120. Babylon, Ancient, and Rome SOURCE: Chr[istopher] Wordsworth, Union With Rome (London: Longmans, 1909), pp. 6–8. [p. 6] We must not neglect the historical parallel between Babylon and Rome. Babylon had been and was the Queen of the East, in the age of the Hebrew Prophets; and Rome was the Mistress of the West when St. John wrote. Babylon was called The Golden City, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency. She claimed Eternity and Universal Supremacy. She aid in her heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will [p. 7] exalt my throne above the stars of God. I shall be a Lady for ever. I am, and none else beside me: I shall not sit as a Widow, neither shall I know the loss of children. In these respects also, Babylon was imitated by Rome. She also called herself the Golden City, the Eternal City. Again: the King of Babylon was the rod of God’s anger, and the staff of his indignation against Jerusalem for its rebellion against him. Babylon was employed by God to punish the sins of Sion, and to lay her walls in the dust. So, in St. John’s own age, the Imperial legions of Rome had been sent by God to chastise the guilty City which had crucified His beloved Son. Again: the Sacred Vessels of God’s Temple at Jerusalem were carried from Sion to Babylon, and were displayed in triumph on the table at the royal banquet in that fatal night, when the fingers of a man’s hand came forth from the Wall and terrified the King. So, the Sacred Vessels of the Jewish Temple, which were restored by Cyrus, and the Book of the Law, and the Golden Candlestick, and the Table of Shewbread, [p. 8] were carried captive in triumphal procession to the Roman Capitol: and even now their effigies may be seen at Rome, carved in sculpture on one of the sides of the triumphal Arch of Titus, the Imperial Conqueror of Jerusalem. 121. Babylon, Center of Semitic Civilization SOURCE: Robert William Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria (6th ed., rev.; New York: Abingdon, 1915), Vol. 2, pp. 575, 576. [p. 575] Babylon stood for more than mere Semitic power. It stood in a large sense for Semitic civilization. As has been so often pointed out before in these pages, Assyria represented far more than Babylonia the prowess of the Semite upon fields of battle. Babylon had stood for Semitic civilization, largely intermixed with many elements, yet Semitic after all. Here were the great libraries of the Sem- [p. 576] itic race. Here were the scholars who copied so painstakingly every little omen or legend that had come down to them out of the hoary past. Here were the men who calculated eclipses, watched the moon’s changes, and looked nightly from observatories upon the stately march of constellations over the sky. Here were the priests who preserved the knowledge of the ancient Sumerian language, that its sad plaints and solemn prayers might be kept for use in temple worship. Much of all this was worthy of preservation—if not for any large usefulness, certainly for its record of human progress upward. 122. Babylon, Center of the Semitic Religion SOURCE: Morris Jastrow, Jr., The Religion of Babylon and Assyria (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1898), pp. 649, 650. [p. 649] The Assyrian rulers regarded it as both a privilege and a solemn duty to come to Babylon and invoke the protection of Marduk and Nabu. In E-Sagila the installation of the rulers over Babylonia took place, and a visit to Marduk’s temple was incomplete without a pilgrimage across the river to E-Zida [in Borsippa]. The influence exerted by these two temples upon the whole course of Babylonian history from the third millennium on, can hardly be overestimated. From the schools grouped around E-Sagila and E-Zida, went forth the decrees that shaped the doctrinal development of the religion of Babylonia and Assyria… The thought of E-Sagila and E-Zida must have stored up emotions in the breast of a Babylonian and Assyrian, that can only be compared to a pious Mohammedan’s enthusiasm for Mecca, or the longing of an ardent Hebrew for Jerusalem… The priests of Marduk could view with equanimity the rise and growth of Assyria’s power. The influence of E-Sagila and E-Zida was not affected by such a shifting of the political kaleidoscope. Babylon remained the [p. 650] religious center of the country. When one day, a Persian conqueror—Cyrus—entered the precincts of E- Sagila, his first step was to acknowledge Marduk and Nabu as the supreme powers in the world; and the successors of