BABYLON

BABYLON—BABYLONIA BABYLON (the modern Hillah) is the Greek form of Babel or Bab-ili, " the gate of god " (or, as it is some times written, " of the gods "), which, again, is the Semitic rendering of Ca-dimirra, the ancient name of the city in the Turanian language of the primitive Accadian popula tion of the country. It is doubtful whether die god meant was Merodach or Anu, Merodach being the patron divinity of Babylon in the Semitic period, and Su-Anna, " the valley of Anu " (Anammelech), being one of its oldest names. Another synonym of the place was E-ci, " the hollow," in reference to its situation, and it was also known, down to the latest times, as Din-Tir, " the house of the jungle," though this seems properly to have been the designation of the town on the left bank of the Euphrates. Under the Cassite dynasty of Khammuragas, it received the title of Gan-Duniyas or Gun-Duni, " the Fortress of Duniyas," which was afterwards made to in clude the neighbouring territory, so that the whole of Babylonia came to be called by this name. Sir H. Rawlin- son has suggested that it was the origin of the Biblical Gan Eden, or " Garden of Eden," to which a popular etymology has given a Hebrew form. However this may be, Babylon figures in the antediluvian history of Berosus, the first of his mythical monarchs, Alorus, being a native of it. The national epic of the Babylonians, which grouped various old myths round the adventures of a solar hero, knows of four cities only Babylon, Erech, Nipur (Niffer] or Calneh, and Surippac or Larankha ; and according to Genesis x., Babylon was a member of the tetrapolis of Shinar or Sumir, where the Semite invaders of the Acca- dians first obtained permanent settlement and power. It seems, however, to have ranked below its three sister-cities, among which Erech took the lead until conquered by the Accadian sovereigns of TJr. It was not until the con quest of Khammuragas that Babylon became a capital, a position, however, which it never afterwards lost, except during the Assyrian supremacy. But it suffered severely at the hands of its northern neighbours. Tiglath-Adar drove the Cassi from it, and established an Assyrian dynasty in their place ; and after being captured by Tiglath-Pileser I. (1130 B.C.) and Shalmancser (851 B.C.), it became a dependency of the Assyrian empire in the reign of the son of the latter. The decline of the first Assyrian empire restored Babylon to independence; but it had soon afterwards to submit to the Caldai, and from the reign of Tiglath-Pileser II. to the death of Assur-bani- pal, it was a mere provincial town of Assyria, breaking now and then into fierce revolt under the leadership of the Caldai, and repeatedly taken and plundered by Sargon, Sennacherib, and Assur-bani-pal. Sennacherib, indeed, | razed the city to its foundations. After the defeat of Suzub (G90 B.C.), he tells us that he " pulled down, dug up, and burned with fire the town and the palaces, root and branch, destroyed the fortress and the double wall, the temples of the gods and the towers of brick, and threw the rubbish into the Araxes," the river of Babylon. After this destruction it is not likely that much will ever be dis- oovered on the site of Babylon older than the buildings of V Essar-haddon and Nebuchadnezzar. It was under the latter monarch and his successors that Babylon became the huge metropolis whose ruins still astonish the traveller, and which was described by Greek writers. Of the older city we can know but little. The Babylon of Nebuchad nezzar and his father, Nabopolassar, must have suffered when taken by Cyrus ; but two sieges in the reign of Darius Hystaspis, and one in the reign of Xerxes, brought about the destruction of the defences, while the monothe istic rule of Persia allowed the temples to fall into decay. Alexander found the great temple of Bel a shapeless ruin, and the rise of Seleucia in its neighbourhood drew away its population and completed its material decay. The buildings became a quarry, first for Seleucia and then for Ctesiphon, Al Modain, Baghdad, Kufa, Kerbelah, Hillah, and other towns, and our only cause for wonder is that the re mains of the great capital of Babylonia are still so extensive. The principal of these lie on the left bank of the Euphrates, and consist of three vast mounds the Bali I or Mujdlile, the Kasr, and the Amrdm, which run from north to south ; two parallel lines of rampart east and west of them ; and an isolated mass, together with a series of elevations separated by the river westward of the Kasr, the whole being surrounded by a triangular rampart. (Jur two chief authorities for the ancient topography of the city are Herodotus and Ctesias ; and though both were eye-witnesses, their statements differ considerably. The city was built, we are