarded by Herodotus greatness. While Nabonassar established as constituting the reign of Semiramis. As the himself at the head of affairs in Babylon, a wife or as the mother of Nabonassar, that lady certain Yakin, the father of Merodach- (according to many) directed the affairs of the Baladan, became master of the tract upon the Babylonian state on behalf of her husband or coast; and various princes, Nadina, Zakiru, her son. The theory is not devoid of a certain and others, at the same time obtained plausibility, and it is no doubt possible that it governments, which they administered in may be true; but at present it is a mere their own name towards the north. The old conjecture, wholly unconfirmed by the native Babylonian kingdom was broken up; and the records; and we may question whether on the way was prepared for that final subjugation whole it is not more probable that the which was ultimately affected by the Semiramis of Herodotus is misplaced. In a Sargonids. former volume it was shown that a Semiramis Still, the Babylonians seemed to have looked flourished in Assyria towards the end of the with complacency on this period, and they ninth and the beginning of the eighth

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centuries B.C.---during the period, that is, of accept the position of Assyrian tributary Babylonian subjection to Assyria. She may under this monarch, to whom he probably have been a Babylonian princess, and have looked for protection against the Babylonian exercised an authority in the southern capital. king, Nabonassar, Merodach-Baladan It would seem therefore to be more probable patiently bided his time, remaining in that she is the individual whom Herodotus comparative obscurity during the two reigns intends, though he has placed her about half a of Tiglath-Pileser and Shalmaneser his century too late, than that there were two successor, and only emerging persons of the same name within so short a contemporaneously with the troubles which time, both queens, and both ruling in ushered in the dynasty of the Sargonids. In Mesopotamia. B.C. 721--the year in which Sargon made Nabonassar was succeeded in the year B.C. himself master of Nineveh--Merodach- 733 by a certain Nadius, who is suspected to Baladan extended his authority over the have been among the independent princes upper country, and was recognized as king of reduced to subjection by Tiglath-Pileser in his Babylon. Here he maintained himself for Babylonian expedition. Nadius reigned only twelve years; and it was probably at some two years--from B.C. 733 to B.C. 731--when point of time within this space that he sent he was succeeded by Ghinzinus and Porus, ambassadors to Hezekiah at Jerusalem, with two princes whose joint rule lasted from B.C. orders to inquire into the particulars of the 731 to B.C. 726. They were followed by an curious astronomical marvel, or miracle, Elulseus, who has been identified with the which had accompanied the sickness and king of that name called by Menander king of recovery of that monarch. It is not unlikely Tyre--the Luliya of the cuneiform that the embassy, whereof this was the inscriptions; but it is in the highest degree pretext, had a further political object. improbable that one and the same monarch Merodach-Baladan, aware of his inability to should have borne sway both in Phoenicia withstand singly the forces of Assyria, was and Chaldea at a time when Assyria was probably anxious to form a powerful league paramount over the whole of the intervening against the conquering state, which country. Elulseus therefore must be assigned threatened to absorb the whole of Western to the same class of utterly obscure monarchs Asia into its dominion. Hezekiah received his with his predecessors, Porus, Chinzinus, and advances favorably, as appears by the fact Nadius; and it is only with Merodach-Baladan, that he exhibited to him all his treasures. his successor, that the darkness becomes a Egypt, we may presume, was cognizant of the little dispelled, and we once more see the proceedings, and gave them her support. An Babylonian throne occupied by a prince of alliance, defensive if not also offensive, was some reputation and indeed celebrity. probably concluded between Egypt and Judaea on the one hand, Babylon, Susiana, and Merodach-Baladan was the son of a monarch, the Aramaean tribes of the middle Euphrates who in the troublous times that preceded, or on the other. The league would have been closely followed, the era of Nabonassar formidable but for one circumstance--Assyria appears to have made himself master of the lay midway between the allied states, and lower Babylonian territory--the true Chaldea- could attack either moiety of the confederates -and to have there founded a capital city, separately at her pleasure. And the Assyrian which he called after his own name, Bit-Yakin. king was not slow to take advantage of his On the death of his father Merodach-Baladan situation. In two successive years Sargon inherited this dominion; and it is here that we marched his troops against Egypt and against first find him, when, during the reign of Babylonia, and in both directions carried all Nabonassar, the Assyrians under Tiglath- before him. In Egypt he forced Sabaco to sue Pileser II. invade the country. Forced to

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for peace. In Babylonia (B.C. 710) he gained a pretensions to the lower country, and a great victory over Merodach-Baladan and his certain Susub, who was acknowledged as king allies, the Arameans and Susianians, took Bit- at Babylon, were the leaders. In the latter, Yakin, into which the defeated monarch had Saos-duchinus, the Assyrian viceroy, and thrown himself, and gained possession of his brother of Asshur-bani-pal, the Assyrian king, treasures and his person. Upon this the whole seduced from his allegiance by the hope of country submitted; Merodach-Baladan was making himself independent headed the carried away captive into Assyria; and Sargon insurrection. In each case the struggle was himself, mounting the throne, assumed the brief, being begun and ended within the year. title-rarely taken by an Assyrian monarch of The power of Assyria at this time so vastly "King of Babylon." preponderated over that of her ancient rival But this state of things did not continue long. that a single campaign sufficed on each Sargon died in the year B.C. 704, and occasion of revolt to crush the nascent coincident with his death we find a renewal of insurrection. troubles in Babylonia. Assyria's yoke was A tabular view of the chronology of this shaken off; various pretenders started up; a period is appended. son of Sargon and brother of Sennacherib re- Having thus briefly sketched the history of established Assyrian influence for a brief the kingdom of Babylon from its conquest by space; but fresh revolts followed. A certain Tiglathi-Nin to the close of the long period of Hagisa became king of Babylon for a month. Assyrian predominance in Western Asia, we Finally, Merodach-Baladan, again appeared may proceed to the consideration of the upon the scene, having escaped from his "Empire." And first, as to the circumstances of Assyrian prison, murdered Hagisa, and its foundation. remounted the throne from which he had When the Medes first assumed an aggressive been deposed seven years previously. But the attitude towards Assyria, and threatened the brave effort to recover independence failed. capital with a siege, Babylonia apparently Sennacherib in his second year, B.C. 703, remained unshaken in her allegiance. When descended upon Babylonia, defeated the the Scythian hordes spread themselves over army which Merodach-Baladan brought Upper Mesopotamia and wasted with fire and against him, drove that monarch himself into sword the fairest regions under Assyrian rule, exile, after a reign of six months, and re- there was still no defection in this quarter. It attached his country to the Assyrian crown. was not till the Scythian ravages were over, From this time to the revolt of Nabopolassar-- and the Medes for the second time poured a period of above three quarters of a century- across Zagros into Adiabene, resuming the -Babylonia with few and brief intervals of enterprise from which they had desisted at revolt, continued an Assyrian fief. The the time of the Scythian invasion, that the Assyrian kings governed her either by means fidelity of the Southern people wavered. of viceroys, such as Belibus, Regibelus, Simultaneously with the advance of the Mesesimordachus, and Saos-duchinus, or Medes against the Assyrian capital from the directly in their own persons, as was the case east, we hear of a force threatening it from during the reign of Esarhaddon, and during the south, a force which can only have the later years of Asshur-bani-pal. consisted of Susianians, of Babylonians, or of The revolts of Babylon during this period both combined. It is probable that the have been described at length in the history emissaries of Cyaxares had been busy in this of Assyria. Two fall into the reign of region for some time before his second attack Sennacherib, one into that of Asshur-bani-pal, took place, and that by a concerted plan while his grandson. In the former, Merodach- the Medes debouched from the Zagros passes, Baladan, who had not yet given up his

