the same length as the first.

Its exterior has two

Its breadth, however, is only one foot. parallel mouldings, which are continued down the jambs of the doorway.

36. The stone employed is of the hard and beautiful breccia, of which the neighbouring rocks, and the contiguous Mount Eubora, consist.

It is the hardest and compactest breccia which Greece produces, resembling the antique marble called Breccia Tracagnina antica, sometimes found among the ruins of Rome. Near the gate lie some masses of rosso antico decorated with guilloche-like and zigzag ornaments, and a columnar base of a Persian character. Some have supposed that these belonged to the decorations of the doorway; but we are of a different opinion, inasmuch as they destroy its grand character. We think if this were the tomb of Agamemnon, they were much more likely to have been a part of the shrine in which the body or ashes were deposited.

37. It is conjectured that the treasury of Minyas, king of Orchomenos, whereof Pausanias speaks, bore a resemblance to the building we have just described; and it is very probable that all the subterranean chambers of Greece, Italy, and Sicily were very similarly constructed. Fig. 17. represents the entrance to the building from the outside. As the architecture of the early races whereof we have been speaking will be further discussed in investigating other monuments, we do not think it necessary to enlarge further in this place on what we have termed Pelasgic or Cyclopean architecture.

Fig. 17.

TREASURY OF MINYAB.

SECT. III.

BABYLONIAN ARCHITECTURE.

38 The name prefixed to this section must not induce the reader to suppose we shall be able to afford him much instruction on this interesting subject. The materials are scanty; the monuments, though once stupendous, still more so. "If ever," says Keith, in his Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion, "there was a city that seemed to bid defiance to any predictions of its fall, that city was Babylon. It was for a long time the most famous city in the Old World. Its walls, which were reckoned among the wonders of the world, appeared rather like the bulwarks of nature than the workmanship of man.” The city of Babylon is thus described by ancient writers. It was situated in a plain of vast extent, and divided into two parts by the river Euphrates, which was of considerable width at the spot. The two divisions of the city were connected by a massive bridge of masonry strongly connected with iron and lead; and the embankments to prevent inroads of the river were formed of the same durable materials as the walls of the city. Herodotus says that the city itself was a perfect square enclosed by a wall 480 furlongs in circumference, which would make it eight times the size of London. It is said to have had numbers of houses three or four stories in height, and to have been regularly divided into streets running parallel with each other, and cross ones opening to the river. It was surrounded by a wide and deep trench, from the earth whereof, when excavated, square bricks were formed and baked in a furnace. With these, cemented together through the medium of heated bitumen intermixed with reeds to bind together the viscid mass, the sides of the trenches were lined, and with the same materials the vast walls above mentioned were constructed. At certain intervals watch-towers were placed, and the city was entered by 100 gates of brass. In the centre of each of the principal divisions of the city a stupendous public monument was erected. In one (Major Rennel thinks that on the eastern side) stood the temple of Belus; in the other, within a large strongly fortified enclosure, the royal palace. The former was a square pile, each side being two furlongs in extent. tower erected on its centre was a furlong in breadth and the same in height, thus making it higher than the largest of the pyramids, supposing the furlong to contain only 500 feet. On this tower as a base were raised, in regular succession, seven other lofty towers, and the whole, according to Diodorus, crowned with a bronze statue of the god Belus 40 feet high.

Fig. 18.

TEMPLE OF BELUS.

The

See fig. 18., in which the dotted lines show the present remains, according to Sir R. K. Porter's account in his Travels. The palace, serving also as a temple, stood on an area 1 mile square, and was surrounded by circular walls, which, according to Diodorus, were decorated with sculptured animals resembling life, painted in their natural colours, on the bricks of which they were depicted, and afterwards burnt in. Such was the city of Babylon in its meridian splendour, that city whose founder (if it were not Nimrod, sometimes called Belus,) is unknown. Great as

