Manifold are the prophecies respecting Babylon and the land of the Chaldeans; and the long lapse of ages has served to confirm their fulfilment in every particular, and to render it at last complete. The judgments of Heaven are not casual, but sure; they are not arbitrary, but righteous. And they were denounced against the Babylonians, and the inhabitants of Chaldea, expressly because of their idolatry, tyranny, oppression, pride, covetousness, drunkenness, falsehood, and other wickedness. The burden of Babylon, which Isaiah the son of Amos did see: “The noise of a multitude in the mountains, like as of a great people: a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together: the Lord of Hosts mustereth the host of the battle. They come from a far country, from the end of heaven, even the Lord and the weapons of his indignation, to destroy the whole land. Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land desolate: and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out of it. Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there: neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there: and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces.” “Thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased! Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. Thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. Thou art cast out of the grave like an abominable branch.--I will cut off from Babylon the name, and remnant, the son, and nephew, saith the Lord. I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water: and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of Hosts.” “Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.” “Thus saith the Lord, that saith unto the deep, Be dry; and I will dry up thy rivers: that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure,--and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.” “Bel boweth down,” &c. “Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon: sit on the ground, there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans. Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans; for thou shalt no more be called the lady of kingdoms.” Many other prophecies against Babylon, and the whole land of Chaldea, are found in the Old Testament; and though the limits of this article will only allow a reference to be made to the exact fulfilment of a few, there is not one of the great number of predictions on record, the accomplishment of which has not been remarked by numerous writers, and more especially by those who have visited the spot. For, though for many centuries the site of Babylon was unknown, or the ruins of other Chaldean cities mistaken for its remains, its true situation and present condition have been, within a few years, satisfactorily ascertained, and accurately described, by several most intelligent and enterprising travellers. When in the plenitude of its greatness, splendour and strength, Babylon first yielded to the arms of Cyrus, whose name, and the manœuvre by which the city was taken, were mentioned by Isaiah nearly two hundred years before the event; which was also predicted by Jeremiah: “Go up, O Elam, (or Persia,) besiege, O Media. The Lord hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes, for his device is against Babylon, to destroy it.” The kings of Persia and Media, prompted by a common interest, freely entered into a league against Babylon, and with one accord entrusted the command of their united armies to Cyrus, the relative and eventually the successor of them both.--But the taking of Babylon was not reserved for these kingdoms alone: other nations had to be “prepared against her.” “Set up a standard in the land; blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her, call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Aschenaz: Lo, I will raise and cause to come up against Babylon an assembly of great nations from the north country,” &c. Cyrus subdued the Armenians, who had revolted against Media, spared their king, bound them over anew to their allegiance, by kindness rather than by force, and incorporated their army with his own.--“The mighty men of Babylon have foreborne to fight. They have remained in their holds; their might hath failed, they became as women.” So dispirited became its people, that Babylon, which had made the world to tremble, was long besieged, without making any effort to drive off the enemy. But, possessed of provisions for twenty years, which in their timid caution they had plentifully stored, they derided Cyrus from their impregnable walls, within which they remained. Their profligacy, their wickedness and false confidence were unabated; they continued to live carelessly in pleasures: and Babylon the great, unlike to many a small fortress and unwalled town, made not one struggle to regain its freedom or to be rid of the foe.--Much time having been lost, and no progress being made in the siege, the anxiety of Cyrus was strongly excited, and he was reduced to great perplexity, when at last it was suggested and immediately determined to divert the course of the Euphrates. And while the unconscious and reckless citizens were engaged in dancing and merriment, the river was suddenly turned into the lake, the trench, and the canals; and the Persians, both foot and horse, so soon as the subsiding of the water permitted, entered by its channel, and were followed by the allies in array, along the dry part of the river. “I will dry up thy sea, and make thy springs dry. That saith to the deep, Be dry, I will dry up thy rivers.”--One detachment was placed where the river first enters the city, and another where it leaves it. And “one post did run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken at the end, and that the passages are shut.” “They were taken,” says Herodotus, “by _surprise_; and such is the extent of the city, that, as the inhabitants themselves affirm, they who lived in the extremities were made prisoners before any alarm was communicated to the centre of the place,” where the palace stood. Thus a “snare was laid for Babylon, it was taken, and it was not aware; it was found and also caught; for it had sinned against the Lord. How is the praise of the whole earth surprised!”