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the south rose in revolt and sent its hasty quietly, the Babylonian yoke being peacefully levies along the valley of the Tigris. accepted in lieu of the Assyrian without the In this strait the Assyrian king deemed it necessity arising for any application of force. necessary to divide his forces and to send a Probably it appeared to the subjects of portion against the enemy which was Assyria, who had been accustomed to a advancing from the south, while with the monarch holding his court alternately at remainder he himself awaited the coming of Nineveh and at Babylon, that the new power the Medes. The troops detached for the was merely a continuation of the old, and the former service he placed under the command monarch a legitimate successor of the old line of a certain Nabopolassar? (Nabu-pal-uzur), of Ninevite kings. who was probably an Assyrian nobleman of Of the reign of Nabopolassar the information high rank and known capacity. Nabopolassar which has come down to us is scanty. It had orders to proceed to Babylon, of which he appears by the canon of Ptolemy that he was probably made viceroy, and to defend the dated his accession to the throne from the southern capital against the rebels. We may year B.C. 625, and that his reign lasted conclude that he obeyed these orders so far twenty-one years, from B.C. 625 to B.C. 604. as to enter Babylon and install himself in During the greater portion of this period the office; but shortly afterwards he seems to history of Babylon is a blank. Apparently the have made up his mind to break faith with his "golden city" enjoyed her new position at the sovereign, and aim at obtaining for himself an head of an empire too much to endanger it by independent kingdom out of the ruins of the aggression; and, her peaceful attitude Assyrian power. Having formed this resolve, provoking no hostility, she was for a while left his first step was to send an embassy to unmolested by her neighbors. Media, bound Cyaxares, and to propose terms of alliance, to her by formal treaty as well as by dynastic while at the same time he arranged a interests, could be relied upon as a firm marriage between his own son, friend; Persia was too weak, Lydia too Nebuchadnezzar, and Amuhia, or Amyitis (for remote, to be formidable; in Egypt alone was the name is written both ways), the daughter there a combination of hostile feeling with of the Median monarch. military strength such as might have been Cyaxares gladly accepted the terms offered; expected to lead speedily to a trial of the young persons were betrothed; and strength; but Egypt was under the rule of an Nabopolassar immediately led, or sent, a aged and wary prince, one trained in the contingent of troops to join the Medes, who school of adversity, whose years forbade his took an active part in the great siege which engaging in any distant enterprise, and whose resulted in the capture and destruction of the prudence led him to think more of defending Assyrian capital. his own country than of attacking others. Thus, while Psammetichos lived, Babylon had A division of the Assyrian Empire between little to fear from any quarter, and could the allied monarchs followed. While Cyaxares afford to "give herself to pleasures and dwell claimed for his own share Assyria Proper and carelessly." the various countries dependent on Assyria towards the north and the north-west, The only exertion which she seems to have Nabopolassar was rewarded by his timely been called upon to make during her first defection, not merely by independence but by eighteen years of empire resulted from the the transfer to his government of Susiana on close connection which had been established the one hand and of the valley of the between herself and Media. Cyaxares, as Euphrates, Syria, and Palestine on the other. already remarked, proceeded from the The transfer appears to have been effected capture of Nineveh to a long series of wars and conquests. In some, if not in all, of these

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he appears to have been assisted by the territories of Nabopolassar. Marching along Babylonians, who were perhaps bound by the usual route, by the _Shephelah_ and the treaty to furnish a contingent as often as he plain of Esdraelon, he learned, when he required it, Either Nabopolassar himself, or neared Megiddo, that a body of troops was his son Nebuchadnezzar, would lead out the drawn up at that place to oppose him, Josiah, troops on such occasions; and thus the the Jewish king, regarding himself as bound military spirit of both prince and people to resist the passage through his territories of would be pretty constantly exercised. an army hostile to the monarch of whom he It was as the leader of such a contingent that held his crown, had collected his forces, and, Nabopolassar was able on one occasion to having placed them across the line of the play the important part of peacemaker in one invader's march, was calmly awaiting in this of the bloodiest of all Cyaxares' wars. After position the approach of his master's enemy. five years' desperate fighting the Medes and Neco hereupon sent ambassadors to Lydians were once more engaged in conflict persuade Josiah to let him pass, representing when an eclipse of the sun took place. Filled that he had no quarrel with the Jews, and with superstitious dread the two armies claiming a divine sanction to his undertaking. ceased to contend, and showed a disposition But nothing could shake the Jewish for reconciliation, of which the Babylonian monarch's sense of duty; and Neco was monarch was not slow to take advantage. consequently forced to engage with him, and Having consulted with Syennesis of Cilicia, to drive his troops from their position. Josiah, the foremost man of the allies on the other defeated and mortally wounded, returned to side, and found him well disposed to second Jerusalem, where he died. Neco pressed his efforts, he proposed that the sword should forward through Syria to the Euphrates; and be returned to the scabbard, and that a carrying all before him, established his conference should be held to arrange terms of dominion over the whole tract lying between peace. This timely interference proved Egypt on the one hand, and the "Great River" effectual. A peace was concluded between the upon the other. On his return three months Lydians and the Medes, which was cemented later he visited Jerusalem, deposed Jehoahaz, by a royal intermarriage: and the result was a younger son of Josiah, whom the people had to give to Western Asia, where war and made king, and gave the crown to Jehoiakim, ravage had long been almost perpetual, his elder brother. It was probably about this nearly half a century of tranquility. time that he besieged and took Gaza, the most important of the Philistine towns next to Successful in his mediation, almost beyond Ashdod. his hopes, Nabopolassar returned from Asia Minor to Babylon. He was now advanced in The loss of this large and valuable territory years, and would no doubt gladly have spent did not at once arouse the Babylonian the remainder of his days in the enjoyment of monarch from his inaction or induce him to that repose which is so dear to those who feel make any effort for its recovery. Neco enjoyed the infirmities of age creeping upon them. But his conquests in quiet for the space of at least Providence had ordained otherwise. In B.C. three full years. At length, in the year B.C. 605, 610--probably the very year of the eclipse-- Nabopolassar, who felt himself unequal to the Psammetichos died, and was succeeded by fatigues of a campaign, resolved to entrust his his son Neco, who was in the prime of life and forces to Nebuchadnezzar, his son, and to who in disposition was bold and enterprising. send him to contend with the Egyptians. The This monarch very shortly after his accession key of Syria at this time was Carchemish, a cast a covetous eye upon Syria, and in the city situated on the right bank of the year B.C. 608, having made vast preparations, Euphrates, probably near the site which was he crossed his frontier and invaded the afterwards occupied by Hierapolis. Here the

