BRICK dried in the sun, or baked in the furnace; and 4th, the consideration of the whole surrounding district having been, for immemorial ages, and even at this day, distinguished by the name of Babel. Ebn Haukal, who flourished in the tenth century, writes thus: "BABEL is a small village, but the most ancient spot in all IRAK. The whole region is denominated BABEL from this place. The Kings of Canaan [he means Chaldea] resided there; and ruins of great edifices still remain*." Niebuhr, the intelligent traveller, and the present explorer of these ruins, attest that it still bears its ancient denomination. It may be remarked, that in scarcely any district of Asia have so many great cities been erected as in this favored region, termed by the Arabians IRAK, those cities having sprung up, according as the Persian, Greek, and Islamite, conquerors successively became masters of the country. The abundance and fertility induced by the Euphrates and Tigris, and by a thousand canals, (many of them now dried up), but especially by the great canal called the NAHR-MALKA, or fluvius regum, which had been the labor of so many kings, and had for its object to join together those two great rivers, made it the chosen seat of princely domination. When properly irrigated and cultivated by human industry, this Mesopotamian region, which is now, for the most part, a barren desert full of lakes and morasses, and inhabited by savage Arabian hordes, must have been uncommonly productive. But the exactions of an eastern despotic government have paralyzed the labours of the husbandman, and will probably long prevent the return of that abundance which was indispensibly * Ebn Haukal, translated by Ouseley, page 70. This valuable addition to our oriental treasures in the geographical line was presented to the public by the learned translator in the year 1800; and in his elaborate preface he has proved it to be the source whence Abulfeda, the Nubian geographer, and other oriental writers of that class, derived many valuable materials for their respective works. Hella is not mentioned by him, for in fact it was not built until the 495th year of the Hegira, or A.D. 1101, when he had been dead above half a century. necessary, when its population was immense, and its cities extensive and numerous. Among those that once raised their august summits on these plains, may justly be mentioned SELEUCIA, built by Seleucus Nicator as the rival of Babylon; CTESIPHON, memorable for the magnificent palace called TAUK-KESRA, or the throne of the mighty Chosroes, built by Nushirvan in the 6th century*; and the more modern, but far-famed, cities of Bagdad and Bassora. The greater part of the massy materials with which these cities were constructed were, it is evident, brought from the ruined towers and plundered palaces of Babylon; the bricks being of the exact size, imprinted with the same characters, and having undergone the operation of an intense fire. It ought therefore to excite our wonder, that such ample, rather than such scanty, remains of that proud capital at this day exist. To do justice to our author's Memoir, we shall present the reader with a summary sketch from Herodotus, but without wholly neglecting the accounts of Diodorus Siculus and Strabo, of the situation, magnitude, and extent, of this vast metropolis, and then consider how far the ruins, explored by Mr. RICH with such persevering assiduity, correspond with those ancient accounts, in regard to their dimensions, their internal arrangement, and the antiquities occasionally dug out of their subterraneous recesses. BABYLON was situated in a plain of vast extent, and bisected by the noble river Euphrates, at this place (according to Strabo) a furlong in breadth, but according to Diodorus five furlongs-a disparity, by the way, too great to be reconciled! Over this river was thrown a bridge of massy masonry, strongly compacted with iron and lead, by which the two sides of the city were connected; and the embankments on each side to restrain its current were lofty, and formed of the same durable materials * Ebn Haukal, p. 351. See a plate of in Ives, at p. 289. as the walls of the city. The city itself is represented by Herodotus to have been a perfect square, enclosed by a wall in circumference four hundred and eighty furlongs*. It is stated to have abounded in houses three or four stories in height, and to have been regularly divided into streets, running parallel to each other, with transverse avenues occasionally opening to the river. It was surrounded with a wide and deep trench, the earth dug out of which was formed into square bricks and baked in a furnace. With these, cemented together with heated bitumen, intermixed with reeds to bind the viscid mass, the sides of the trenches were lined, and of the same solid materials the walls of the vast dimensions above described were formed. At certain regular distances on them, watch-towers were erected, and below they were divided and adorned with a hundred massy gates of brass. In the centre of each of the grand divisions of the city, a stupendous public fabric was erected. In one (the eastern side, as Rennel conjectures) stood the temple of Belus; in the other (or western