it was, it was enlarged by Semiramis, and still further enlarged and fortified by Nebuchadnezzar. We shall now present, from the account of Mr. Rich, a gentleman who visited the spot early in this century, a sketch of what the city is now. The first grand mass of ruins marked A (fig. 19.), which the above gentleman describes, he says extends 1100 yards in length and 800 in its greatest breadth, in figure nearly resembling a quadrant; its height is irregular, but the most elevated part may be about 50 or 60 ft. above the level of the plain, and it has been dug into for the purpose of procuring bricks. This mound Mr. R. distinguishes by the name of Amran. On the north is a valley 550 yards long, and then the second grand heap of ruins, whose shape is nearly a square of 700 yards long and broad; its south-west angle being connected with the north-west angle of the mounds of Amran by a high ridge nearly 100 yards in breadth. This is the place where Beauchamp made his observations, and is highly interesting from every vestige of it being composed of buildings far superior to those whereof there are traces in the eastern quarter. The bricks are of the finest description, and, notwithstanding this spot being the principal magazine of them and constantly used for a supply, are still in abundance. The operation of extracting the bricks has caused much confusion, and increased the difficulty of deciphering the use of this mound. In some places the solid mass has been bored into, and the superincumbent strata falling in, frequently bury workmen in the rubbish. In all these excavations walls of burnt brick laid in lime mortar of a good quality are to be seen; and among the ruins are to be found fragments of alabaster vessels, fine earthenware, marble, and great quantities of varnished tiles, whose glazing and colouring are surprisingly fresh.

"In a

hollow," observes Mr. Rich,

99

F

ibn Ali

66

near the southern part, I found a sepulchral urn of earthenware, which had been broken in digging, and near it lay some human bones, which pulverised with the touch." Not more than 200 yards from the northern extremity of this mound, is a ravine near 100 yards long, hollowed out by those who dig for bricks, on one of whose sides a few yards of wall remain, the face whereof is clear and perfect, and appears to have been the front of some building. The opposite side is so confused a mass of rubbish, that it looks as if the ravine had been worked through a solid building. Under the foundations at the southern end was discovered a subterranean passage floored and walled with large bricks in bitumen, and covered over with pieces of sandstone a yard thick and several yards long, on which the pressure is so great as to have pushed out the side walls. What was seen was near seven feet in height, its course being to the south. The upper part of the passage is cemented with bitumen, other parts of the ravine with mortar, and the bricks have all writing on them. At the northern end of the ravine an excavation was made, and a statue of a lion of colossal dimensions, standing on a pedestal of coarse granite and rude workmanship, was discovered. This was about the spot marked E on the plan. A little to the west of the ravine at B is a remarkable ruin called the Kasr or Palace, which, being uncovered, and partly detached from the rubbish, is visible from a considerable distance. It is "so surprisingly fresh," says the author," that it was only after a minute inspection I was satisfied of its being in reality a Babylonian remain." It consists of several walls and piers, in some places ornamented with niches, and in others strengthened by pilasters of burnt brick in lime cement of great tenacity. The tops of the walls have been broken down, and they may have been much higher. Contiguous to this ruin is a heap of rubbish, whose sides are curiously streaked by the alternation of its materials, probably unburnt bricks, of which a small quantity were found in the neighbourhood, without however any reeds in their interstices. A little to the N. N. E. of it is the famous tree which the natives call Athelì. They say it existed in ancient Babylon, and was preserved by God that it might afford a convenient place to Ali for tying up his horse after the battle Hellah!" "It is an evergreen," says Mr. R., "something resembling the lignum vitæ, and of a kind, I believe, not common in this part of the country, though I am told there is a tree of the description at Bassora." The valley which separates the mounds just described from the river is white with nitre, and does not now appear to have had any buildings upon it except a small circular heap at D. The whole embankment is abrupt, and shivered by the action of the water. At the narrowest part E, cemented into the burnt brick wall, there were a number of urns filled with human bones which had not undergone the action of fire. From a considerable quantity of burnt bricks and other fragments of building in the water the river appears to have encroached here.

Fig. 19.

PLAN OF BABYLON.

39. A mile to the north of the Kasr, and 950 yards from the bank of the river, is the last ruin of this series, which Pietro della Valle, in 1616, described as the tower of Belus, in which he is followed by Rennell. The natives call it, according to the vulgar Arab pronunciation of those parts, Mujelibè, which means overturned. They sometimes also apply the same term to the mounds of the Kasr. This is marked F on the plan. "It is of an oblong shape, irregular in its height and the measurement of its sides, which face the cardinal points as follows: the northern side 200 yards in length, the southern 219, the eastern 182, and the western 136. The elevation of the south-east or highest angle, 141 feet. The western face, which is the least elevated, is the most interesting on account of the appearance of building it presents. Near the summit of it appears a low wall, with interruptions, built of unburnt bricks mixed up with chopped straw or reeds and cemented with clay mortar of great thickness." The south-west angle seems to have had a turret, the others are less perfect. The ruin is much worn into furrows, from the action of the weather, penetrating considerably into the mound in some places. The summit is covered with heaps of rubbish, among which fragments of burnt brick are found, and here and there