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forces of Neco were drawn up to protect his place him on a par with the greatest builders conquests, and here Nebuchadnezzar of antiquity. proceeded boldly to attack them. A great We have no complete, or even general battle was fought in the vicinity of the river, account of Nebuchadnezzar's wars. Our chief, which was utterly disastrous to the Egyptians, our almost sole, information concerning them who "fled away" in confusion, and seem not to is derived from the Jewish writers. have ventured on making a second stand. Consequently, those wars only which Nebuchadnezzar rapidly recovered the lost interested these writers, in other words those territory, received the submission of whose scene is Palestine or its immediate Jehoiakim, king of Judah, restored the old vicinity, admit of being placed before the frontier line, and probably pressed on into reader. If Nebuchadnezzar had quarrels with Egypt itself, hoping to cripple or even to crush the Persians, or the Arabians, or the Medes, or his presumptuous adversary. But at this point the tribes in Mount Zagros, as is not he was compelled to pause. News arrived improbable, nothing is now known of their from Babylon that Nabopolassar was dead; course or issue. Until some historical and the Babylonian prince, who feared a document belonging to his time shall be disputed succession, having first concluded a discovered, we must be content with a very hasty arrangement with Neco, returned at his partial knowledge of the external history of best speed to his capital. Babylon during his reign. We have a tolerably Arriving probably before he was expected, he full account of his campaigns against the Jews, discovered that his fears were groundless. and some information as to the general The priests had taken the direction of affairs course of the wars which he carried on with during his absence, and the throne had been Egypt and Phoenicia; but beyond these kept vacant for him by the Chief Priest, or narrow limits we know nothing. Head of the Order. No pretender had started It appears to have been only a few years after up to dispute his claims. Doubtless his Nebuchadnezzar's triumphant campaign military prestige, and the probability that the against Neco that renewed troubles broke out soldiers would adopt his cause, had helped to in Syria. Phoenicia revolted under the keep back aspirants; but perhaps it was the leadership of Tyre; and about the same time promptness of his return, as much as Jehoiakim, the Jewish king, having obtained a anything, that caused the crisis to pass off promise of aid from the Egyptians, renounced without difficulty. his allegiance. Upon this, in his seventh year Nebuchadnezzar is the great monarch of the (B.C. 598), Nebuchadnezzar proceeded once Babylonian Empire, which, lasting only 88 more into Palestine at the head of a vast years--from B.C. 625 to B.C. 538--was for army, composed partly of his allies, the nearly half the time under his sway. Its Medes, partly of his own subjects. He first military glory is due chiefly to him, while the invested Tyre; but, finding that city too strong constructive energy, which constitutes its to be taken by assault, he left a portion of his especial characteristic, belongs to it still more army to continue the siege, while he himself markedly through his character and genius. It pressed forward against Jerusalem. On his is scarcely too much to say that, but for near approach, Jehoiakim, seeing that the Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonians would have Egyptians did not care to come to his aid, had no place in history. At any rate, their made his submission; but Nebuchadnezzar actual place is owing almost entirely to this punished his rebellion with death, and, prince, who to the military talents of an able departing from the common Oriental practice, general added a grandeur of artistic had his dead body treated with indignity. At conception and a skill in construction which first he placed upon the throne Jehoiachin, the son of the late monarch, a youth of

