570

TOPOGRAPHY OF BABYLON.

APP. BOOK III.

ESSAY IV.

ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF BABYLON.

1. Difficulties of the subject. 2. Great extent of Babylon according to ancient writers. 3. No traces of original enceinte. 4. General plan of the existing ruins. 5. Their position on the left bank of the Euphrates a difficultymodes of meeting it. 6. Canal between the northern and the central ruins 7. Mound of Babil, the Temple of Belus-its present state. 8. Proofs of the identity. 9. Mounds of the Kasr and Amrám, the ancient palace. 10. Site of the great reservoir. 11. Palace of Neriglissar, and embankment of Nabunit. 12. Triangular enclosure, of the Parthian age. 13. The BirsNimrud-its present appearance. 14. Original plan of the Birs. 15. Its ornamentation. 16. The Birs rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar-his account of the restoration.

1. THE topography of ancient Babylon is a subject which is still involved in a good deal of doubt and difficulty. Though an accurate survey on a large scale has recently been made of the ruins by Captain Selby of the Indian Navy,' whereof the accompanying Chart is a reduced copy, it is still very difficult to pronounce a decided opinion on the various intricate questions involved in the wide subject here proposed for consideration. Certain main points may, however, be regarded as sufficiently determined, and certain. principal buildings and other features of the ancient city may be considered as identified by the inscriptions on their remains and by the descriptive documents of the Babylonian kings. To these leading features of the topography, and to these only, it is proposed at present to direct the reader's attention.

2. The most remarkable fact recorded of Babylon by the ancient writers is its extraordinary extent. According to Herodotus it was a square, 120 stades or nearly 14 miles each way, covering thus an area of nearly 200 square miles! This estimate is somewhat diminished by the historians of Alexander, who reduce the sides to about 11 miles, and the area to something less than 130 square miles. Even this space is (according to modern notions)

I am greatly indebted to Captain Selby for a copy of his Chart and Memoir, printed for the Bombay Government, in 1859, but Lot (I be.

lieve) as yet published. (G. R. 1863.) 2 Book i. ch. 178.

3 For the details see note on the above-named chapter.

572

NO TRACES OF THE GREAT WALL.

APP, BOOK III.

enormous, being five or six times the size of London. The authority, however, upon which it rests is of great weight and importance; for one cannot but suppose that accurate measurements would be made by the Greeks upon their conquest of the city. It has, therefore, been usual to accept the statement, and to suppose that a wall of great height surrounded an area of the size indicated, and that the name Babylon attached in popular parlance to the entire space within the rampart. Of course, however, if the wall was of this extent, only a small proportion of the ground within it can have been covered with buildings. The Babylon thus described was not a town, but a great fortified district very partially built upon, and containing within it not only gardens and parks, but numerous fields and orchards.6

3. Of the great wall enclosing this space, it is agreed by almost all travellers that not a vestige remains. It has been destroyed by quarrying, or has sunk into the ditch from which it arose; and there is no possibility of even determining its position, unless by the merest conjecture. The earliest of the Mesopotamian explorers1 imagined that it included within it the Birs-Nimrud, which is six miles from the Euphrates; but the inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar make it certain that this vast ruin marks the site of a distinct town."

4 The only argument that can be urged with any effect against this, is that the walls had perished before Alexander's conquest, and therefore that his historians only reported a tradition. But it is very unlikely that they could have altogether disappeared so early. And Abydenus expressly states that the wall of Nebuchadnezzar continued to Alexander's time. (See vol. i. Essay viii. p. 527, § 16, note 4.) 5 On the height of the wall see note 7 on Book i. ch. 178.

6 This is declared to have been the case by Q. Curtius (v. i. § 27). It has been generally allowed by modern writers. (See Rich's Second Memoir, p. 14; Ker Porter, vol. ii. p. 386; Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, p. 494; Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History, vol. i. p. 24, note 15, E. T.)

7 M. Oppert alone, I believe, disputes this. He is of opinion that he has found traces of the walls, or rather of their towers and gates, in certain of

the mounds or Tels which cover the flat country on either side of the Enphrates. These views are developed in his great work on Mesopotamia. See Note B at the end of this Essay. Captain Selby says, "Of the immense walls, 300 feet high, and 60 (?) thick, which, according to Herodotus, encircled the city to the extent of about 25 (?) miles square, no vestige has been discovered," On this account he is inclined to doubt whether the ruins at Hillah are really those of Babylon! (Memoir, p. 3.)

8 See vol i. Essay viii. p. 546. 1 Rich, Second Memoir, pp. 31, 32; Ker Porter, vol. ii. p. 382.

2 M. Oppert admits that the Birs. Nimrud marks the site of the ancient Borsippa; but he supposes this place to have been a sort of second citadel (Acropolis minor) to Babylon, and to have lain between the outer and the inner walls. (See below, p. 589).

ESSAY IV.

PRESENT STATE OF THE RUINS.