--“In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the Lord. I will bring them down like lambs to the slaughter,” &c. “I will make drunken her princes and her wise men, her captains and her rulers, and her mighty men, and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep,” &c. Cyrus, as the night drew on, stimulated his assembled troops to enter the city, because in that night of general revel within the walls, many of them were asleep, many drunk, and confusion universally prevailed. On passing, without obstruction or hinderance, into the city, the Persians, slaying some, putting others to flight, and joining with the revellers, as if slaughter had been merriment, hastened by the shortest way to the palace, and reached it ere yet a messenger had told the king that his city was taken. The gates of the palace, which was strongly fortified, were shut. The guards stationed before them, were _drinking_ beside a blazing light, when the Persians rushed impetuously upon them. A louder and altered clamour, no longer joyous, caught the ear of the inmates of the palace, and the bright light showed them the work of destruction, without revealing its cause. And not aware of the presence of an enemy in the midst of Babylon, the king himself, (who had been roused from his revelry by the hand writing on the wall,) excited by the warlike tumult at the gates, commanded those within to examine from whence it arose; and according to the same word, by which “the gates” (leading from the river to the city) “were not shut, the loins of kings were loosed to open before Cyrus the two-leaved gates” of the palace. The eager Persians sprang in. “The king of Babylon heard the report of them; anguish took hold of him;” he and all who were about him perished; God had “numbered” his kingdom and finished it; it was “divided,” and given to the Medes and Persians; the lives of the Babylonian princes, and lords, and rulers, and captains, closed with that night’s festival; the drunken slept “a perpetual sleep, and did not wake.”--“I will fill thee with men as with caterpillars.” Not only did the Persian army enter with ease as caterpillars, together with all the nations that had come up against Babylon, but they seemed also as numerous. Cyrus, after the capture of the city, made a great display of his cavalry in the presence of the Babylonians, and in the midst of Babylon. Four thousand guards stood before the palace gates, and two thousand on each side. These advanced as Cyrus approached; two thousand spearmen followed them. These were succeeded by four square masses of Persian cavalry, each consisting of ten thousand men: and to these again were added, in their order, the Median, Armenian, Hyrcanian, Caducian, and Sacian horsemen,--all, as before, “riding upon horses, every man in array,”--with lines of chariots, four abreast, concluding the train of the numerous hosts. Cyrus afterward reviewed, at Babylon, the whole of his army, consisting of one hundred and twenty thousand horse, two thousand chariots, and six hundred thousand foot. Babylon, which was taken when not aware, and within whose walls no enemy, except a captive, had been ever seen, was thus “filled with men as with caterpillars,” as if there had not been a wall around it. The Scriptures do not relate the manner in which Babylon was taken, nor do they ever allude to the exact fulfilment of the prophecies. But there is, in every particular, a strict coincidence between the predictions of the prophets and the historical narratives, both of Herodotus and Xenophon.

Every step in the progress of the decline of Babylon was the accomplishment of a prophecy. Conquered, for the first time, by Cyrus, it was afterward reduced from an imperial to a tributary city. “Come down and sit in the dust, O daughter of Babylon: sit on the ground, there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans.” After the Babylonians rebelled against Darius, the walls were reduced in height, and all the gates destroyed. “The wall of Babylon shall fall, her walls are thrown down.”--Xerxes, after his ignominious retreat from Greece, rifled the temples of Babylon, the golden images alone of which were estimated at 20,000,000_l_, beside treasures of vast amount. “I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he has swallowed up; I will do judgment upon the graven images of Babylon.”--Alexander the Great attempted to restore it to its former glory, and designed to make it the metropolis of a universal empire. But while the building of the temple of Belus, and the reparation of the embankments of the Euphrates, were actually carrying on, the conqueror of the world died, at the commencement of this his last undertaking, in the height of his power, and in the flower of his age. “Take balm for her pain, if so be that she may be healed. We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed.” The building of the neighbouring city of Seleucia was the chief cause of the decline of Babylon, and drained it of a great part of its population. And at a later period, or about 130 years before the birth of Christ, Humerus, a Parthian governor, who was noted as excelling all tyrants in cruelty, exercised great severities on the Babylonians; and having burned the forum and some of the temples, and destroyed the fairest parts of the city, reduced many of the inhabitants to slavery on the slightest pretexts, and caused them, together with all their households, to be sent into Media. “They shall remove, they shall depart, both man and beast.” The “golden city” thus gradually verged, for centuries, toward poverty and desolation. Notwithstanding that Cyrus resided chiefly at Babylon, and sought to reform the government, and remodel the manners of the Babylonians, the succeeding kings of Persia preferred, as the seat of empire, Susa, Persepolis, or Ecbatana, situated in their own country: and in like manner the successors of Alexander did not attempt to complete his purpose of restoring Babylon to its preeminence and glory; but, after the subdivision of his mighty empire, the very kings of Assyria, during their temporary residence even in Chaldea, deserted Babylon, and dwelt in Seleucia. And thus the foreign inhabitants, first Persians and afterward Greeks, imitating their sovereigns by deserting Babylon, acted as if they verily had said, “Forsake her, and let us go every man unto his own country; for her judgment is reached unto heaven, and is lifted up even to the skies.”