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eighteen; but three months later, becoming which, weak as it was, had yet ventured to suspicious (probably not without reason) of revolt against him now for the fourth time, this prince's fidelity, he deposed him and had Nebuchadnezzar came in person, "he and all him brought a captive to Babylon, his host," against Jerusalem, and after substituting in his place his uncle, Zedekiah, a overcoming and pillaging the open country, brother of Jehoiakim and Jehoahaz. "built forts" and besieged the city. Uaphris, Meanwhile the siege of Tyre was pressed, but upon this, learning the danger of his ally, with little effect. A blockade is always tedious; marched out of Egypt to his relief; and the and the blockade of an island city, strong in Babylonian army, receiving intelligence of his its navy, by an enemy unaccustomed to the approach, raised the siege and proceeded in sea, and therefore forced to depend mainly quest of their new enemy. According to upon the assistance of reluctant allies, must Josephus a battle was fought, in which the have been a task of such extreme difficulty Egyptians were defeated; but it is perhaps that one is surprised it was not given up in more probable that they avoided an despair. According to the Tyrian historians engagement by a precipitate retreat into their their city resisted all the power of own country. At any rate the attempt Nebuchadnezzar for thirteen years. If this effectually to relieve Jerusalem failed. After a statement is to be relied on, Tyre must have brief interval the siege was renewed; a been still uncaptured, when the time came for complete blockade was established; and in a its sister capital to make that last effort for year and a half from the time of the second freedom in which it perished. investment, the city fell. After receiving his crown from Nebuchadnezzar had not waited to witness Nebuchadnezzar, Zedekiah continued for this success of his arms. The siege of Tyre was eight years to play the part of a faithful vassal. still being pressed at the date of the second At length, however, in the ninth year, he investment of Jerusalem, and the Chaldean fancied he saw a way to independence. A monarch had perhaps thought that his young and enterprising monarch, Uaphris-- presence on the borders of Phoenicia was the Apries of Herodotus--had recently necessary to animate his troops in that mounted the Egyptian throne. If the alliance quarter. If this was his motive in withdrawing of this prince could be secured, there was, from the Jewish capital, the event would seem Zedekiah thought, a reasonable hope that the to have shown that he judged wisely. Tyre, if yoke of Babylon might be thrown off and it fell at the end of its thirteen years' siege, Hebrew autonomy re-established. The must have been taken in the very year which infatuated monarch did not see that, do what followed the capture of Jerusalem, B.C. 585. he would, his country had no more than a We may suppose that Nebuchadnezzar, when choice of masters, that by the laws of political he quitted Jerusalem and took up his abode at attraction Judaea must gravitate to one or Ribleh in the Coele-Syrian valley, turned his other of the two great states between which it main attention to the great Phoenician city, had the misfortune of lying. Hoping to free his and made arrangements which caused its country, he sent ambassadors to Uaphris, capture in the ensuing year. who were to conclude a treaty and demand The recovery of these two important cities the assistance of a powerful contingent, secured to the Babylonian monarch the quiet composed of both foot and horse. Uaphris possession thenceforth of Syria and Palestine. received the overture favorably; and But still he had not as yet inflicted any Zedekiah at once revolted from Babylon, and chastisement upon Egypt; though policy, no made preparations to defend himself with less than honor, required that the aggressions vigor. It was not long before the Babylonians of this audacious power should be punished. arrived. Determined to crush the daring state, If we may believe Josephus, however, the day

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of vengeance was not very long delayed. once beautifying and benefiting his kingdom. Within four years of the fall of Tyre, B.C. 581, From the time when he first took the field at Nebuchadnezzar, he tells us, invaded Egypt, the head of an army he adopted the Assyrian put Uaphris, the monarch who had succored system of forcibly removing almost the whole Zedekiah, to death, and placed a creature of population of a conquered country, and his own upon the throne. Egyptian history, it planting it in a distant part of his dominions. is true, forbids our accepting this statement Crowds of captives--the produce of his as correct in all its particulars. Uaphris various wars--Jews, Egyptians, Phoenicians, appears certainly to have reigned at least as Syrians, Ammonites, Moabites, were settled in late as B.C. 569, and according to Herodotus, various parts of Mesopotamia, more he was put to death, not by a foreign invader, especially about Babylon. From these but by a rebellious subject. Perhaps we may unfortunates forced labor was as a matter of best harmonize the conflicting statements on course required; and it seems to have been the subject by supposing that Josephus has chiefly, if not solely, by their exertions that confounded two distinct invasions of Egypt, the magnificent series of great works was one made by Nebuchadnezzar in his twenty- accomplished, which formed the special glory third year, B.C. 581, which had no very of the Fourth Monarchy. important consequences, and the other The chief works expressly ascribed to eleven years later, B.C. 570, which terminated Nebuchadnezzar by the ancient writers are in the deposition of Uaphris, and the the following: He built the great wall of establishment on the throne of a new king, Babylon, which, according to the lowest Amasis, who received a nominal royalty from estimate, must have contained more than Chaldean monarch. 500,000,000 square feet of solid masonry, Such--as far as they are known--were the and must have required three or four times military exploits of this great king. He that number of bricks. He constructed a new defeated Neco, recovered Syria, crushed and magnificent palace in the neighborhood rebellion in Judaea, took Tyre, and humiliated of the ancient residence of the kings. He made Egypt. According to some writers his the celebrated "Hanging Garden" for the successes did not stop here. Megasthenes gratification of his wife, Amyitis. He repaired made him subdue most of Africa, and thence and beautified the great temple of Belus at pass over into Spain and conquer the Babylon. He dug the huge reservoir near Iberians. He even went further, and declared Sippara, said to have been 140 miles in that, on his return from these regions, he circumference, and 180 feet deep, furnishing settled his Iberian captives on the shores of it with flood-gates, through which its water the Euxine in the country between Armenia could be drawn off for purposes of irrigation. and the Caucasus! Thus Nebuchadnezzar was He constructed a number of canals, among made to reign over an empire extending from them the Nahr Malcha or "Royal River," a the Atlantic to the Caspian, and from the broad and deep channel which connected the Caucasus to the Great Sahara. Euphrates with the Tigris. He built quays and The victories of Nebuchadnezzar were not breakwaters along the shores of the Persian without an effect on his home administration Gulf, and he at the same time founded the city and on the construction of the vast works of Diridotis or Teredon in the vicinity of that with which his name is inseparably sea. associated. It was through them that he To these constructions may be added, on the obtained that enormous command of "naked authority either of Nebuchadnezzar's own human strength" which enabled him, without inscriptions or of the existing remains, the undue oppression of his own people, to carry Birs-i-Nimrud, or great temple of Nebo at out on the grandest scale his schemes for at Borsippa; a vast reservoir in Babylon itself,

