remains of the profane historians who treat of his time such as naturally to supply the deficiency. Of the account which Berosus gave of him, we possess but one considerable fragment; of Abydenus, we have two shorter ones; the remaining writers furnish only a few sentences or a few lines. It is unfortunate that this should be so; but so it is. Had the "Babylonian History" of Berosus come down to us complete, or had kind faith permitted that Antimenides, the brother of Alcæus, should have written, and time have spared a record of his Babylonian experiences, the slighter details and more delicate shades of the monarch's character might have been laid open to us. At present we have to content ourselves with treating the broader features and more salient points of a character that was not without many minor tones and some curious complications.

CHAPTER VI.

FURTHER NOTICES OF BABYLON IN DANIEL.

"The king spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty ?"-DAN. iv. 30.

WHEN we think of the enormous size of Babylon, according to the most trustworthy accounts, it seems a most audacious boast on the part of any one man, that he had built the whole of it. According to Herodotus,' who represents himself as having visited the city about B. C. 450, the walls formed a circuit of 480 stades, or fifty-five miles, enclosing a square space, which was, 120 stades, or nearly fourteen miles each way. Strabo reduced the circuit to 385 stades, Quintus Curtius to 368,3 Clitarchus to 365, and Ctesias to 360.5 If we accept the smallest of these estimates, it will give us a square of above ten miles each way, and consequently an area of above a hundred square miles. This is a space four times as great as that of Paris within the enceinte, and fully double that of London within the bills of mortality.

1 Herod., i. 178.

2 Strab., xvi.

Vit. Alex. Magn., v. 1.

Ap. Diod. Sic., ii. 7, 8 3.

1, 8 5. 5 Ibid.

The royal quarter, or palatial enclosure, of Nebuchadnezzar's time, comprised three, or according to some,' four principal buildings. These were the old palace, the new palace, the hanging gardens, and (if we allow it to have been a sort of adjunct to the palace) the great temple of Bel-Merodach. It was also guarded by a wall, which Herodotus declares to have been "very little inferior in strength" to the outer wall of the city;2 and it contained further a vast artificial reservoir. Some account must be given of these various buildings and constructions. before we can appreciate fully Nebuchadnezzar's greatness as a builder.

The" old palace" seems to be represented by the modern "mound of Amram." This is a huge mass of ruins, almost triangular in its present shape, occupying the more southern portion of the ancient "royal city." It is about a thousand yards along its southwestern or principal side, which faced the river, and has perhaps been washed into its present receding line by water action. The northern face of the mound measures about seven hundred yards, and the eastern about eight hundred, the triangle being thus scalene, with its shortest side facing northwards. The mound is deeply furrowed with ravines, worn by the rains in

4

1 Oppert, "Expédition Scientifique en Mésopotamie,” vol. i., Plan of Babylon.

2 Herod., i. 181.

3 See the "Standard Inscription of Nebuchadnezzar" in the author's "Herodotus," vol. ii., p. 587.

* See the author's "Ancient Monarchies," vol. ii., pp. 525, 526.

the friable soil; its elevation above the level of the plain is nowhere very considerable, but amounts in places to about fifty or sixty feet.1 Excavators have driven galleries into it in various directions, but have found little to reward their labours; no walls or distinct traces of buildings of any kind have presented themselves. A few bricks, belonging to early kings of Babylon, are all that it has yielded,—enough, perhaps, to confirm the conjecture that it represents the site of the "old palace," but otherwise uninteresting. The huge mass seems to be, in reality, less a palace than a palace mound-the basis or substratum on which once stood a royal edifice, which has now wholly disappeared. It was no doubt purely artificial; but whether originally constructed of unbaked bricks, or merely of the natural soil of the country, may be doubted. At present it consists wholly of a soft and friable mould, interspersed with a few fragments of bricks. The mound covers a space of about thirtyseven acres.2

If the "mound of Amram" represents the "old palace" of the Babylonian kings, the "new palace," which adjoined it,3 can scarcely fail to be correctly identified with the "great mound" which immediately succeeds the Amram mound towards the north, and, according to some writers, is connected with it by a broad causeway. The name Kasr, or "palace," still

1 Rich, "Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon," p. 61. Oppert, "Expédition Scientifique," vol. i., p. 157. Berosus, ap. Joseph., "Ant. Jud.” x. II, ¿ I.

4 Rich, p. 62.

attaches to this mass of ruins. The "Kasr mound” is an oblong square, about seven hundred yards long by six hundred broad, with the sides facing the cardinal points. Like the Amram hill, it is wholly of artificial origin, but is composed of somewhat better material, as loose bricks, tiles, and fragments of stone. It contains at least one subterranean passage, which is seven feet high, floored and walled with baked bricks, and roofed over with great blocks of sandstone, which reach from side to side. This passage may have been either a secret exit or a gigantic drain-more probably the latter. On the summit of the mound (which is seventy feet above the level of the plain), not very far from the centre, are the remains of the palace proper, from which the mound is named. This is a building of excellent brick masonry, in a wonderful state of preservation, consisting of walls, piers, and buttresses, and in places ornamented with pilasters, but of too fragmentary a character to furnish the modern inquirer with any clue to the original plan of the edifice. Probably it did not greatly differ from the palaces of the Assyrian monarchs at Nimrud, Koyunjik, and Khorsabad, consisting, like them, of a series of courts, great halls, galleries, and smaller apartments, ornamented throughout with sculptured or painted figures, and with inscriptions in places. Fragments of the ornamentation have been found. One of these is a portion of a slab of stone, representing a frieze, where the abacus was supported by a series of figures of 1 "Ancient Monarchies," vol. ii., p. 524.