same, there would be an equality of level. It is probably meant, that the elevated parts of these hanging gardens commanded a view over their own walls; and that either these, or the level of the gardens themselves, were fifty cubits high; the command of such a prospect over the interior of the whole city on both sides, and across the river in the centre, was an object worth attaining.

Another reason why the enclosing wall of the palace and hanging gardens continued longer than those of the city itself, might be, that the latter, being intended merely as a security from intrusion, and not as a wall of military defence, was probably constructed of unburnt brick, more particularly as that is the kind found in the very exterior facing of the supposed castellated palace. This therefore being a material unsought after for building, and more easily made on the spot than transported from afar, a wall composed of it would be left undisturbed, until some sufficient motive urged its demolition, while the great outer wall of the city would be as constantly diminishing, for the reasons before enumerated.

The difference in the materials of which these boundaries were constructed, would account satisfactorily for the disappearance of every vestige of the one, while the other, though of later destruction, would leave a very considerable mound behind it. The burnt bricks, as soon as discovered, would be fit for use; and there is no authority for believing that any thing but such bricks, and their cement, was used in the city-wall; so that, as their separation was easy, the fragments occasioned by their disjointing, and the dust of the cement left behind, might easily be dispersed with the winds, and mingled with the Desert sands.* The unburnt bricks, on the contrary,

* "Berosus in Josephus saith, that when Cyrus had taken Babylon, he ordered the outer walls to be pulled down, because the city appeared to him very factious and difficult to be taken. And Xenophont informs us, that Cyrus obliged the Babylonians to

† Κυρος δε Βαβυλωνα καταλαβομενος, και συνταξας τα εξω της πολεως τείχη κατασκαψαι, δια το λιαν αυτῷ πραγματικήν και δυσάλωτον φανηναι την πολιν. -Cyrus autem Babylone capta, constitutoque exteriora ejus munimenta diruere, quod civitatem videret ad res novas mobilem, urbem vero expugnatu difficilem. Contra Apion. lib. i. Sect. 22. p. 1344. Edit. Hudson.

Xenoph. Cyropæd. lib. vii. p. 114 et 117. Edit. Steph.

would constantly crumble in their fall; so that a wall of them, beginning to loosen at the top, would, by the falling down of the rubbish on each side, soon become a mound of apparently pure earth, strewed with fragments of such materials as might have been near, and be afterwards sprinkled over with scanty weeds growing out of the surface, which is the case with many of the mounds at Nineveh, at Memphis, and other Egyptian cities, and even at Babylon itself.

To return from this digression to a consideration of the arguments used against the enormous circuit of the walls. Their prodigious extent appears to have been doubted only from the disproportionate size which they bore to the enclosures of more modern cities: since London and Paris are cited in the comparison, and an estimate is made of Babylon being, by the highest standard, eight times as large as the former in the area of its walls; and, by the lowest standard, in the proportion of five to two larger than the latter.

When it is said, however, that Nineveh was "an exceeding great city of three days' journey in length," and that Jonah did not begin to preach its destruction "until he had entered into it one day's journey,” its extent is not objected to, because it is on the authority of a Prophet.* This city is, indeed, said by Strabo to have been larger than Babylon;† and Diodorus describes it to be an oblong figure of ninety stadia in breadth, and one hundred and fifty stadia in length, extending a front of nearly nineteen miles along the eastern bank of the Tigris, and a breadth of about eleven miles from the river to the mountains on one side only, which was, indeed, nearly as large as the largest dimensions assumed for Babylon.

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Taking the extent of Gour, the ancient capital of Bengal, at the most reasonable calculation," says Major Rennel, "it was not

deliver up all their arms upon pain of death, distributed their best houses among his officers, imposed a tribute upon them, appointed a strong garrison, and compelled the Babylonians to defray the charge, being desirous to keep them poor, as the best means of keeping them obedient."-Newton on the Prophecies, pp. 168, 169.

* Jonah, chap. iii. v. 3, 4.

† p. 737.

+ Lib. ii. c. 11.

less than fifteen miles in length, extending along the old bank of the Ganges, and from two to three in breadth." The Ayeen Akbaree states, according to the same author, that the wall of Mahmoodabad, in Guzerat, was a square of seven cosses, which are equal to about thirteen miles; and the distance between the most remote of the ruined edifices of the Egyptian Thebes, both of which are temples, and therefore not likely to have been situated in the very opposite extremities of the town, is upwards of nine miles, as a diameter only.

While the extent of such cities is admitted in some, and known by actual measurement in other, instances; there seems to be no sufficient reason for rejecting the testimony of Herodotus, when he gives to Babylon an extent of a square of fifteen miles on each side, taking his four hundred and eighty stadia at their highest standard of eight to a mile.