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called the Yapur-Shapu; an extensive afforded us by certain of the Old Testament embankment along the course of the Tigris, writers. We see him in the Book of Daniel at near Baghdad; and almost innumerable the head of a magnificent Court, surrounded temples, walls, and other public buildings at by "princes, governors, and captains, judges, Cutha, Sippara, Borsippa, Babylon, Chilmad, treasurers, councilors, and sheriffs;" waited Bit-Digla, etc. The indefatigable monarch on by eunuchs selected with the greatest care, seems to have either rebuilt, or at least "well-favored" and carefully educated; repaired, almost every city and temple attended, whenever he requires it, by a throughout the entire country. There are said multitude of astrologers and other "wise to be at least a hundred sites in the tract men," who seek to interpret to him the will of immediately about Babylon, which give Heaven. He is an absolute monarch, disposing evidence, by inscribed bricks bearing his with a word of the lives and properties of his legend, of the marvelous activity and energy subjects, even the highest. All offices are in his of this king. gift. He can raise a foreigner to the second We may suspect that among the constructions place in the kingdom, and even set him over of Nebuchadnezzar was another great work, a the entire priestly order. His wealth is work second in utility to none of those above enormous, for he makes of pure gold an mentioned, and requiring for its completion image, or obelisk, ninety feet high and nine an enormous amount of labor. This is the feet broad. He is religious after a sort, but canal called by the Arabs the _Kerek Saideh_, wavers in his faith, sometimes acknowledging or canal of Saideh, which they ascribe to a the God of the Jews as the only real deity, wife of Nebuchadnezzar, a cutting 400 miles sometimes relapsing into an idolatrous in length, which commenced at Hit on the worship, and forcing all his subjects to follow Euphrates, and was carried along the extreme his example. Even then, however, his western edge of the alluvium close to the polytheism is of a kind which admits of a Arabian frontier, finally falling into the sea at special devotion to a particular deity, who is the head of the Bubian creek, about twenty called emphatically "his god." In temper he is miles to the west of the Shat el-Arab. The hasty and violent, but not obstinate; his fierce traces of this canal which still remain indicate resolves are taken suddenly and as suddenly a work of such magnitude and difficulty that repented of; he is moreover capable of bursts we can scarcely ascribe it with probability to of gratitude and devotion, no less than of any monarch who has held the country since accesses of fury; like most Orientals, he is Nebuchadnezzar. vainglorious but he can humble himself before the chastening hand of the Almighty; The Pallacopas, or canal of Opa (Palga Opa), in his better moods he shows a spirit which left the Euphrates at Sippara (Mosaib) astonishing in one of his country and time--a and ran into a great lake in the neighborhood spirit of real piety, self-condemnation, and of Borsippa, whence the lands in the self-abasement, which renders him one of the neighborhood were irrigated, may also have most remarkable characters in Scripture. been one of Nebuchadnezzar's constructions. It was an old canal, much out of repair, in the A few touches of a darker hue must be added time of Alexander, and was certainly the to this portrait of the great Babylonian king work, not of the Persian conquerors, but of from the statements of another some native monarch anterior to Cyrus. The contemporary, the prophet Jeremiah. The Arabs, who call it the Nahr Abba, regard it as execution of Jehoiakim, and the putting out of the oldest canal in the country. Zedekiah's eyes, though acts of considerable severity, may perhaps be regarded as justified Some glimpses into the private life and by the general practice of the age, and personal character of Nebuchadnezzar are therefore as not indicating in

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Nebuchadnezzar any special ferocity of works were completed, in the midst of disposition. But the ill-treatment of complete tranquility and prosperity, a sudden Jehoiakim's dead body, the barbarity of warning was sent him. He dreamt a strange murdering Zedekiah's sons before his eyes, dream, and when he sought to know its and the prolonged imprisonment both of meaning, the Prophet Daniel was inspired to Zedekiah and of Jehoiachin, though the latter tell him that it portended his removal from had only contemplated rebellion, cannot be the kingly office for the space of seven years, thus excused. They were unusual and in consequence of a curious and very unusual unnecessary acts, which tell against the kind of madness. This malady, which is not monarch who authorized them, and must be unknown to physicians, has been termed considered to imply a real cruelty of "Lycanthropy." It consists in the belief that disposition, such as is observable in Sargon one is not a man but a beast, in the disuse of and Asshur-bani-pal. Nebuchadnezzar, it is language, the rejection of all ordinary human plain, was not content with such a measure of food, and sometimes in the loss of the erect severity as was needed to secure his own posture and a preference for walking on all interests, but took a pleasure in the wanton fours. Within a year of the time that he infliction of suffering on those who had received the warning, Nebuchadnezzar was provoked his resentment. smitten. The great king became a wretched On the other hand, we obtain from the native maniac. Allowed to indulge in his writer, Berosus, one amiable trait which distempered fancy, he eschewed human deserves a cursory mention. Nebuchadnezzar habitations, lived in the open air night and was fondly attached to the Median princess day, fed on herbs, disused clothing, and who had been chosen for him as a wife by his became covered with a rough coat of hair. His father from political motives. Not content subjects generally, it is probable, were not with ordinary tokens of affection, he erected, allowed to know of his condition, although solely for her gratification, the remarkable they could not but be aware that he was structure which the Greeks called the suffering from some terrible malady. The "Hanging Garden." A native of a mountainous queen most likely held the reins of power, country, Amyitis disliked the tiresome and carried on the government in his name. uniformity of the level alluvium, and pined for The dream had been interpreted to mean that the woods and hills of Media. It was to satisfy the lycanthropy would not be permanent; and this longing by the best substitute which even the date of recovery had been circumstances allowed that the celebrated announced, only with a certain ambiguity. Garden was made. Art strove to emulate The Babylonians were thereby encouraged to nature with a certain measure of success, and await events, without taking any steps that the lofty rocks and various trees of this would have involved them in difficulties if the wonderful Paradise, if they were not a very malady ceased. And their faith and patience close imitation of Median mountain scenery, met with a reward. After suffering were at any rate a pleasant change from the obscuration for the space of seven years, natural monotony of the Babylonian plain, suddenly the king's intellect returned to him. and must have formed a grateful retreat for His recovery was received with joy by his the Babylonian queen, whom they reminded Court. Lords and councilors gathered about at once of her husband's love and of the him. He once more took the government into beauty of her native country. his own hands, issued his proclamations, and performed the other functions of royalty. He The most remarkable circumstance in was now an old man, and his reign does not Nebuchadnezzar's life remains to be noticed. seem to have been much prolonged; but "the Towards the close of his reign, when his glory of his kingdom," his "honor and conquests and probably most of his great