But kindred judgments, the issue of common crimes, rested on the land of Chaldea, as well as on its doomed metropolis. “They come from a far country, from the end of the earth, to destroy the whole land. Many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of thee also,” &c. The Persians, the Macedonians, the Parthians, the Romans, the Saracens, and the Turks, are the chief of the many nations who have unscrupulously and unsparingly “served themselves” of the land of the Chaldeans: and Cyrus and Darius, kings of Persia; Alexander the Great; and Seleucus, king of Assyria; Demetrius and Antiochus the Great; Tragan, Severus, Julian, and Heraclius, emperors of Rome; the victorious Omar, the successor of Mohammed; Holagou, and Tamerlane,--are “great kings” who successively subdued or desolated Chaldea, or exacted from it tribute to such an extent, as scarcely any other country ever paid to a single conqueror. And though the names of some of these nations were unknown to the Babylonians, and unheard of in the world at the time of the prophecy, most of these “many nations and great kings” need now but to be named, to show that, in local relation to Chaldea, “they came from the utmost border, from the coasts of the earth.”--“I will punish the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations; cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of harvest. A drought is on her waters, and they shall be dried up. Behold the hinder-most of the nations, a dry land and a desert.” The land of the Chaldeans was indeed made--perpetual, or long continued, desolation. Ravaged and spoiled for ages, the Chaldees’ excellency finally disappeared, and the land became desolate, as still it remains. Rauwolff, who passed through it in 1574, describes the country as bare, and “so dry and barren that it cannot be tilled.” And the most recent travellers all concur in describing it in similar terms. On the one side, near to the site of Opis, “the country all around,” says Mr. Buckingham, “appears to be one wide desert, of sandy and barren soil, thinly scattered over with brushwood and tufts of reedy grass.” On the other, between Bussorah and Bagdad, “immediately on either bank of the Tigris,” observes Mignan, “is the _untrodden desert_. The absence of all cultivation, the sterile, arid, and wild character of the whole scene, formed a contrast to the rich and delightful accounts delineated in Scripture. The natives, in travelling over these pathless deserts, are compelled to explore their way by the stars.” “The whole country between Bagdad and Hillah is a perfectly flat and (with the exception of a few spots as you approach the latter place) _uncultivated waste_. That it was at some former period in a far different state, is evident from the number of canals by which it is traversed, now _dry_ and neglected; and the quantity of heaps of earth covered with fragments of brick and broken tiles, which are seen in every direction, the indisputable traces of former population. At present the only inhabitants of the tract are the Sobeide Arabs. Around, as far as the eye can reach is a _trackless desert_.”--“Her cities are desolations.” The course of the Tigris through Babylonia, instead of being adorned with cities, is marked with the sites of “ancient ruins.” Sitace, Sabata, Narisa, Fuchera, Sendia, “no longer exist.” A succession of longitudinal mounds, crossed at right angles by others, mark the supposed site of Artemita, or Destagered. Its once luxuriant gardens are covered with grass; and a higher mound distinguishes “the royal residence” from the ancient streets. “Extensive ridges and mountains, (near to Houmania,) varying in height and extent, are seen branching in every direction.” A wall, with sixteen bastions, is the only memorial of Apollonia. The once magnificent Seleucia is now a scene of desolation. There is not a single entire edifice, but the country is strewed for miles with fragments of decayed buildings. “As far,” says Major Keppel, “as the eye could reach, the horizon presented a broken line of mounds; the whole of this place was a desert flat.” On the opposite bank of the Tigris, where Ctesiphon its rival stood, beside fragments of walls and broken masses of brick work, and remains of vast structures encumbered with heaps of earth, there is one magnificent monument of antiquity “in a remarkably perfect state of preservation,” “a large and noble pile of building, the front of which presents to view a wall three hundred feet in length, adorned with four rows of arched recesses, with a central arch, in span eighty-six feet, and above a hundred feet high, supported by walls sixteen feet thick, and leading to a hall which extends to the depth of a hundred and fifty-six feet,” the width of the building. A great part of the back wall, and of the roof, is broken down; but that which remains “still appears much larger than Westminster Abbey.” It is supposed to have been the lofty palace of Chosroes; but there desolation now reigns. “On the site of Ctesiphon,” says Mignan, “the smallest insect under heaven would not find a single blade of grass wherein to hide itself, nor one drop of water to allay its thirst.” In the rear of the palace, and attached to it, are mounds two miles in circumference, indicating the utter desolation of buildings, formed to minister to luxury.

