Part 21 (1/2)

Froha (the father of Azeez), I received every help Like most towns in this part of Turkey, it is peopled by Arabs, once belonging to different tribes, but now forgetting their clanshi+ps in a sedentary life They maintain, however, a friendly intercourse with the Bedouins and with the wild inhabitants of theoff their obedience to the Sultan, and frequentlyfor some time their independence

At the ti the result of the expedition of Abde Pasha against the rebellious tribes Their allegiance to the Turkish governor and the consequent payment of taxes depended upon its success If the Pasha were beaten they would declare openly in favor of the Arabs, hom, it was suspected, they were already in coht of the town, and the Kazail (the tribe that dwell in theates I was consequently unable to do more than visit the celebrated ruin of the Birs Nimroud To excavate in it in the then disturbed state of the country was iht or nine thousand inhabitants The Euphrates flows through the town, and is about two hundred yards wide and fifteen feet deep; a noble streaation The houses, chiefly built of bricks taken from the ruins of ancient Babylon, are small and mean Around the town, and above and below it for so a broad belt on both sides of the river In the plain beyond them a few canals bear water to plots cultivated heat, barley and rice

Ast the inhabitants of Hillah hoayl, a very worthy, hospitable fellow He lived in Hillah, where his house, open to every traveller, was a place offor the Arabs of the Desert from Nejd to the Sinjar To keep up this unbounded hospitality he had a date grove and a few sheep, and cultivated a little land outside the walls of the town He was thus supplied with nearly all that was necessary for an Arab entertainment[195] He usually accouide With one Ali, also a chief of the Agayl, a h somewhat of a buffoon, and with other Sheikhs, he usually spent the evening with ions and tribes, until the night was far spent

Having thus established relations with the principal inhabitants of the toho could assist or interrupt me, as they ell or ill disposed, I could venture to commence excavations in the most i the palm trees on the eastern banks of the Euphrates above Hillah, are a few ha to Arabs, who till the soil From them I was able to procure workmen, and thus to make up, with the addition of my Jebours, several parties of excavators They were placed under the superintendence of Latiff Agha and an intelligent Chaldaean Christian of Baghdad, who had entered my service

[Illustration: Plan of Part of the Ruins of Babylon on the Eastern Bank of the Euphrates]

The ruins of Babylon have been frequently described[196], so that I shall here only give a general sketch of the into accurate details ofplan, which will enable him to understand the position of the principal hdad to Hillah crosses, near the village of Mohawill, a wide and deep canal still carrying water to distant gardens On the southern bank of this artificial streaenerally believed to be the most northern remains of the ancient city of Babylon Froh which winds the Euphrates, with its dark belt of evergreen pal objects, is the one square mound, in form and size more like a natural hill than the work of reat ruin to the east of the river, and the Arab, as I have said, na this ruin, still about foura the e the heaps of drifted earth which cover the walls and foundations of buildings Some have here traced the lines of the streets, and the divisions between the inhabited quarters of ancient Babylon As yet no traces whatever have been discovered of that great wall of earth rising, according to Herodotus, to the height of 200 royal cubits, and no less than fifty cubits broad; nor of the ditch that encompassed it The radually lost in the vast plains to the eastward

But southward of Babel, for the distance of nearly three miles, there is almost an uninterrupted line of ether as in the heart of a great city They are inclosed by earthen ra the foot of Babel, stretched inland about two miles and a half fro nearly at right angles completed the defences on the southern side of the principal buildings that mark the site of Babylon, on the eastern bank of the river Between its most southern point and Hillah, as between Mohawill and Babel, can only be traced low heaps and eularly over the plain

It is evident that the space inclosed within this continuous rahty city, whose nificence and extent were the wonder of the ancient world The walls of Babylon, according to Herodotus, measured 120 stadia on each side, and formed a perfect square of 480 stadia, or nearly sixty miles Several later writers have repeated his statement Strabo and Diodorus Siculus have however reduced the circuit of the city to 385 and 360 stadia; and such, according to clitarchus, were its di reree as little in form as in size with the descriptions of Babylon; for the city was a perfect square Mr