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brightness" returned; his last days were as there were at this time any Magi at Babylon; brilliant as his first: his sun set in an but it was certainly an ancient and very high unclouded sky, shorn of none of the rays that dignity of which even kings might be proud. It had given splendor to its noonday. is remarkable that Neriglissar calls himself Nebuchadnezzar expired at Babylon in the the son of Bel-sum-iskun, "king of Babylon"--a forty-fourth year of his reign, B.C. 561, after monarch whose name does not appear in an illness of no long duration. He was Ptolemy's list, but who is probably to be probably little short of eighty years old at his identified with a chieftain so called, who death. assumed the royal title in the troubles which The successor of Nebuchadnezzar was his son preceded the fall of the Assyrian Empire. Evil-Merodach, who reigned only two years, During his short reign of four years, or rather and of whom very little is known. We may three years and a few months, Neriglissar had expect that the marvelous events of his not time to distinguish himself by many father's life, which are recorded in the Book exploits. So far as appears, he was at peace of Daniel, had made a deep impression upon with all his neighbors, and employed his time him, and that he was thence inclined to favor principally in the construction of the Western the persons, and perhaps the religion, of the Palace at Babylon, which was a large building Jews. One of his first acts was to release the placed at one corner of a fortified enclosure, unfortunate Jehoiachin from the directly opposite the ancient royal residence, imprisonment in which he had languished for and abutting on the Euphrates. If the account thirty-five years, and to treat him with which Diodorus gives of this palace be not a kindness and respect. He not only recognized gross exaggeration of the truth, it must have his royal rank, but gave him precedence over been a magnificent erection, elaborately all the captive kings resident at Babylon. ornamented with painting and sculpture in Josephus says that he even admitted the best style of Babylonian art, though in size Jehoiachin into the number of his most it may have been inferior to the old residence intimate friends. Perhaps he may have of the kings on the other side of the river. designed him some further advancement, and Neriglissar reigned from B.C. 559 to B.C. 556, may in other respects have entertained and dying a natural death in the last-named projects which seemed strange and alarming year, left his throne to his son, to his subjects. At any rate he had been but Laborosoarchod, or Labossoracus. This two years upon the throne when a conspiracy prince, who was a mere boy, and therefore was formed against him; he was accused of quite unequal to the task of governing a great lawlessness and intemperance; his own empire in critical times, was not allowed to brother-in-law, Neriglissar, the husband of a retain the crown many months. Accused by daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, headed the those about him--whether justly or unjustly malcontents; and Evil-Merodach lost his life we cannot say--of giving many indications of with his crown. a bad disposition, he was deposed and put to Neriglissar, the successful conspirator, was at death by torture. With him power passed once acknowledged king. He is probably from the House of Nabopolassar, which had identical with the "Nergal-shar-ezer, Rab- held the throne for just seventy years. Mag," of Jeremiah, who occupied a prominent On the death of Laborosoarchod the position among the Babylonian nobles left to conspirators selected one of their number, a press the siege of Jerusalem when certain Nabonadius or Nabannidochus, and Nebuchadnezzar retired to Ribleh. The title of invested him with the sovereignty. He was in "Rab-Mag," is one that he bears upon his no way related to the late monarch, and his bricks. It is doubtful what exactly his office claim to succeed must have been derived was; for we have no reason to believe that

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mainly from the part which he had played in power his enemy, or refuse the proffered the conspiracy. But still he was a personage of alliance and trust to the gratitude of Cyrus for some rank, for his father had, like Neriglissar, the future security of his kingdom. It would held the important office of Rab Mag. It is be easy to imagine the arguments pro and probable that one of his first steps on contra which presented themselves to his ascending the throne was to connect himself mind at this conjuncture; but as they would by marriage with the royal house which had be destitute of a historical foundation, it is preceded him in the kingdom. Either the perhaps best to state simply the decision at mother of the late king Laborosoarchod, and which he is known to have arrived. This was widow of Neriglissar, or possibly some other an acceptance of the Lydian offer. Nabonadius daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, was found consented to join the proposed league; and a willing to unite her fortune with those of the treaty was probably soon afterwards new sovereign, and share the dangers and the concluded between the three powers dignity of his position. Such a union whereby they united in an alliance offensive strengthened the hold of the reigning and defensive against the Persians. monarch on the allegiance of his subjects, and Knowing that he had provoked a powerful tended still more to add stability to his enemy by this bold act, and ignorant how dynasty. For as the issue of such a marriage soon he might be called upon to defend his would join in one the claims of both royal kingdom, from the entire force of his foe, houses, he would be sure to receive the which might be suddenly hurled against him support of all parties in the state. Very shortly almost at any moment, Nabonadius seems to after the accession of Nabonadius (B.C. 555) have turned his attention at once to providing he received an embassy from the far north- means of defense. The works ascribed by west. An important revolution had occurred Herodotus to a queen, Nitocris, whom he on the eastern frontier of Babylonia three makes the mother of Nabonadius (Labynetus) years before, in the reign of Neriglissar; but must be regarded as in reality constructions its effects only now began to make of that monarch himself, undertaken with the themselves felt among the neighboring object of protecting Babylon from Cyrus. They nations. Had Cyrus, on taking the crown, consisted in part of defenses within the city, adopted the policy of Astyages, the designed apparently to secure it against an substitution of Persia for Media as the ruling enemy who should enter by the river, in part Arian nation would have been a matter of of hydraulic works intended to obstruct the small account. But there can be little doubt advances of an army by the usual route. The that he really entered at once on a career of river had hitherto flowed in its natural bed conquest, Lydia, at any rate, felt herself through the middle of the town. Nabonadius menaced by the new power, and seeing the confined the stream by a brick embankment danger which threatened the other carried the whole way along both banks, after monarchies of the time, if they allowed the which he built on the top of the embankment great Arian kingdom to attack them severally a wall of a considerable height, pierced at with her full force, proposed a league intervals by gateways, in which were set whereby the common enemy might, she gates of bronze. He likewise made certain thought, be resisted with success. cuttings, reservoirs, and sluices at some Ambassadors seem to have been sent from distance from Babylon towards the north, Sardis to Babylon in the very year in which which were to be hindrances to an enemy's Nabonadius became king. He therefore had at march, though in what way is not very once to decide whether he would embrace the apparent. Some have supposed that besides offer made him, and uniting with Lydia and these works there was further built at the Egypt in a league against Persia, make that same time a great wall which extended