whole bricks with mscriptions on them. Interspersed are innumerable fragments of pottery, brick, bitumen, pebbles, vitrified brick or scoria, and even shells, bits of glass, and mother

of pearl. The northern face of the Mujelibé (fig. 20.) contains a niche of the height of a man, at the back whereof a low aperture leads to a small cavity, whence a passage branches off to the right till it is lost in the rubbish. It is called by the natives

the serdaub or cellar, and Mr. Rich was informed that four years previous to his survey, a quantity of marble was taken out from it, and a coffin of mulberry wood, in which was contained a human body enclosed in a tight wrapper, and apparently partially covered with bitumen, which crumbled into dust on exposure to the air. About this spot Mr. R. also excavated and found a coffin containing a skeleton in high preservation, whose antiquity was placed beyond dispute by the attachment of a brass bird to the outside of the coffin, and inside an ornament of the same material, which had seemingly been suspended to some part of the skeleton. On the western side of the river there is not the slightest vestige of ruins excepting opposite the mass of Amran, where there are two small mounds of earth in existence. 40. The most stupendous and surprising mass of the ruins of ancient Babylon is situate in the desert, about six miles to the south-west of Hellah. It is too distant to be shown on the block plan above given. By the Arabs it is called Birs Nemroud; by the Jews,

Fig. 21.

BIRS NEMROUD.

Nebuchadnezzar's Prison. Mr. Rich was the first traveller who gave any account of this ruin, of which fig. 21. is a representation; and the description following we shall present in Mr. Rich's own words. "The Birs Nemroud is a mound of an oblong figure, the total circumference of which is 762 yards. At the eastern side it is cloven by a deep furrow, and is not more than fifty or sixty feet high; but at the western it rises in a conical figure to the elevation of 198 ft., and on its summit is a solid pile of brick 37 ft. high by 28 in breadth, diminishing in thickness to the top, which is broken and irregular, and rent by a large fissure extending through a third of its height. It is perforated by small square holes disposed in rhomboids. The fine burnt bricks of which it is built have inscriptions on them; and so admirable is the cement, which appears to be lime mortar, that, though the layers are so close together that it is difficult to discern what substance is between them, it is nearly impossible to extract one of the bricks whole. The other parts of the summit of the hill are occupied by immense fragments of brickwork, of no determinate figure, tumbled together and converted into solid vitrified masses, as if they had undergone the action of the fiercest fire or been blown up with gunpowder, the layers of the bricks being perfectly discernible, a curious fact, and one for which I am utterly incapable of accounting. These, incredible as it may seem, are actually the ruins spoken of by Pére Emanuel (See D'Anville, sur l'Euphrate et le Tigre), who takes no sort of notice of the prodigious mound on which they are elevated." The mound is a majestic ruin, and of a people whose powers were not lost, if the hypothesis brought before the reader in the previous section on Celtic and Druidical architecture be founded on the basis of truth, but shown afterwards, on their separation from the parent stock, in Abury, Stonehenge, Carnac, and many other places. Ruins to a considerable extent exist round the Birs Nemroud; but for our purpose it is not necessary to particularise them. The chance (for more the happiest conjecture would not warrant) of conclusively enabling the reader to come to a certain and definite notion of the venerable city, whereof it is our object to give him a faint idea, is far too indefinite to detain him and exhaust his patience. One circumstance, however, we must not omit; and again we shall use the words of the traveller to whom we are under so many obligations. They are, "To these ruins I must add one, which, though not in the same direction, bears such strong characteristics of a Babylonian origin, that it would be C

improper to omit a description of it in this place. I mean Akerkouf, or, as it is more generally called, Nimrod's Tower; for the inhabitants of these parts are as fond of attributing every vestige of antiquity to Nimrod as those of Egypt are to Pharaoh. It is situate ten miles to the north-west of Bagdad, and is a thick mass of unburnt brickwork, of an irregular shape, rising out of a base of rubbish; there is a layer of reeds between every fifth or sixth (for the number is not regulated) layer of bricks. It is perforated with small square holes, as the brickwork at the Birs Nemroud; and about half way up on the east side is an aperture like a window; the layers of cement are very thin, which, considering it is mere mud, is an extraordinary circumstance. The height of the whole is 126 ft.; diameter of the largest part, 100 ft.; circumference of the foot of the brickwork above the rubbish, 300 ft.; the remains of the tower contain 100,000 cubic feet. (Vide Ives's Travels, p. 298.) To the east of it is a dependent mound, resembling those at the Birs and Al Hheimar."