Rich, in order to explain these difficulties, was the first to suggest that the vast ruin to the west of the Euphrates, called the Birs Nimroud, should be included within the li a square large enough to include the smaller mounds scattered over the plains from Mohawill to below Hillah on one side of the river, and the Birs Nile on the other, the site of a city of the diht be satisfactorily determined But then it must be assumed, that neither the outer wall nor the ditch soto the united testimony of ancient authors, the city was divided by the Euphrates into two parts The principal existing ruins are to the east side of the river; there are very few remains to the west, between Hillah and the Birs Nimroud Indeed, in soht, to a certain extent, be explained in the following e its course and to lose itself in marshes _to the west_ of its actual bed We find that the low country on that side was subject to continual inundations fro to a tradition, Semiraes in its course to which the Euphrates was thus liable, appear only to have taken place _to the west_ of its present bed After the most careful examination of the country, I could find no traces whatever of its having at any tih during unusual floods it occasionally spreads over the plain on that side The greaton the eastern bank prove this

Supposing, therefore, the river fro many centuries, between the Hindiyah marshes and its present channel, it will easily be understood how the ruins, which radually been washed away, and how the existing flat alluvial plain has taken their place In this manner the complete disappearance of the principal part of the western division of the city may, I think, be accounted for

It is more difficult to explain the total absence of all traces of the external wall and ditch so fully and minutely described by Herodotus and other ancient writers, and, according to their concurrent accounts, of such enorates, and equidistant towers, all of stupendous height and thickness, did once exist, it is scarcely to be believed that no part whatever of it should now remain Darius and other conquerors, it is true, are said to have pulled down and destroyed these defences; but it is surely impossible that any human labor could have obliterated their very traces Even supposing that the ruins around Hillah do not represent the site of ancient Babylon, there are no rereat ramparts If there had been, they could not have escaped the researches of modern travellers

But Herodotus states that, in the midst of each division of the city, there was a circular space surrounded by a lofty wall: one contained the royal palace; the other, the te that the mounds within the earthen raht represent the first of these fortified inclosures, which we know to have been on that side of the Euphrates It is not iested, that the Birs Nimroud--around which--as it will be seen--there are still the traces of a regular wall, es in the course of the river just described, may have completely destroyed all traces of it

It may be inferred, I think, from the descriptions of Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, that Babylon was built on the saotten, also, that the outer walls of Nineveh as well as those of Babylon have entirely disappeared Are we to suppose that the historians in their descriptions confounded the the temples and palaces; and that these exterior fortifications were mere ramparts of mud and brushwood, such as are still raised round lected, would soon fall to dust, and leave no traces behind I confess that I can see no other way of accounting for the entire disappearance of these exterior walls[197]

I will now describe the results of st the ruins near Hillah Parties of workmen were placed at once on the two most important mounds, the Babel of the Arabs (the Mujelibe of Rich) and the Mujelibe (the Kasr of the same traveller) I was co in the Birs Nireat pile of masonry is about six e of the vast marsh, formed by the waters of the Hindiyah canal, and by the periodical floods of the Euphrates The plain between it and the town is, in tiated by a canal derived froe of Anana

Shortly after my arrival at Hillah I visited the Birs Niayls This was unfortunately the only opportunity I had of exa my residence in Babylonia[198] The country became daily more disturbed, and no Arabs could be induced to pitch their tents near the mounds, or to work there