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entirely across the tract between the two far and wide over his country, with an almost rivers--a huge barrier a hundred feet high and inexhaustible supply of human labor at his twenty thick--meant, like the Roman walls in command for the construction of such dikes, Britain and the great wall of China, to be walls, or cuttings as he should deem insurmountable by an unskillful foe; but there advisable, Nabonadius might, one would have is ground for suspecting that this belief is ill- thought, have aspired to save his land from founded, having for its sole basis a invasion, or have disputed inch by inch his misconception of Xenophon's. enemy's advance towards the capital. But Nabonadius appears to have been allowed such considerations have seldom had much ample time to carry out to the full his system force with Orientals, whose notions of war of defenses, and to complete all his and strategy are even now of the rudest and preparations. The precipitancy of Croesus, most primitive description. To measure one's who plunged into a war with Persia single- strength as quickly as possible with that of handed, asking no aid from his allies, and the one's foe, to fight one great pitched battle in promptitude of Cyrus, who allowed him no order to decide the question of superiority in opportunity of recovering from his first false the field, and then, if defeated, either to step, had prevented Nabonadius from coming surrender or to retire behind walls, has been into actual collision with Persia in the early the ordinary conception of a commander's part of his reign. The defeat of Croesus in the duties in the East from the time of the battle of Pteria, the siege of Sardis, and its Ramesside kings to our own day. No special capture, followed so rapidly on the first blame therefore attaches to Nabonadius for commencement of hostilities, that whatever his neglect. He followed the traditional policy his wishes may have been, Nabonadius had it of Oriental monarchs in the course which he not in his power to give any help to his rash took. And his subjects had less reason to ally. Actual war was thus avoided at this time; complain of his resolution than most others, and no collision having occurred, Cyrus could since the many strongholds in Babylonia defer an attack on the great kingdom of the must have afforded them a ready refuge, and south until he had consolidated his power in the great fortified district within which the north and the northeast, which he rightly Babylon itself stood must have been capable regarded as of the last importance. Thus of accommodating with ease the whole native fourteen years intervened between the population of the country. capture of Sardis by the Persian arms and the If we may trust Herodotus, the invader, commencement of the expedition against having made all his preparations and Babylon. commenced his march, came to a sudden When at last it was rumored that the Persian pause midway between Ecbatana and king had quitted Ecbatana (B.C. 539) and Babylon. One of the sacred white horses, commenced his march to the south-west, which drew the chariot of Ormazd, had been Nabonadius received the tidings with drowned in crossing a river; and Cyrus had indifference. His defenses were completed: thereupon desisted from his march, and, his city was amply provisioned; if the enemy declaring that he would revenge himself on should defeat him in the open field, he might the insolent stream, had set his soldiers to retire behind his walls, and laugh to scorn all disperse its waters into 360 channels. This attempts to reduce his capital either by work employed him during the whole blockade or storm. It does not appear to have summer and autumn; nor was it till another occurred to him that it was possible to spring had come that he resumed his protect his territory. With a broad, deep, and expedition. To the Babylonians such a pause rapid river directly interposed between him must have appeared like irresolution. They and his foe, with a network of canals spread must have suspected that the invader had

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changed his mind and would not venture him in the government his son, Belshazzar, or across the Tigris. If the particulars of the Bel-shar-uzur, the grandson of the great story reached them, they probably laughed at Nebuchadnezzar. This step, taken most likely the monarch who vented his rage on with a view to none but internal dangers, was inanimate nature, while he let his enemies now found exceedingly convenient for the escape scot free. purposes of the war. In his father's absence Cyrus, however, had a motive for his Belshazzar took the direction of affairs within proceedings which will appear in the sequel. the city, and met and foiled for a considerable Having wintered on the banks of the Gyndes time all the assaults of the Persians. He was in a mild climate, where tents would have young and inexperienced, but he had the been quite a sufficient protection to his army, counsels of the queen-mother to guide and he put his troops in motion at the support him, as well as those of the various commencement of spring, crossed the Tigris lords and officers of the court. So well did he apparently unopposed, and soon came in manage the defense that after a while Cyrus sight of the capital. Here he found the despaired, and as a last resource ventured on Babylonian army drawn out to meet him a stratagem in which it was clear that he must under the command of Nabonadius himself, either succeed or perish. who had resolved to try the chance of a battle. Withdrawing the greater part of his army An engagement ensued, of which we possess from the vicinity of the city, and leaving no details; our informants simply tell us that behind him only certain corps of observation, the Babylonian monarch was completely Cyrus marched away up the course of the defeated, and that, while most of his army Euphrates for a certain distance, and there sought safety within the walls of the capital, proceeded to make a vigorous use of the he himself with a small body of troops threw spade. His soldiers could now appreciate the himself into Borsippa, an important town value of the experience which they had lying at a short distance from Babylon gained by dispersing the Gyndes, and towards the south-west. It is not easy to see perceive that the summer and autumn of the the exact object of this movement. Perhaps preceding year had not been wasted. They Nabonadius thought that the enemy would dug a channel or channels from the thereby be obliged to divide his army, which Euphrates, by means of which a great portion might then more easily be defeated; perhaps of its water would be drawn off, and hoped in he imagined that by remaining without the this way to render the natural course of the walls he might be able to collect such a force river fordable. among his subjects and allies as would When all was prepared, Cyrus determined to compel the beleaguering army to withdraw. wait for the arrival of a certain festival, during Or, possibly, he merely followed an instinct of which the whole population were wont to self-preservation, and fearing that the engage in drinking and reveling, and then soldiers of Cyrus might enter Babylon with silently in the dead of night to turn the water his own, if he fled thither, sought refuge in of the river and make his attack. It fell out as another city. he hoped and wished. The festival was held It might have been supposed that his absence with even greater pomp and splendor than would have produced anarchy and confusion usual; for Belshazzar, with the natural in the capital; but a step which he had insolence of youth, to mark his contempt of recently taken with the object of giving the besieging army, abandoned himself stability to his throne rendered the wholly to the delights of the season, and preservation of order tolerably easy. At the himself entertained a thousand lords in his earliest possible moment--probably when he palace. Elsewhere the rest of the population was about fourteen--he had associated with was occupied in feasting and dancing.