But let us come to the fulfilment of these wonderful prophecies in the present condition of Babylon itself, as described by those who have most recently visited it. “Babylon shall become heaps.” Babylon the glory of kingdoms is now the greatest of ruins. “Immense tumuli of temples, palaces, and habitations of every description,” are every where seen, and form “long and varied lines of ruins,” which, in some places, says Sir R. K. Porter, “rather resemble natural hills than _mounds_ which cover the remains of great and splendid edifices.” These buildings, which were once the labour of slaves and the pride of kings, are now misshapen heaps of rubbish. “The whole face of the country,” observes Rich, “is covered with vestiges of building, in some places consisting of brick walls surprisingly fresh, in others, merely a _vast succession of mounds_ of rubbish, of such indeterminate figures, variety, and extent, as to involve the person who should have formed any theory in inextricable confusion.”--“Let nothing of her be left.” “Vast heaps constitute _all that now remains_ of ancient Babylon,” says Rich. All its grandeur is departed; all its treasures have been spoiled; all its excellence has utterly vanished; the very heaps are searched for bricks, when nothing else can be found; even these are _not left_, wherever they can be taken away; and Babylon has for ages been “a quarry above ground,” ready to the hand of every successive despoiler. Without the most remote allusion to this prophecy, Captain Mignan describes a mound attached to the palace, ninety yards in breadth by half that height, the whole of which is deeply furrowed, in the same manner as the generality of the mounds. “The ground is extremely soft, and tiresome to walk over, and appears _completely exhausted_ of all its building materials; _nothing now is left_, save one towering hill, the earth of which is mixed with _fragments_ of broken brick, red varnished pottery, tile, bitumen, mortar, glass, shells, and pieces of mother of pearl,”--worthless fragments, of no value to the poorest. “From thence shall she be taken, let nothing of her be left.” While the workmen “cast her up as heaps” while excavating for bricks, that they may “take” them “from thence,” and that “nothing may be left;” they labour more than trebly in the fulfilment of prophecy: for the numerous and deep excavations form pools of water, on the over-flowing of the Euphrates, and, annually filled, they are not dried up throughout the year. “Deep cavities are also formed by the Arabs, when digging for hidden treasure.” Thus “the ground,” says Buckingham, “is sometimes covered with pools of water in the hollows.” “Sit in the dust, sit on the ground, O daughter of the Chaldeans.” The surface of the mounds which form all that remains of Babylon, consists of decomposed buildings, reduced to dust; and over all the ancient streets and habitations, there is literally nothing but the dust of the ground on which to sit.--“Thy nakedness shall be uncovered.” “Our path,” says Captain Mignan, “lay through the great mass of ruined heaps on the site of ‘shrunken Babylon;’ and I am perfectly incapable of conveying an adequate idea of the dreary, lonely nakedness that appeared before me.”--“Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness.” “There reigns throughout the ruins,” says Sir R. K. Porter, “a silence profound as the grave.” “Babylon is now a silent scene, a sublime solitude.”--“It shall never be inhabited, nor dwelt in from generation to generation.” From Rauwolff’s testimony it appears that, in the sixteenth century, “there was not a house to be seen.” And now “the eye wanders over a barren desert, in which the ruins are nearly the only indication that it had ever been inhabited.” “It is impossible,” adds Major Keppel, “to behold this scene and not to be reminded how exactly the predictions of Isaiah and Jeremiah have been fulfilled, even in the appearance Babylon was doomed to present, that ‘she should never be inhabited;’ that ‘the Arabian should not pitch his tent there;’ that she should ‘become heaps;’ that her cities should be ‘a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness.’” “Babylon is spurned alike by the heel of the Ottomans, the Israelites, and the sons of Ishmael.” It is “a tenantless and desolate metropolis,” remarks Mignan. “It shall not be inhabited, but be wholly desolate. Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their folds there.” It was prophesied of Ammon that it should be a stable for camels and a couching place for flocks; and of Philistia, that it should be cottages for shepherds, and a pasture of flocks. But Babylon was to be visited with a far greater desolation, and to become unfit or unsuited even for such a purpose; and that neither a tent would be pitched there, even by an Arab, nor a fold made by a shepherd, implies the last degree of solitude and desolation. “It is common in these parts for shepherds to make use of ruined edifices to shelter their flocks in.” But Babylon is an exception. Instead of taking the bricks from thence, the shepherd might very readily erect a defence from wild beasts, and make a fold for his flock amidst the heaps of Babylon; and the Arab who fearlessly traverses it by day, might pitch his tent by night. But neither the one nor the other could now be persuaded to remain a single night among the ruins. The superstitious dread of evil spirits, far more than the natural terror of the wild beasts, effectually prevents them. Captain Mignan was accompanied by six Arabs, completely armed; but he “could not induce them to remain toward night, from the apprehension of evil spirits. It is impossible to eradicate this idea from the minds of this people, who are very deeply imbued with superstition.” “Wild beasts of the deserts shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs (goats) shall dance there,” &c. “There are many dens of wild beasts in various parts. And while the lower excavations are often pools of water, in most of the cavities are numbers of bats and owls.” The king of the forest now ranges over the site of that Babylon which Nebuchadnezzar built for his own glory. And the temple of Belus, the greatest work of man, is now like unto a natural den of lions. Two or three majestic lions were seen upon its heights by Sir Robert Ker Porter, as he was approaching it; and “the broad prints of their feet were left plain in the clayey soil.” Major Keppel saw there a similar foot-print of a lion. It is