division) in a large and strongly fortified inclosure, the royal palace, intended, doubtless, for defence as well as for ornament. The temple of Belus was a square pile, on each side of the extent of two furlongs. The tower erected in its centre was a furlong in breadth, and as much in height, the latter of which (taking the furlong at only 500 feet) is enormous, being higher, by 20 feet, `than the great pyramid of Memphis, whose altitude was taken by Greaves. On this tower, as a BASE, seven other lofty towers were erected in regular succession; and the whole was crowned, according to Diodorus, with a brazen statue of the god BELUS, 40 feet high! The palace, intended also * This computation, according to the presumed length of the ancient stadium, gives such a vast area for the city, (not less, according to Major Rennel, than about 126 square miles, or 8 times the area of London!!) that some error may reasonably be supposed to have here crept into the text, or the length of the stadium mistaken; but this matter shall be considered presently. as a citadel, was erected on an area a mile and a half square, and was surrounded with three vast circular walls, which, as we are informed by Diodorus Siculus, were ornamented with sculptured animals resembling life, richly painted in their natural colours on the bricks of which they were composed, and afterwards burnt in. This may be mentioned as nearly the earliest specimen of enamelling on record. Indeed, it was scarcely possible for a nation, who were so well practised in the burning of bricks even to a vitreous hardness, to have been ignorant of this fine art; and that they could also engrave upon them, is evident (were such evidence wanting) from the characters at this day sculptured upon those that have been dug up and brought to Europe, two of which are preserved in the British Museum. On the far-famed hanging gardens, and the subterraneous vault or tunnel constructed by Semiramis or Nitocris, or the founder of Babylon, whoever he was, there is no necessity to dilate, as every trace of them, except what the idle fancy of travellers has surmised, must long since have disappeared; but such, in its general outline, was the MIGHTY BABYLON*! Exaggerated as appear to be the statements of Herodotus concerning the extent of the walls of Babylon, yet have the descriptions of the cities and people of Asia in the venerable volume of the Father of History been found by scholars, in their eastern antiquarian researches, so frequently verified, that we are willing, with our great English geographer mentioned above, to impute either to the errors of transcribers, or to some mistaken notions of the length of the Greek stade by which his computations are regulated, what, in his generally correct page, seems to militate against truth and probability. To settle the point, both D'Anville and himself have employed their erudition, and exerted the utmost acumen of their genius ; and, without entering into unnecessary detail, it will be sufficient for us if, * See Herodotus, Clio, cap. 78, et seq.; Diod. Sic. lib. ii. p. 120, 121; Strabo. lib. xvi. p. 738. with the latter, we take the stade at 500 English feet, which is the result of his investigation in the second section of his work. But even on this reduced scale, he considers the numbers in Herodotus as beyond all rational belief, and thinks it safer to adopt the account of Diodorus, which states the circumference of the exterior walls at 360 stadia, and gives to the space inclosed an area of between 70 and 80 square miles. Still he judiciously contends, that this area could never have been filled up with houses closely built, and fully stocked with inhabitants, as European cities are; but must have been laid out in the way in which most Asiatic cities are planned-in large gardens, public squares, and reservoirs of water, and inhabited by a population very disproportionate to so vast an inclosure. Nature herself has fixed boundaries to the extent of great capitals. The wants of a people as numerous as such limits would admit (amounting to some millions) could not be provided for in a situation like that of Babylon, which could command no supplies by sea, and was neither acquainted with the best modes of land conveyance, nor possessed any very commodious inland navigation. Consequently the price of provisions and necessaries of all kinds must, in such a place, have been raised to an extravagant pitch, and that price, increasing with the increasing multitude of inhabitants, must have given birth to incalculable evils*. The reader has now been presented with a slight sketch of what the magnificent city of Babylon was in its meridian splendour-that city, the actual founder of which (if it was not Nimrod, sometimes denominated Belus) is not known, but which, according to history, was enlarged by Semiramis, and still farther enlarged, adorned, and fortified, by Nebuchadnezzar. So vast a prodigy as Babylon in ruins, which was its state so early as the period in which the Parthian monarchy was in the zenith of its glory, could not fail of attracting the attention of the scientific travel * D'Anville's Euphrates and Tigris, p. 18; and Rennel on the Geography of Herodotus, p. 338. |