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Drunken riot and mad excitement held the monarch, and slew him on the scene of his possession of the town; the siege was impious revelry. Other bands carried fire and forgotten; ordinary precautions were sword through the town. When morning neglected. Following the example of their came, Cyrus found himself undisputed master king, the Babylonians gave themselves up for of the city, which, if it had not despised his the night to orgies in which religious frenzy efforts, might with the greatest ease have and drunken excess formed a strange and baffled them. revolting medley. The war, however, was not even yet at an end. Meanwhile, outside the city, in silence and Nabonadius still held Borsippa, and, if darkness, the Persians watched at the two allowed to remain unmolested, might have points where the Euphrates entered and left gradually gathered strength and become once the walls. Anxiously they noted the gradual more a formidable foe. Cyrus, therefore, sinking of the water in the river-bed; still having first issued his orders that the outer more anxiously they watched to see if those fortifications of Babylon should be within the walls would observe the dismantled, proceeded to complete his suspicious circumstance and sound an alarm conquest by laying siege to the town where through the town. Should such an alarm be he knew that Nabonadius had taken refuge. given, all their labors would be lost. If, when That monarch, however, perceiving that they entered the river-bed, they found the resistance would be vain, did not wait till river-walls manned and the river-gates fast- Borsippa was invested, but on the approach locked, they would be indeed "caught in a of his enemy surrendered himself. Cyrus trap." Enfiladed on both sides by an enemy rewarded his submission by kind and liberal whom they could neither see nor reach, they treatment. Not only did he spare his life, but would be overwhelmed and destroyed by his (if we may trust Abydenus) he conferred on missiles before they could succeed in making him the government of the important their escape. But, as they watched, no sounds province of Carmania. of alarm reached them--only a confused noise Thus perished the Babylonian empire. If we of revel and riot, which showed that the seek the causes of its fall, we shall find them unhappy townsmen were quite unconscious partly in its essential military inferiority to of the approach of danger. the kingdom that had recently grown up upon At last shadowy forms began to emerge from its borders, partly in the accidental the obscurity of the deep river-bed, and on circumstance that its ruler at the time of the the landing-places opposite the river-gates Persian attack was a man of no great capacity. scattered clusters of men grew into solid Had Nebuchadnezzar himself, or a prince of columns--the undefended gateways were his mental caliber, been the contemporary of seized--a war-shout was raised--the alarm Cyrus, the issue of the contest might have was taken and spread--and swift runners been doubtful. Babylonia possessed naturally started off to "show the King of Babylon that vast powers of resistance--powers which, had his city was taken at one end." In the they been made use of to the utmost, might darkness and confusion of the night a terrible have tired out the patience of the Persians. massacre ensued. The drunken revelers could That lively, active, but not over-persevering make no resistance. The king paralyzed with people would scarcely have maintained a fear at the awful handwriting upon the wall, siege with the pertinacity of the Babylonians which too late had warned him of his peril, themselves or of the Egyptians. If the could do nothing even to check the progress stratagem of Cyrus had failed--and its success of the assailants, who carried all before them depended wholly on the Babylonians everywhere. Bursting into the palace, a band exercising no vigilance--the capture of the of Persians made their way to the presence of town would have been almost impossible.

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Babylon was too large to be blockaded; its of its population. Babylon, equally with walls were too lofty to be scaled, and too Assyria, failed to win the affections of the massive to be battered down by the means subject nations, and, as a natural result, possessed by the ancients. Mining in the soft received no help from them in her hour of alluvial soil would have been dangerous need. Her system was to exhaust and oppress work, especially as the town ditch was deep the conquered races for the supposed benefit and supplied with abundant water from the of the conquerors, and to impoverish the Euphrates. Cyrus, had he failed in his night provinces for the adornment and enrichment attack, would probably have at once raised of the capital. The wisest of her monarch's the siege; and Babylonian independence thought it enough to construct works of might perhaps in that case have been public utility in Babylonia Proper, leaving the maintained down to the time of Alexander. dependent countries to themselves, and doing Even thus, however, the "Empire" would not nothing to develop their resources. This have been continued. So soon as it became selfish system was, like most selfishness, evident that the Babylonians were no match short-sighted; it alienated those whom it for the Persians in the field, their authority would have been true policy to conciliate and over the subject nations was at an end. The win. When the time of peril came, the subject Susianians, the tribes of the middle nations were no source of strength to the Euphrates, the Syrians, the Phoenicians, the menaced empire, On the contrary, it would Jews, the Idumeans, the Ammonites and seem that some even turned against her and Moabites, would have gravitated to the made common cause with the assailants. stronger power, even if the attack of Cyrus on Babylonian civilization differed in many Babylon itself had been repulsed. For the respects from Assyrian, to which however it conquests of Cyrus in Asia Minor, the Oxus approached more nearly than to any other region, and Afghanistan, had completely known type. Its advantages over Assyrian destroyed the balance of power in Western were in its greater originality, its superior Asia, and given to Persia a preponderance literary character, and its comparative width both in men and in resources against which and flexibility. Babylonia seems to have been the cleverest and most energetic of the source from which Assyria drew her Babylonian princes would have struggled in learning, such as it was, her architecture, the vain. Persia must in any case have absorbed main ideas of her mimetic art, her religious all the tract between Mount Zagros and the notions, her legal forms, and a vast number of Mediterranean, except Babylonia Proper; and her customs and usages. But Babylonia thus the successful defense of Babylon would herself, so far as we know, drew her stores merely have deprived the Persian Empire of a from no foreign country. Hers was apparently province. the genius which excogitated an alphabet-- In its general character the Babylonian worked out the simpler problems of Empire was little more than a reproduction of arithmetic--invented implements for the Assyrian. The same loose organization of measuring the lapse of time--conceived the the provinces under native kings rather than idea of raising enormous structures with the satraps almost universally prevailed, with the poorest of all materials, clay--discovered the same duties on the part of suzerain and art of polishing, boring, and engraving gems-- subjects and the same results of ever- reproduced with truthfulness the outlines of recurring revolt and re-conquest. Similar human and animal forms--attained to high means were employed under both empires to perfection in textile fabrics--studied with check and discourage rebellion--mutilations success the motions of the heavenly bodies-- and executions of chiefs, pillage of the conceived of grammar as a science-- rebellious region, and wholesale deportation elaborated a system of law--saw the value of

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an exact chronology--in almost every branch of science made a beginning, thus rendering it comparatively easy for other nations to proceed with the superstructure. To Babylonia, far more than to Egypt, we owe the art and learning of the Greeks. It was from the East, not from Egypt, that Greece derived her architecture, her sculpture, her science, her philosophy, her mathematical knowledge--in a word, her intellectual life. And Babylon was the source to which the entire stream of Eastern civilization may be traced. It is scarcely too much to say that, but for Babylon, real civilization might not even yet have dawned upon the earth. Mankind might never have advanced beyond that spurious and false form of it which in Egypt, India, China, Japan, Mexico, and Peru, contented the aspirations of the species.