also the unmolested retreat of jackalls, hyenas, and other noxious animals. Wild beasts are numerous at the Mujelibé, as well as on Birs Nimrood. “The mound,” says Kinneir, “was full of large holes: we entered some of them, and found them strewed with the carcasses and skeletons of animals recently killed. The ordure of wild beasts was so strong, that prudence got the better of curiosity; for we had no doubt as to the savage nature of the inhabitants. Our guides, indeed, told us, that all the ruins abounded in lions, and other wild beasts: so literally has the divine prediction been fulfilled, that wild beasts of the deserts should lie there, and their houses be full of doleful creatures; that the wild beasts of the islands should cry in their desolate houses.” “The sea is come upon Babylon. She is covered with the multitude of the waves thereof.” The traces of the western bank of the Euphrates are now no longer discernible. The river overflows unrestrained; and the very ruins, with “every appearance of the embankment,” have been swept away. “The ground there is low and marshy, and presents not the slightest vestige of former buildings, of any description whatever.” “Morasses and ponds,” says Porter, “tracked the ground in various parts. For a long time after the general subsiding of the Euphrates, great part of this plain is little better than a swamp,” &c. “The ruins of Babylon are then inundated, so as to render many parts of them inaccessible, by converting the valleys among them into morasses.” But while Babylon is thus “covered with the multitude of waves, and the waters come upon it;” yet, in striking contrast and seeming contradiction to such a feature of desolation, (like the formation of “pools of water,” from the “casting up of heaps,”) are the elevated sunburnt ruins, which the waters do not overflow, and the “dry waste” and “parched and burning plain,” on which the heaps of Babylon lie, equally prove that it is “a desert, a dry land, and a wilderness.” One part, even on the western side of the river, is “low and marshy, and another,” says Mignan, “an arid desert.” Many other striking particulars might be collected; and we may conclude in the words of Mr. Keith, from whose work on the prophecies several of the above particulars have been extracted:--“Is it possible that there can be any attestation of the truth of prophecy, if it be not witnessed here? Is there any spot on earth which has undergone a more complete transformation? ‘The records of the human race,’ it has been said with truth, ‘do not present a contrast more striking than that between the primeval magnificence of Babylon and its long desolation.’ Its ruins have of late been carefully and scrupulously examined by different natives of Britain, of unimpeached veracity; and the result of every research is a more striking demonstration of the literal accomplishment of every prediction. How few spots are there on earth of which we have so clear and faithful a picture as prophecy gave to fallen Babylon at a time when no spot on earth resembled it less than its present desolate solitary site! or could any prophecies respecting any single place have been more precise, or wonderful, or numerous, or true, or more gradually accomplished throughout many generations? And when they look at what Babylon was, and what it is, and perceive the minute realization of them all, may not nations learn wisdom, may not tyrants tremble, and may not skeptics think?” The reasons why prophecies so numerous and particular were recorded concerning Babylon, appear to have been, 1. That Babylon was the great oppressor of the Jews. 2. That it was the type of all the powerful persecuting enemies of the church of God, especially of Rome; and in its fate they may read their own. 3. That the accomplishment of prophecy in the destruction of so eminent an empire might give a solemn testimony to the truth of the Scriptures to the whole earth, and to all ages.

BABYLON (the modern ΞillaK) is the Greek form of Babel or Bab-ili, “the gate of god” (or, as it is sometimes 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 population of the country. It is doubtful whether the 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 name3∙ Another synonym of the place was Ed, “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 include the neighbouring territory, so that the whole of Babylonia came to be called by this name. Sir H. Rawlinson 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 Accadians 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 Ur. It was not until the conquest 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 Shalmaneser (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 (690 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 discovered on the site of Babylon older than the buildings of 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 Nebuchadnezzar 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 monotheistic 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,AlModain, Baghdad, Kufa, Kerbelah, Hillah,and other towns, and our only cause for wonder is that the remains 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 Babil or Mujellibe, the Kasr, and the Aπιτdm, 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. Cur 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 inscriptions 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 circumference, while according to Herodotus it measured 480 stades (56 miles), which would include an area of about 200 square miles! Pliny (√V^. H., 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, however, 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 (Hdt., 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 (Andb., iii. 4, 10, and cf. ii. 4, 12), while the spaces between 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), supported 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., xvi 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 Amrâm mound. The lesser palace in the western division of the city belonged to Neriglissar, 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 Rawlinson has 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 Birs Nimrud, stood at Borsippa, the suburb of Babylon. Γt 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 unfinished 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 Nabathaeans 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, therefore, that it was drained by the western reservoir, (a. h. s.)