Alexander continue to glory in the title, ‘Adorner of E- Sagila and E-Zida.’ 123. Babylon, Cultural Capital, Compared With Rome SOURCE: Hugo Winckler, The History of Babylonia and Assyria, trans. and ed. by James Alexander Craig (New York: Scribner, 1907), pp. 61, 62. [p. 61] In the history of the world Rome alone can be compared with Babylon when we consider the important r"le which this city of Marduk played in Western Asia. As in the Middle Ages Rome exercised its power over men’s minds and, through its teaching, dominated the world, so did Babylon from this time [the 1st dynasty] in the ancient Orient. Just as the [p. 62] German kings strove to gain for themselves world-sovereignty in papal Rome, as the heiress of world power, so shall we find later a similar claim by the kings of Assyria who look back to Babylon. The influence of this dynasty appears most conspicuously in the admiration in which it was held when Babylonian independence was hastening to its close. When after the fall of Nineveh Babylon again rose to political independence under Nebuchadrezzar, and, for the last time, appeared as mistress in Western Asia every exertion was put forth to represent the new kingdom as a rejuvenation of the ancient empire of Khammurabi. 124. Babylon, Description of—Citadel-Palace in Nebuchadnezzar’s Time SOURCE: Leonard W. King, A History of Babylon and Assyria, Vol. 2 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1919), pp. 27, 28. Used by permission. [p. 27] It is clear that a Babylonian citadel was not simply a fortress to be used by the garrison for the defense of the city as a whole: it was also a royal residence, into which the monarch and his court could shut themselves for safety should the outer wall of the city itself be penetrated… In the case of the Southern Citadel of [p. 28] Babylon, on which excavations have now been continuously carried out for sixteen years, we shall see that it formed a veritable township in itself. It was a city within a city, a second Babylon in miniature. The Southern or chief Citadel was built on the mound now known as the Kasr, and within it Nebuchadnezzar erected his principal palace, partly over an earlier building of his father Nabopolassar. The palace and citadel occupy the old city-square or centre of Babylon, which is referred to in the inscriptions as the irṣit Bâbili, “the Babil place.” … We may conclude that the chief fortress of Babylon always stood upon this site, and the city may well have derived its name Bâb-ilî, “the Gate of the Gods,” from the strategic position of its ancient fortress, commanding as it does the main approach to E-sagila, the famous temple of the city-god. [See No. 211.] 125. Babylon, Description of—Herodotus’ Account SOURCE: Herodotus i. 178–183; translated by A. D. Godley, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946), pp. 221, 223, 225, 227, 229. Reprinted by permission of the publishers and The Loeb Classical Library. [p. 221] When Cyrus had brought all the mainland under his sway, he attacked the Assyrians. There are in Assyria many other great cities; but the most famous and the strongest was Babylon, where the royal dwelling had been set after the destruction of Ninus [Nineveh]. Babylon was a city such as I will now [p. 223] describe. It lies in a great plain, and is in shape a square, each side an hundred and twenty furlongs in length; thus four hundred and eighty furlongs make the complete circuit of the city. Such is the size of the city of Babylon; and it was planned like no other city whereof we know. Round it runs first a fosse deep and wide and full of water, and then a wall of fifty royal cubits’ thickness and two hundred cubits’ height. The royal cubit is greater by three fingers’ breadth than the common cubit. Further, I must show where the earth was used as it was taken from the fosse and in what manner the wall was wrought. As they dug the fosse, they made bricks of the earth which was carried out of the place they dug, and when they had moulded bricks enough they baked them in ovens; then using hot bitumen for cement and interposing layers of wattled reeds at every thirtieth course of bricks, they built first the border of the fosse and then the wall itself in the same fashion. On the top, along the edges of the wall, they built houses of a single chamber, facing each other, with space enough between for the driving of a four-horse chariot. There are an hundred gates in the circle of the wall, all of bronze, with posts and lintels of the same.