told, on both sides of the river, in the form of a square, and enclosed within a double row of high walls. Ctesias adds a third wall, but the inscrip tions refer only to two, the inner enceinte, called Imgur-Bel, and its salkhu or outwork, called Nimitti-Bel. Ctesias makes the outermost wall 360 stades (42 miles) in circum ference, while according to Herodotus it measured 480 stades (56 miles), which would include an area of about 200 square miles ! Pliny (iV. //., vi. 26) follows Herodotus in his figures, but Strabo (xvi. 1, 5) with his 385 stades, Qu. Curtius (v. 1, 26) with his 368 stades, and Clitarchus (ap. Diod. Sic. , ii. 7) with 365 stades, agree sufficiently closely with Ctesias. Even the estimate of Ctesias, how ever, would make Babylon cover a space of about 100 square miles, nearly five times the size of London. Such an area could not have been occupied by houses, especially as these were three or four stories high (Ildt., i. 180). Indeed Q. Curtius asserts (v. 1, 27) that even in the most flourishing times, nine-tenths of it consisted of gardens, parks, fields, and orchards. According to Herodotus, the height of the walls was about 335 feet, and their width 85 feet; while Ctesias makes the height about 300 feet. Later writers give smaller dimensions, but it is clear that they have merely tried to soften down the estimates of Herodotus (and Ctesias) ; and we seem bound, therefore, to accept the statement of the two oldest eye-witnesses, astonishing as it is. But we may remember that the ruined wall of Nineveh was 150 feet high, even in Xenophon s time (Anab., iii. 4, 10, and cf. ii. 4, 12), while the spaces be tween the 250 towers irregularly disposed along the wall of Babylon (Ctes. ap. Diod., ii. 7) were broad enough to allow a four-horse chariot to turn (Hdt., i. 179). The clay dug from the moat had served for the bricks of the wall, which was pierced with 100 gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and posts. The two inner enclosures were faced with coloured brick, and represented hunting-scenes. Two other walls ran along the banks of the Euphrates and the quays with which it was lined, each containing 25 gates, which answered to the number of the streets they led into. Ferry-boats plied between the landing-places of the gates ; and a movable drawbridge (30 feet broad), sup ported on stone piers, joined the two parts of the city together. At each end of the bridge was a palace ; the great palace of Nebuchadnezzar on the eastern side (the modern Kasr}, which Herodotus incorrectly transfers to the western bank, being the most magnificent of the two. It was surrounded, according to Diodorus (ii. 8, 4), by three walls, the outermost being 60 stades(7 miles) in circuit. The inner walls were decorated with hunting-scenes painted on brick, fragments of which have been discovered by modern explorers. Two of its gates were of brass, and had to be opened and shut by a machine ; and Mr Smith has found traces of two libraries among its ruins. The palace, called "the Admiration of Mankind" by Nebuchadnezzar, and commenced by Nabopolassar, overlooked the Ai-ipur-sabu, the great reservoir of Babylon, and stretched from this to the Euphrates on the one side, and from the Imgur-Bel, or inner wall, to the Libil, or eastern canal, on the other. Within its precincts rose the Hanging Gardens, consisting of a garden of trees and flowers on the topmost of a series of arches at least 75 feet high, and built in the form of a square, each side measuring 400 Greek feet. Water was raised from the Euphrates by means, it is said, of a screw (Strab., xvL 1, 5; Diod., ii. 10, 6). Some of the materials for the construction of this building may have been obtained from the old ruined palace of the early kings, now represented by the adjoining Amram mound. The lesser palace in the western division of the city belonged to ISTeriglissar, and contained a number of bronze statues. The most remarkable edifice in Babylon was the temple of Bel, now marked by the Babil, on the north-east, as Professor Eawlinsonhas shown. It was a pyramid of eight square stages, the basement stage being over 200 yards each way. A winding ascent led to the summit and the shrine, in which stood a golden image of Bel 40 feet high, two other statues of gold, a golden table 40 feet long and 15 feet broad, and many other colossal objects of the same precious material. At the base of the tower was a second shrine, with a table and two images of solid gold. Two altars were placed outside the chapel, the smaller one being of the same metal. A similar temple, represented by the modern Sirs Nimrud, stood at Borsippa, the suburb of Babylon. It consisted of seven stages, each ornamented with one of the seven planetary colours, the azure tint of the sixth, the sphere of Mercury, being