The Birs Nimroud, ”the palace of Nimrod” of the Arabs, and ”the prison of Nebuchadnezzar” of the Jews; by old travellers believed to be the very ruins of the tower of Babel; by soain, supposed to represent the temple of Belus, the wonder of the ancient world; and, by others, to hplace of the Chaldean worshi+p, is a vast heap of bricks, slag, and broken pottery The dry nitrous earth of the parched plain, driven before the furious south wind, has thrown over the hugecan find nourishrass-clothed mounds of the more fertile districts of assyria, the Birs Niht of 198 feet, and has on its suh by 28 broad,[199] the whole being thus 235 in perpendicular height Neither the original form or object of the edifice, of which it is the ruin, have hitherto been deter, and its shape is not that of the remains of a tower It is pierced by square holes, apparently h the co ments torn from the pile itself The calcined and vitreous surface of the bricks fused into rock-like hting; and, as the ruin is rent almost from top to bottom, early Christian travellers, as well as sonise in the to tradition, arrested by fire from heaven the impious attempt of the first descendants of Noah Even the Jews, as it would appear, from Benjamin of Tudela, at one time identified the Birs Nimroud with the Tower of Babel

Whatever inal edifice, of which the Birs Nimroud is the ruin, or whoever its founder, it is certain that as yet no remains have been discovered there more ancient than of the time of Nebuchadnezzar Every inscribed brick taken from it--and there are thousands and tens of thousands--bear the na It must, however, be remembered, that this fact is no proof that he actually founded the building He may have h it would appear by the inscriptions froinally raised by a king who lived long before him whose nament has been found of the time of that earlier monarch Such is the case in other assyrian ruins It is, therefore, not impossible that at some future time more ancient remains may be discovered at the Birs

I will now describe the ruins It must be first observed, that they are divided into two distinct parts, undoubtedly the res A rampart or wall, the remains of which are marked by mounds of earth, appears to have inclosed both of theh mound, topped by the tower-like pile of er but lower, and in shape more like the ruins on the eastern bank of the Euphrates It is traversed by ravines and water-courses, and strewed over it are the usual fragments of stone, brick, and pottery Upon its summit are two small Mohammedan chapels, one of which, the Arabs declare, is built over the spot where Nimroud cast the patriarch Abraha to the co been able to excavate in this mound, I could not ascertain whether it covers the re

Travellers, as far as I a any satisfactory restoration of the Birs It is generally represented, without sufficient accuracy, as a mere shapelessmound, its outline would at once strike any one acquainted with the ruins to the west of Mosul, described in a former of this work[200] The sinised, and it will be seen that they are all the remains of edifices built upon very nearly, if not precisely, the same plan The best published representations of the Birs Nimroud appear to me to be those contained in atraveller, the late Mr Rich

The mound rises abruptly from the plain on one face, the western, and falls to its level by a series of gradations on the opposite Such is precisely the case with the ruins of Mokhamour, Abou-Khameera, and Tel Ermah The brickwork still visible in the lower parts of the mound, as well as in the upper, shows the sides of several distinct stages or terraces I believe the isolated hest terraces, if not the highest, and the whole edifice to have consisted, on the eastern or south-eastern side, of a series of stages rising one above the other, and, on the western or north-western, of one solid perpendicular wall The back of the buildingto Diodorus Siculus,[201] were the palaces of Babylon, with hunting or sacred scenes, and may have been decorated with cornices or other architectural ornaments There were no means of ascent to it Nor was it accessible in any part unless narrow galleries were carried round it at different elevations

It is probable that the ascents frohts of steps, or of inclined ways, carried up the centre of each stage Such we e, froreat buildings at Babylon The ascents to the different terraces of the hanging gardens, he says, were like the gradines of a theatre[202] There are certainly traces of them in the mounds in the Desert west of Mosul, if not in the Birs Nimroud Herodotus states that the temple of Belus at Babylon consisted of a series of towers His description is not very clear, but it may be inferred that the various parts of the structure were nearly square The base was undoubtedly so, and so also enerally represented as round There is nothing in the word used by Herodotus ([Greek: purgos]) to show that they were circular, and that they were solid masses of masonry appears 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 tehly probable one unifor was adopted in the East, for sacred purposes, and that these ascending and receding platforeneral type of the Chaldaean and assyrian temples