In contrast with the arid plateau of Mesopotamia, stretched the rich alluvial plain of Chaldea, formed by the deposits of the two great rivers by which it was enclosed. The soil was extremely fertile, and teemed with an industrious population. Eastward rose the mountains of Elam, southward were the sea-marshes and the ancient kingdom of Nituk or Dilvun (the modern Bender-Dilvun), while on the west the civilisation of Babylonia encroached beyond the banks of the Euphrates, upon the territory of the Semitic nomades (or Suti). Here stood Ur (now Mugheir), the earliest capital of the country; and Babylon, with its suburb, Borsippa (Birs Nimrud), as well as the two Sipparas (the Sepharvaim of Scripture, now Mosaib), occupied both the Arabian and Chaldean side of the river. (See Babylon.) The Araxes, or “River of Babylon,” was conducted through a deep valley into the heart of Arabia, irrigating the land through which it passed; and to the south of it lay the great inland fresh-water sea of Nedjef, surrounded by red sandstone cliffs of considerable height, 40 miles in length and 35 in breadth in the widest part. Above and below this sea, from Borsippa to Kufa, extend the famous Chaldean marshes, where Alexander was nearly lost (Arrian, Exp. Al., vii. 22.; Strab., xvi. 1, § 12,); but these depend upon the state of the Hindiyah canal, disappearing altogether when it is closed. Between the sea of Nedjef and Ur, but on the left side of the Euphrates, was Erech (now Warka), which with Nipur or Calneh (now Niffer), Surippac (Senkereh ?), and Babylon (now Hillah), formed the tetrapolis of Sumir or Shinar. This northwestern part of Chaldea was also called Gan-duniyas or Gun-duni after the accession of the Cassite dynasty. Southeastern Chaldea, on the other hand, was termed Accad, though the name came also to be applied to the whole of Babylonia. The Caldai, or Chaldeans, are first met with in the 9th century p.c. as a small tribe on the Persian Gulf, whence they slowly moved northwards, until under Merodach-Baladan they made themselves masters of Babylon, and henceforth formed so important an element in the population of the country, as in later days to give their name to the whole of it. In the inscriptions, however, Chaldea represents the marshes of the sea-coast, and Teredon was one of their ports. The whole territory was thickly studded with towns; but among ⅜11 this “vast number of great cities,” to use the words of Herodotus, Cuthah, or Tiggaba (now Ibrahim), Chilmad (Kalwadah), Is (Hit), and Dur-aba (Akkerkuf) alone need be mentioned, The cultivation of the country was regulated by canals, the three chief of which carried off the waters of the Euphrates towards the Tigris above Babylon,—the “Royal River,” or Ar-Malcha, entering the Tigris a little below Baghdad, the Nahr-Malcha running across to the site of Seleucia, and the Nahr-Kutha passing through Ibrahim. The Pallacopas, on the other side of the Euphrates, supplied an immense lake in the neighbourhood of Borsippa. So great was the fertility of the soil that, according to Herodotus (i. 193), grain commonly returned two hundredfold to the sower, and occasionally three hundredfold. Pliny, too (H. N., xviii. 17), says that wheat was cut twice, and afterwards was good keep for sheep; and Berosus remarked that wheat, barley, sesame, ochrys, palms, apples, and many kinds of shelled fruit grew wild, as wheat still does in the neighbourhood of Anah. A Persian poem celebrated the 360 uses of the palm (Strab., xvi. 1, 14), and Ammianus Marcellinus (xxiv. 3) states that from the point reached by Julian’s army to the shores of the Persian Gulf was one continuous forest of verdure.

Such a country was well fitted to be one of the primeval seats of civilisation. Where brick lay ready to hand, and climate and soil needed only settled life and moderate labour to produce all that man required, it was natural that the great civilising power of Western Asia should take its rise. The history of the origin and development of this civilisation, interesting and important as it is, has but recently been made known to us by the decipherment of the native monuments. The scanty notices and conflicting statements of classical writers have been replaced by the evidence of contemporaneous documents; and though the materials are still but a tithe of w hat we may hope hereafter to obtain, we can sketch the outlines of the history, the art, and the science of the powerful nations of the Tigris and Euphrates. Before doing so, however, it would be well to say a few words in regard to our classical sources of information, the only ones hitherto available. The principal of these is Berosus, the Manetho of Babylonia, who flourished at the time of Alexander’s conquests (though see Havet, Mémoire sur la Date des Ecrits qui portent les noms de Bérose et de Manethon). He was priest of Bel, and translated the records and astronomy of his nation into Greek. His works have unfortunately perished, but the second and third hand quotations from them, which we have in Eusebius and other writers, have been strikingly verified by inscriptions so fax as regards their main facts. The story of the flood taken from Berosus, for instance, is almost identical with the one preserved on the cuneiform tablets. Numerical figures, however, as might be expected, are untrustworthy. According to Berosus, ten kings reigned before the Deluge for 120 saroi, or 432,000 years, beginning with Alorus of Babylon and ending with Otiartes (Opartes) of Larankha, and his son Sisuthrus, the hero of the flood. Then came eight dynasties, which are given as follows: — [table]

Ptolemy’s canon (in the Almagest) gives the seventh dynasty in full— [table]

Next to Berosus, the authority of Herodotus ranke highest. His information, however, is scanty, and he had to trust to the doubtful statements of ciceroni. Herodotus was controverted by Ctesias of Cnidus, the physician of Artaxerxes Mnemon. But Ctesias mistook mythology for history, and the Ninus and Semiramis, the Ninyas and Sardanapalus, of Greek romance were in great measure his creations. We may yet construct an Assyrian epopee, like the Shahnameh of Firdusi, out of his pages, but we must not look to them for history. Other historical notices of Assyria and Babylonia, of more or less questionable value, are to be gathered from Diodorus and one or two more writers, but beyond Berosus and, to a limited extent, Herodotus, our only ancient authority of much value upon this subject is the Old Testament.