produced by the vitrifaction of the bricks after the stage had been completed. The lowest stage was a square, 272 feet each way, its four corners exactly corresponding to the four cardinal points, as in all other Chaldean temples, and each of the square stages raised upon it being placed nearer the south-western than the north-eastern edge of the underlying one. It had been partly built by an ancient monarch, but, after lying un finished for many years, like the Biblical tower of Babel, was finally completed by Nebuchadnezzar. The amount of labour bestowed upon these brick edifices must have been enormous, and gives some idea of the human force at the disposal of the monarch. If any further illustration of this fact were needed, it would be found in the statement made by Nebuchadnezzar in one of his inscriptions (and quoted also from Berosus), that he had finished the Imgur-Bel in fifteen days. The same monarch also continued the embankment of the Euphrates for a considerable distance beyond the limits of Babylon, and cut some canals to carry off the overflow of that river into the Tigris. The great reservoir, 40 miles square, on the west of Borsippa, which had been excavated to receive the waters of the Euphrates while the bed of its channel was being lined with brick, was also used for a similar purpose. The reservoir seems to have been entered by the Arakhtu or Araxes, "the river of Babylon/ which flowed through a deep wady into the heart of Northern Arabia, as Wetzstein has pointed out. Various nomad tribes, such as the Nabathseans or the Pekod, pitched their tents on its banks ; but, although it is not unfrequently mentioned in early Babylonian history, we hear no more of it after the time of Nebuchadnezzar. It is possible, there fore, that it was drained by the western reservoir. (a. h. s.) BABYLONIA and ASSYRIA. Geographically, as well as ethnologically and historically, the whole district en closed between the two great rivers of Western Asia, the Tigris and Euphrates, forms but one country. The writers of antiquity clearly recognised this fact, speakingof the whole under the general name of Assyria, though Babylonia, as will be seen, would have been a more accurate designation. It naturally falls into two divisions, the northern being more or less mountainous, while the southern is flat and marshy ; and the near approach of the two rivers to one another, at a spot where the undulating plateau of the north sinks suddenly into the Babylonian alluvium, tends still more completely to separate them. In the earliest times of which we have any record, the northern portion was comprehended under the vague title of Gutium (the Goyim of Gen. xiv. 1), which stretched from the Euphrates on the west to the mountains of Media on the east ; but it was definitely marked off as Assyria after the rise of that monarchy in the 16th century B.C. Aram-Naharaim, or Mesopotamia, however, though claimed by the Assyrian kings, and from time to time overrun by them, did not form an integral part of the kingdom until the 9th century B.C., while the region on the left bank of the Tigris, between that river and the Greater Zab, was not only included in Assyria, but contained the chief capitals of the empire. In this respect the monarchy of the Tigris resembled Chaldea, where some of the most important cities were situated on the Arabian side of the Euphrates. The reason of this preference for the eastern bank of the Tigris was due to its abundant supply of water, whereas the great Mesopotamian plain on the western side had to depend upon the streams which flowed into the Euphrates. This vast flat, the modern El-Jezireh, is about 250 miles in length, interrupted only by a single limestone range, rising abruptly out of the plain, and branching off from the Zagros mountains under the names of Sarazur, Hamrin, and Sinjar. The numerous remains of old habitations show how thickly this level tract must once have been peopled, though now for the most part a wilderness. North of the plateau rises a well-watered and undulating belt of country, into which run low ranges of limestone hills, sometimes arid, sometimes covered with dwarf-oak, and often shutting in, between their northern and north-eastern flank and the main mountain-line from which they detach themselves, rich plains and fertile valleys. Behind them tower the massive ridges of the Niphates and Zagros ranges, where the Tigris and Euphrates take their rise, and which cut off Assyria from Armenia and Kurdistan. The name Assyria itself originally denoted the small territory immediately sur rounding the primitive capital "the city of Asur " (alAsur, the Ellasar of Genesis), which was built, like the other chief cities of the country, by Turanian tribes, in whose language the word signified " water-meadow." It s