66

573

4. The only ruins which can be confidently assigned to the ancient Babylon are the group of mounds upon the Euphrates, a little above Hillah, which cover a space about three and a half miles long and from one to two miles broad, and are almost entirely inclosed within an irregular triangle, formed by two long lines of rampart (called "Sur or earthen rampart" in the plan) and the river. These ruins are generally said to consist of three great masses of brickwork, the northernmost of which (Rich's Mujellibeh) is known to the Arabs as BABIL (“Mujelybe" in the plan), the central as the Kasr or Palace, and the southernmost as the mound of Amrám. Besides these principal buildings there are various lesser ruins, among which the most remarkable are two long parallel lines of rampart (“Inner Rampart" and "Low Mounds" of the plan) having a direction nearly north and south, which shut in the central and southern ruins on the east, and a remarkable red hill (“El Amerrah" of the plan) which lies to the west of these ramparts, between them and the "Kasr" or Palace." Very few and insignificant ruins intervene between the great mounds (called Amram and the Kasr) and the present east bank of the river, which (according to some observers) seems once to have flowed directly along the western face of the two great mounds. Less noticeable, but still of some visible importance, are some ruins on the right bank of the Euphrates (called "Annana" in the plan) parallel with the mound of Amrám, and consisting chiefly of a broad rampart 20 feet high running from N.N.W. to S.S.E. a distance of nearly a mile, and then carried at right angles down to the river. Beyond the ruins thus described, towards Hillah on the south and towards Mohawill on the north, are low heaps and embankments scattered irregularly over the plain. On the western side of the river, besides the ruin already mentioned (Annana), there are a number of lesser mounds; and both here and towards the east the ground is everywhere covered with fragments of brick and with nitre, the sure marks of former buildings.3

The particulars of this account are chiefly taken from Captain Selby's survey, compared with the accounts given by Rich (First Memoir), Ker Porter (vol. ii. pp. 337-380), and Layard (Nineveh and Babylon, pp. 490492), and with the personal recollections of Sir H. Rawlinson and Dr.

Hyslop, the latter of whom was engaged with Captains Jones and Selby in the recent surveys. Reference has also been made to the letters of M. Fresnel in the Journal Asiatique for June and July, 1853, and to the general description of Mr. Loftus (Chaldæa, ch. ii.).

574

THEIR POSITION, EAST OF THE RIVER. APP. BOOK III.

5. The difficulty which immediately strikes the observer, who, acquainted with the descriptions of Babylon given by the ancient writers, casts his eye over the mass of ruins above described, is their position, with few and unimportant exceptions, on the left bank of the river. The ancients unanimously declare that the Euphrates flowed through Babylon; and that the most important buildings were placed on the opposite sides of the stream.5 The Temple of Belus and the Royal Palace-the two chief edifices-are said to have been separated by the river, each forming a stronghold or fortress in its own division of the town. Now although it must be granted that the Euphrates, having a general tendency to run off to the westward," has done much to obliterate the ruins which originally stood upon the right bank, yet it can scarcely be thought that this cause is sufficient to account for the entire disappearance of a building so vast as each of these is said to have been. We ought to find traces both of the palace and of the temple, and they ought to be separated either by the main stream of the Euphrates or at least by a branch from it—which is certainly not the case at present with any of the important ruins. The suggestion that the Birs-Nimrud represented the old temple of Belus, though it is distant eight or nine miles from the true Babylon, originated in the supposed necessity of finding one or other of the two great buildings among the ruins still existing to the west of the stream. The Birs

is the only ruin of any magnitude on the right bank at present; and the vast dimensions ascribed to Babylon by the ancients would allow of its being included within the ancient enceinte. The identification, however, of the Birs with Borsippa-a town quite distinct from Babylon, which is rendered certain by the monuments 9

8

4 Besides the description of our author (i. 178-183), the most important are those of Diodorus (ii. 7, et seqq.), which is probably derived from Ctesias, and of Berosus, as reported by Josephus (Ant. Jud. x. 11). This last seems to have been derived by Berosus directly from Nebuchadnezzar's monuments, and, if it were less corrupt, would be invaluable.

Herod. i. 181; Diod. Sic. ii. 8; Strab. xvi. § 5, p. 1019; Plin. H. N. vi. 26, &c.

6 Layard, Nin. and Bab. p. 493.

This was strongly urged by Rich

(Second Memoir, p. 32) and Ker Por. ter (vol. ii. p. 383), who were the first to propose the identification of the Birs with the Temple of Belus. It is echoed by Niebuhr (1. s. c.), and Fresnel (Journal Asiatique, Juillet, 1853, p. 24).

8 See Beros. Fr. 14, p. 508; Strab. xvi. p. 1050; Steph. Byz. ad voc., &c. 9 See the inscription upon the Birs Cylinder, infra, p. 586, and compare the abstract of the Standard Inscrip. tion in Note A at the end of this Essay.