included the palace of Nebuchadnezzar-that is to say, probably the mound of Babil-and the ruin of Birs Nimroud, which he supposes, in accordance with the Jewish tradition, to be the Tower of Babel. His

account of the latter, which shows that it was in a state of better preservation than at present, may perhaps be quoted once more :

"The tower built by the dispersed generation is four miles from Hillah. It is constructed of bricks called al-ajur" [this is the old Babylonian word for a baked brick]; "the base measures two miles,

the breadth 240 yards, and the height about 100 reeds " [a measure of six cubits]. "A spiral passage, built into the tower (from ten to twelve yards), leads up to the summit, from which there is a prospect of twenty miles, the country being one wide plain, and quite level. The heavenly fire which struck the tower split it to its very foundation."

Shortly after the death of Benjamin, another Jew, the Rabbi Pethachiah of Ratisbon, also made a pilgrimage to the East for the purpose of visiting the scattered congregations of his people. It must always be borne in mind that these early travellers never journeyed for a purely scientific purpose; they went as traders or pilgrims, or political envoys or missionaries, and the information they give us of historical or geographical interest is always composed of notes, more or less scanty, made by the way. The narrative of Pethachiah has only come down to us in the form of an abridgment made by one of his disciples.

"From Nisibis, after five days' journey, Rabbi Pethachiah arrived at the new Nineveh on the Tigris. He crossed the river, and, after having travelled for three days, he arrived at the ancient Nineveh, which is now ruined. The soil in the neighbourhood is like pitch, and the principal place of Nineveh, which was formerly a forest, has been overthrown like Sodom, so that neither herbs nor bushes are to be found there; and the new Nineveh lies upon the opposite bank.

"From Bagdad the Rabbi Pethachiah went in two days to the extremity of ancient Babylon. The palace of Nebuchadnezzar the wicked is entirely ruined. Near its old walls you see a column, and the house of Daniel; you see also the stone on which he used to sit, and the marble on which he rested his feet; above is the stone on which was placed the book that he wrote.

"On his way to the tomb of Ezechiel, Pethachiah passed by the Tower of the dispersed generation. It is falling into decay, and

forms a lofty mound, an eternal ruin; but the town which was in its neighbourhood has been demolished."

Bagdad is almost always named Babylon by the Rabbi; but, in spite of the inaccuracies of their narratives, the two Israelites stand alone among the travellers of their age. It is disappointing, after their accounts, to find that Marco Polo, a hundred years later, visited Mosul and Bagdad without leaving any notice of the historical sites lying near these towns, in his delightful Book concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East. Sir John Mandeville made a pilgrimage to Palestine between A.D. 1322 and 1356, but he did not visit Mesopotamia. His account of that region is

borrowed from ancient writers and from other travellers of his period. The Friar Odericus wrote an itinerary in A.D. 1330, in which he related his adventures on the way to Tartary, but beyond a mention of the Tower of Babel, which he passed, he gives us no particulars of the kind that we require.

Early in the fifteenth century a member of the noble family of Conti travelled from Venice to Arabia, Chaldæa, and India for the purpose of trade; he returned in A.D. 1444. During his sojourn in Mahometan countries he had renounced Christianity in order to save his life, which was in danger from his fanatical companions; and on his return to Italy he sought absolution from Pope Eugenius IV. This pontiff, well known for his zeal for learning, imposed upon the traveller the novel penance of composing and dictating a full and accurate account of his journeys,

and this was written down in Latin by his Florentine secretary, Poggio. The interest which it aroused at the time is proved by the Portuguese translation, which King Manoel I. caused to be made in A.D. 1500 for the instruction of his navigators, who had recently made their way round the Cape, and were beginning to explore the coasts of Asia. Conti, however, fell into the common mistake made by European travellers in the Middle Ages, and occasionally even down to the last century, of supposing that Bagdad stood on the site of the ancient Babylon, by which name they often call the Mahometan capital. His words are:

"On the river Euphrates (sic) stands a part of the most noble and ancient city of Babylon, fourteen miles in circuit, the inhabitants of which at present call it Bagdad. The river runs through the middle of it, spanned by a strong bridge of fourteen arches, which unites the two halves of the city. Many remains and foundations of ancient buildings are still to be seen."

The exact state of the information which the scholars of Western Europe possessed at the end of the sixteenth century is shown by the learned and celebrated Geographical Treasury of Ortelius, of Antwerp, published in A.D. 1596. In this work it is simply stated that certain writers identified Nineveh with Mosul; whether this is correct or not the geographer is unable to decide, Mosul was also identified with Seleucia by some. Most of the authorities quoted by Ortelius place the modern Bagdad, or Baldach, as it was often called, upon the site of ancient Babylon; Benjamin of Tudela being the only exception. It was the easier for Ortelius

D

to accept this identification because, so confusing were the scanty reports of medieval travellers, he believes, like Conti, that Bagdad was upon the Euphrates, and there he sets it in his map.

We have now come to the period when travellers in the East began to multiply, and their reports became fuller and more intelligent. We shall find, however, a certain vagueness in their opinions about the sites of Nineveh and Babylon. The first they place near Mosul, but whether it lay on the eastern bank, opposite the modern town, or some miles higher up the river, at Eski-Mosul, they are often at a loss to say. Babylon is generally placed by them between Felujah, where the traveller leaves the Euphrates on his way to Bagdad, and the latter city, which they often supposed to stand on the same ground as part of the ancient capital; the ruin of Akerkuf, or Nimrod's Tower, which is passed on the road, was generally accepted as the Tower of Babel.

One of the most interesting documents in Hakluyt's collection of voyages and travels, published in 1599, is a translation from the Italian of the narrative of Cesare de' Federici, or, as he is here called, Cæsar Frederike, a merchant of Venice, who started on a journey to the East in 1563. He is the first who gives us an account of the Tower of Akerkuf, to which allusion has just been made, and which has recently been proved, by inscriptions in cuneiform characters, to have been part of the ancient Babylonian town of DurKurigalzu. It is, indeed, very far from Borsippa, where the Tower of Babel actually was.