41. The inquiry (following Mr. Rich) now to be pursued is that of identifying some of the remains which have been described with the description which has been left of them. And, first, of the circuit of the city. The greatest circumference of the city, according to the authors of antiquity, was 480 stadia (supposed about 500 ft. each), the least 360. Strabo, who was on the spot when the walls were sufficiently perfect to judge of their extent, states their circuit at 385 stadia. It seems probable that within the walls there was a quantity of arable and pasture ground, to enable the population to resist a siege; and that, unlike modern cities, the buildings were distributed in groups over the area inclosed; for Xenophon reports that when Cyrus took Babylon (which event happened at night) the inhabitants of the opposite quarter of the town were not aware of it till the third part of the day; that is, three hours after sunrise. The accounts of the height of the walls all agree in the dimension of 50 cubits, which was their reduced height from 350 ft. by Darius Hystaspes, in order to render the town less defensible. The embankment of the river with walls, according to Diodorus 100 stadia in length, indicates very advanced engineering skill; but the most wonderful structure of the city was the tower, pyramid, or sepulchre of Belus, whose base, according to Strabo, was a stadium on each side. It stood in an enclosure of two miles and a half, and contained the temple in which divine honours were paid to the tutelary deity of Babylon. The main interest attached to the tower of Belus arises from a belief of its identity with the tower which we learn from Scripture (Gen. xi.) the descendants of Noah, with Belus at their head, constructed in the plains of Shinar. The two masses of ruins in which this tower must be sought, seem to be the Birs Nemroud, whose four sides are 2286 English feet in length; and the Mujelibé, whose circumference is 2111 ft. Now, taking the stadium at 500 ft., the tower of Belus, according to the accounts, would be 2000 ft. in circumference; so that both the ruins agree, as nearly as possible, in the requisite dimensions, considering our uncertainty respecting the exact length of the stadium. Mr. Rich evidently inclines to the opinion that the Birs Nemroud is the ruin of this celebrated temple, though he allows "a very strong objection may be brought against the Birs Nemroud in the distance of its position from the extensive remains on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, which for its accommodation would oblige us to extend the measurement of each side of the square to nine miles, or adopt a plan which would totally exclude the Mujelibé, all the ruins above it, and most of those below: even in the former case, the Mujelibé and the Birs would be at opposite extremities of the town close to the walls, while we have every reason to believe that the tower of Belus occupied a central situation."

42. The citadel or palace was surrounded by a wall whose total length was 60 stadia, within which was another of 40 stadia, whose inner face was ornamented with painting, — a practice (says Mr. Rich) among the Persians to this day. Within the last-named wall was a third, on which hunting subjects were painted. The old palace was on the opposite side of the river, the outer wall whereof was no larger than the inner wall of the new one. Above the palace or citadel were, according to Strabo, the hanging gardens, for which, in some respects, a site near the Mujelibé would sufficiently answer, were it not that the skeletons found there "embarrass almost any theory that may be formed on this extraordinary pile."

43. As yet, no traces have been found of the tunnel under the Euphrates, nor of the obelisk which Diodorus says was erected by Semiramis; it is not, however, impossible that the diligence and perseverance of future travellers may bring them to light. Rich believes that the number of buildings within the city bore no proportion to the extent of the walls, -a circumstance which has already been passingly noticed. He moreover thinks that the houses were, in general, small; and further, that the assertion of Herodotus, that it abounded in houses of two or three stories, argues that the majority consisted of only one. He well observes, "The peculiar climate of this district must have caused a similarity of habits and accommodation in all ages; and if, upon this principle, we take the present fashion of building as some example of the mode heretofore practised in Babylon, the houses that had more than one story must have consisted of the ground floor, or basse-cour, occupied by stables, magazines, and serdaubs or cellars, sunk a little below the ground, for