Ethnology and History.— The primitive population of Babylonia, the builders of its cities, the originators of its culture, and the inventors of the cuneiform system of writing, or rather of the hieroglyphics out of which it gradually developed, belonged to the Turanian or Ural-Altaic family. Their language was highly agglutinative, approaching the modern Mongolian idioms in the simplicity of its grammatical machinery, but otherwise more nearly related to the Ugro-Bulgaric division of the Finnic group; and its speakers were mentally in no w ay inferior to the Hungarians and Turks of the present day. The country waβ divided into two halves, the Sumir (Sungir, or Shinar) in the north-west, and the Accad in the south-east, corresponding most remarkably to the Suomi and Akkara-k, into which the Finnic race believed itself to have been separated in its first mountain home. Like Suomi, Sumir signified “ (the people) of the rivers,” and just as Finnic tradition makes Kemi a district of the Suomi, so Came was another name of the Babylonian Sumir. The Accadai, or Accad, were “the highlanders” who had descended from the mountainous region of Elam on the east, and it was to them that the Assyrians ascribed the origin of Chaldean civilisation and writing. They were, at all events, the dominant people in Babylonia at the time to which our earliest contemporaneous records reach back, although the Sumir, or “people of the home language,” as they are sometimes termed, were named first in the royal titles out of respect to their prior settlement in the country. A survey of the syllabary has led to the conclusion that the first attempts at writing were made before the Accad had descended into the plains and exchanged papyrus as a w riting material for clay; other considerations, however, go to show that although the system of writing may have been invented before they had entered Babylonia, it was not completed until after they had done so. In harmony with this, we find Berosus ascribing the culture of “the mixed population of Chaldea” to Oannes and other similar creatures from the Persia^ Gulf. So far as we can judge, the civilisation of Elam is at least coeval with that of Babylonia, and the capture of Babylon by the Medes, with whom the historical dynasties of Berosus are commonly supposed to begin, must be explained by an Elamite conquest. Media was the Accadian ΛIada, “the land" par excellence; and Accadian tradition looked back upon the mountainous district to the south-west of the Caspian as the cradle of their race. Among these “mountains of the east,” and in the land of Nisir (the furthermost division of Gutium beyond the Lesser Zab), rose “the mountain of the world,” the Turanian Olympus, on which the ark of the Chaldean Noah was believed to have rested. From this centre Turanian tribes spread in all directions, meeting Alarodians on the north, and Semites on the south-west. The Aryans had not yet penetrated across the great Sagartian desert. The numerous tribes of Susiana, both civilised and uncivilised, spoke languages more closely Ugrian than even that of the Accadians; the oldest towns of Northern Syria, where the Semite afterwards reigned supreme, bore Accadian names, and, as in the case of Haran, were mythologically connected with Babylon; while the chief cities of Assyria were founded by Accadians, were denoted by Accadian symbols, and were ruled by Accadian princes, in strict accordance with the statement of Genesis that out of Babylonia “went forth Asshur.” An Elamite conqueror of Chaldea, like Chedorlaomer (Gen. xiv. 1), imposed his authority not only over Shinar, but over Assyria and Gutium as well. The earliest geographical lists know only of Nuvva, or Elam, on the east, the Khani on the west, Martu, the land of “the path of the setting sun,” Subarti, or Syria, with its four races, and Gutium, which stretched across Mesopotamia from the Euphrates on the one side to the mountains of Media on the other. To these must be added Anzan, or southern Elam, with its capital Susa, Dilvun, or Nituk, on the Persian Gulf, and, at a considerably later date, the Hittites, with their chief city Carchemish.

