pears to me to be evident, for upon the upper one was constructed the temple of the god. The ascent, too, was on the outside. Without, however, venturing to identify the Birs Nimroud with the ruins of this temple, it may be observed that it is highly probable one uniform system of building was adopted in the East for sacred purposes, and that these ascending and receding platforms formed the general type of the Chaldæan and Assyrian temples. A step may still be traced around the foot of the ruin, probably part of the basement or first platform, and as the whole is surrounded by the remains of a quadrangular enclosure, it is in every respect like those in the Desert to the west of Mosul. Around the Birs are heaps of rubbish marking the sites of ancient buildings.

The edifice, of which this remarkable ruin is the remains, was built of kiln-burnt bricks. Fragments of stone, marble and basalt, scattered amongst the rubbish, show that it was adorned with other materials. The cement by which the bricks were united is of so tenacious a quality, that it is almost impossible to detach one from the mass entire. The ruin is a specimen of the perfection of the Babylonian masonry.'

1 There seems now no doubt but that many, perhaps most of the Buddhist forms of architecture in India and further eastward, were derived from the banks of the Euphrates. Many of the links are still wanting; but it is something to know that the Birs Nimroud is the type which two thousand years afterwards was copied at Pagahn in Burmah and Boro Buddor in Java; and that the descent from these can easily be traced in those countries and in China to the present day. In so far as it has been explored, the lower storey forms a perfect square, 272 feet each way.

Above this are six storeys each forty-two feet less in horizontal dimensions. These are not placed concentrically on those below them, but at a distance of only twelve feet from the southeastern edge, and consequently thirty feet from the northwest and twenty-one feet from the two other sides.

This temple, as we know from the decipherment of the cylinders which were found on its angles, was dedicated to the seven planets or heavenly spheres, and we find it consequently adorned with the colours of each. The lower, which was also richly panelled, was black, the colour of Saturn; the next, orange, the colour of Jupiter; the third, red, emblematic of Mars; the fourth, yellow, belonging to the sun; the fifth and sixth, green and blue respectively, as dedicated to Venus and Mercury; and the upper probably white, that being the colour belonging to the moon, whose place in the Chaldean system would be uppermost.-James Fergusson.

THE WALLS AND HANGING GARDENS OF

BABYLON

GEORGE RAWLINSON

HE main glory of the palace was its pleasure ground

THE

-the Hanging Gardens, which the Greeks regarded as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. This extraordinary construction, which owed its erection to the whim of a woman,' was a square, each side of which measured 400 Greek feet. It was supported upon several tiers of open arches, built one over the other, like the walls of a classic theatre, and sustaining at each stage, or story, a solid platform, from which the piers of the next tier of arches rose. The building towered into the air to the height of at least seventy-five feet, and was covered at top with a great mass of earth, in which there grew not merely flowers and shrubs, but trees also of the largest size. Water was supplied from the Euphrates through pipes, and was raised (it is said) by a screw working on the principle

1 The chief works expressly ascribed to Nebuchadnezzar by the ancient writers are the following. He built the great Wall of Babylon, which according to the lowest estimate must have contained more than 500,000,000 square feet of solid masonry, and must have required three or four times that number of bricks. He constructed a new and magnificent palace in the neighbourhood of the ancient residence of the kings. He made the celebrated Hanging Garden for the gratification of his wife Amytis.

of Archimedes. To prevent the moisture from penetrating into the brickwork and gradually destroying the building, there were interposed between the bricks and the mass of soil, first a layer of reeds mixed with bitumen, then a double layer of burnt brick cemented with gypsum, and thirdly a coating of sheet lead. The ascent to the garden was by steps. On the way up, among the arches which sustained the building, were stately apartments which must have been pleasant from their coolness. There was also a chamber within the structure containing the machinery by which the water was raised.

Of the smaller palace, which was opposite to the larger one, on the other side the river, but few details have come down to us. Like the large palace, it was guarded by a triple enclosure, the entire circuit of which measured (it is said) thirty stades. It contained a number of bronze statues which the Greeks believed to represent the god Belus, and the sovereigns Ninus and Semiramis, together with their officers. The walls were covered with battlescenes and hunting-scenes, vividly represented by means of bricks painted and enamelled.

Such was the general character of the town and its chief edifices, if we may believe the descriptions of eye-witnesses. The walls which enclosed and guarded the whole-or which, perhaps one should rather say, guarded the district within which Babylon was placed—were remarkable for their great extent. Like the Hanging Gardens, they were included among the "world's seven wonders," and, accord

ing to every account given of them, their magnitude and construction were remarkable.

According to the lowest of the ancient estimates, the entire length of the walls was 360 stades, or more than fortyone miles. With respect to the width, we have two very different statements, one by Herodotus and the other by Clitarchus and Strabo. Herodotus makes the width fifty royal cubits or about eighty-five English feet; Strabo and Q. Curtius reduced the estimate to thirty-two feet. There is still greater discrepancy with respect to the height of the walls. Herodotus says that the height was 200 royal cubits, or 300 royal feet (about 335 English); Ctesias made it fifty fathoms or 300 ordinary Greek feet; Pliny and Solinus, substituting feet for the royal cubits of Herodotus, made the altitude 235 feet; Philostratus and Q. Curtius, following perhaps some one of Alexander's historians, gave for the height 150 feet; finally Clitarchus, as reported by Diodorus Siculus, and Strabo, who probably followed him, have left us the very moderate estimate of seventy-five feet. It is impossible to reconcile these numbers. The supposition that some of them belonged properly to the outer, and others to the inner wall, will not explain the discrepancies-for the measurements cannot by any ingenuity be reduced to two sets of dimensions. The only conclusion which it seems possible to draw from the conflicting testimony is that the numbers were either rough guesses made by very unskilful travellers, or else were (in most cases) intentional exaggerations