In reasoning on this point, by which, as Major Rennel says, the public belief has been led, the principal objection is resolved at last into the improbability of so vast a contiguous space having ever been built on. But, says the same writer, "that the wall might have been continued to the extent given, does not appear so improbable; for we cannot suppose that so many of the eminent writers could have been misled concerning this point. The Macedonians and others had viewed it, and both Strabo and Diodorus appear have written from documents furnished by them, and might also have conversed with persons who had seen Babylon, and they all speak of it as of a city whose circuit was of wonderful extent; therefore, we ought to be prepared for something very much out of the common way."

to

The writers who, after Herodotus and Pliny, give about the number of three hundred and sixty-five stadia for the extent, seem, from the reason assigned by Clitarchus and others, to have shaped this as a favourite number, from its corresponding to the days of the year, as is still done in estimating the number of windows in large cathedrals, the number of doors in the Palace of Alhambra in Spain, the minarets in some of the large Oriental cities, and the

ruined towns in the deserted districts of the Haurān. It is true, that in some cases, as Rennel has observed, the very act of connecting the number with that of the days contained in the year, seems to prove that it approached nearly to it. But in these countries, sufficient instances could be cited, to shew that this number is used indiscriminately to express an amount as frequently above as beneath the truth, and often, indeed, very far from it in either case. It would be underrating the general veracity of the authorities cited, however, to suppose that some slight regard was not had to an approximation at least of the reported and the real number.

When Pliny and Solinus give their statement at sixty Roman miles, which, at eight stadia to a mile, agrees with Herodotus, it is said that they merely follow him. But though Strabo (whose number of three hundred and eighty-five is thought, by Rennel, to have been corrupted from three hundred and sixty-five), Diodorus from Ctesias, Clitarchus who accompanied Alexander, and, lastly, Quintus Curtius, all hang round the number of the days in the year, with a tale affixed as a reason for that choice which itself would awake suspicion, it is no where suggested that this tale becoming current after the standard was first fixed by it, the others merely followed its authority, without correcting it by actual measurement. The remark of Mr. Rich on this subject includes all that need be said on the comparative value of these testimonies at such different periods of time. "Of all the ancient writers who have described Babylon," says that gentleman, "Herodotus and Diodorus are the most detailed, and much weight ought certainly to be placed on the accounts of the former of these historians, who was an eyewitness of what he himself relates, notwithstanding the exaggeration and credulity which may, in many instances, be laid to his charge, when he reports from the information of others. The accounts of late writers (he continues) are of comparatively small value; for though Strabo's general accuracy and personal experience render his description of great interest, as far as it goes, yet he could have seen Babylon only at a period when its public buildings had already

become heaps of rubbish; and, consequently, must have depended upon more ancient authorities for particular accounts of most of them."

In short, the city, of which so extensive a traveller as Herodotus, who had seen all the great monuments of the age in which he lived, had said, " Its extent, its beauty, and its magnificence, surpass all that has come within my knowledge;" the city, which is characterized in a hundred places throughout the Scriptures, from the denunciations of judgment by the Prophets, to the dreamer of dreams in the Revelations, as emphatically and peculiarly "the Great;" the city, which is expressly called "The Glory of Kingdoms, and the Beauty of the Chaldees' excellency," must be thought to have been at least as great as most of the large cities coeval with it in the East, whose enormous dominions are undisputed, admitting even that a considerable portion of its celebrity arose out of the conspicuous part which it bore in the wars and revolutions of the Eastern world.*

"It is a question," says Rennel," which no one can positively answer, what proportion of the space within the walls of Babylon

* In a Memoir on some points of Ancient Geography, and a Dissertation on the Ancient Stadium, by M. de la Nauze, the author says, "On objecte qu' Herodote donne à Babylone quatre cents quatre vingts stades de circuit (Herodote, chap. i. p. 178,) ce qui seroit, ajoute-t-on, prodigieux et incroyable, si l'on ne reduisoit le stade à une courte mesure:-comme si Babylone avoit été une ville ordinaire; comme si Aristote n'assuroit pas que le titre de ville ne lui convenoit pas plus qu'il conviendroit au Peloponèsse, en cas qu'on l'entourat de murailles; comme si Diodore n'avertissoit pas que Babylone renfermait de terres labourables, et d'autres lieux inhabités; comme si l'enceinte de Nanquin à la Chine n'egaloit pas, à peu près, aujourd'hui, non compris même l'immensité des fauxbourgs, ce que les stades d'Herodote, pris pour des stades de dix au mille, donnent à l'enceinte de Babylone.—Quant à la hauteur et à la largeur de mur de la ville, qui faisoit alors toute la sureté d'un empire, en mettant l'ennemi dans l'impossibilité de le franchir; ces murs de Babylone auroient-ils été une des sept merveilles, s'ils n'eussent pas offert le spectacle le plus extraordinaire et le plus frappant? Ainsi les dimensions d'une telle ville, étant données comme étonnantes par ceux-là même qui en étoient les témoins oculaires, s'accordent beaucoup mieux avec un stade de soixante seize toises qu'avec un stade beaucoup plus court."-Memoires de l'Academie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, tome xxvi. p. 369.