The first monarchs whose monumental records we possess had their seat at Ur, on the right bank of the Euphrates. Ur, in Accadian, signified “the city” par excellence, and so bore testimony to the supremacy claimed by its rulers over the rest of Babylonia. The great temple of the Moon-god there was one of the oldest buildings in the country, and its erection was due to a prince who claimed sovereignty over the whole of Babylonia, and adorned Erech, Nipur, Larsa, and other cities with temples of vast size, dedicated to the sun, to Istar, and to Bel. He seems to have been the first great Babylonian builder; and this would imply that it was under him that Ur rose to its prominent position, and united the numerous principalities of Chaldea under one head. The enormous brick structures were cemented with bitumen in the place of lime mortar; but the use of the buttress, of drains, and of external ornamentation, shows that architectural knowledge was already advanced. The cuneiform system of writing had attained its full development, signet stones were carved with artistic skill, and the amount of human force at the disposal of the monarch may be estimated from the fact that the Bowariyeh mound at Warka, on the site of the temple of the Sun-god, is 200 feet square and 100 feet high, so that above 30,000,000 bricks must have been employed upon its construction. The vicinity of Ur to the Semitic tribes of Arabia implies that the Accadian sovereigns had been turning their attention in that direction, and we find nothing surprising therefore in the Scriptural account of Abraham’s migration from this place, or the Phoenician tradition of the original home of the Canaanitish race on the shores of the Persian Gulf (Strab., i. 2, 35, xvi. 3, 4, 27; Justin, xviii. 3, 2; Pliny, A r . II., iv. 36). Indeed, we have clear evidence that Semitic was spoken in Ur itself at this remote epoch. Although the ruling caste were Accadian, and generally wrote their inscriptions in that language, Dungi, one of their earliest monarchs, in spite of his Turanian name, has left us a short legend in Semitic; and it is more than probable that the imperial title of “Sumir and Accad” was soon to be assumed to mark a linguistic as well as a geographical distinction. The brick legends of the various viceroys who governed the cities of Chaldea under this dynasty are all, however, in Accadian.

The supremacy of Ur had been disputed by its more ancient rival Erech, but had finally to give way before the rise of Nisin or Karrak, a city whose site is uncertain, and Karrak in its turn was succeeded by Larsa. Elamite conquest seems to have had something to do with these transferences of the seat of power. In 2280 b.c. —the date is fixed by an inscription of Assur-bani-pal’s—Cudur-nankhundi, the Elamite, conquered Chaldea at a time when princes with Semitic names appear to have been already reigning there, and Cudur-mabug not only overran “the west,” or Palestine, but established a line of monarchs in Babylonia. His son and successor took an Accadian name, and extended his sway over the whole country. Twice did the Elamite tribe of Cassi or Kossaeans furnish Chaldea with a succession of kings. At a very early period we find one of these Kossaean dynasties claiming homage from Syria, Gutium, and Northern Arabia, and rededicating the images of native Babylonian gods, which had been carried away in war, with great splendour and expense. The other Cassite dynasty was founded by Khammuragas, who established his capital at Babylon, which henceforward continued to be the seat of empire in the south. The dynasty is probably to be identified with that called Arabian by Berosus, and it was during its domination that Semitic came gradually to supersede Accadian as the language of the country. Khammuragas himself assumed a Semitic name, and a Semitic inscription of his is now in the Louvre. A large number of canals were constructed during his reign, more especially the famous Nahr-Malcha, and an embankment built along the banks of the Tigris. The king’s attention seems to have been turned to the subject of irrigation by a flood which overwhelmed the important city of Mulhas. His first conquests were in the north of Babylonia, and from this base of operations he succeeded in overthrowing Naram-Sin (or Rim-Acuî) in the south, and making himself master of the whole of Chaldea. Naram-Sin and a queen had been the last representatives of a dynasty which had attained a high degree of glory both in arms and in literature. Naram-Sin and his father Sargon had not only subdued the rival princes of Babylonia, but had successfully invaded Syria, Palestine, and even, as it would seem, Egypt. At Agane, a suburb of Sippara, Sargon had founded a library, especially famous for its works on astrology and astronomy, copies of which were made in later times for the libraries of Assyria. Indeed, so prominent a place did Sargon take iu the early history of Babylonia, that his person became surrounded with an atmosphere of myth. Not only was he regarded as a sort of eponymous hero of literature, a Babylonian Solomon, whose title was “the deviser of law and prosperity,” popular legends told of his mysterious birth, how, like Romulus and Arthur, he knew no father, but was born in secrecy, and placed by his mother in an ark of reeds and bitumen, and left to the care of the river; how, moreover, this second Moses was carried by the stream to the dwelling of a ferryman, who reared him as his own son, until at last the time came that his rank should bo discovered, and Sargon, “the constituted king,” for such is the meaning of his name, took his seat upon the throne of his ancestors. It was while the Cassite sovereigns were reigning in the south, and probably in consequence of reverses that they suffered at the hands of the Egyptians, who, under the monarchs of the 18th dynasty, were pushing eastward, that the kingdom of Assyτia took its rise. Its princes soon began to treat with their southern neighbours on equal terms; the boundaries of the two kingdoms were settled, and intermarriages between the royal families took place, which led more than once to an interference on the part of the Assyrians in the affairs of Babylonia. Finally, in the 14th century b.c., Tiglath-A dar of Assyria captured Babylon, and established a Semitic line of sovereigns there, which continued until the days of the later Assyrian empire. From this time down to the destruction of Nineveh, Assyria remained the leading power of Western Asia. Occasionally, it is true, a king of Babylon succeeded in defeating his aggressive rival and invading Assyria; but the contrary was more usually the case, and the Assyrians grew more and more powerful at the expense...