CHAPTER XVIII

BABYLON

_A labyrinth of ruins, Babylon_

_Spreads o’er the blasted plain;_

_The wandering Arab never sets his tent_

_Within her walls; the shepherd eyes afar_

_Her evil towers, and devious drives his flock._

_Alone unchanged, a free and bridgeless tide,_

_Euphrates rolls along,_

_Eternal nature’s work._

SOUTHEY.

Hillah was founded by the Arabs in the eleventh century of our era and

is said by some to occupy the southern part of the site of ancient

Babylon. Aside from its interesting legends and traditions--many

of them connected with the Tower of Babel and the famed capital of

Nebuchadnezzar--its chief attraction for us was the number and beauty

of its date palms. Some of them were, doubtless, descendants of those

noble trees which once graced the gardens and orchards of Babylon in

the meridian of her splendor and which supplied her people with an

important part of their nutriment. And, if Delitzsch’s theory regarding

the site of the Garden of Eden be true, it is reasonable to suppose

that some of the stately palms that now adorn the gardens of Hillah are

scions of trees that once raised their graceful fronds high above the

humbler plants and shrubs of the Terrestrial Paradise.

Nowhere in the world, not even in the valley of the Nile or in the

fertile oases of Algeria, will one find such magnificent groves of date

palms as one sees along the lower course of the Euphrates. On the west

bank of the Shat-el-Arab, in the humid district of Pasra, there are

more than sixty varieties of date palms while the number of trees is

estimated to run into hundreds of millions. It is, indeed, from this

region that are exported most of the dates of commerce.

But these nourishing and delicately flavored fruits are not a modern

staple of commerce. Way back in early Babylonian times “dates of

Akkad,” as they are called in cuneiform invoices of the period, were

exported in exchange for gold, sheep, and oxen. With corn and flocks

and herds they were among the principal sources of the country’s

wealth. The early Babylonian kings specially encouraged the development

of date plantations and it is related of a certain governor that he

considered the planting of palms as among the most notable achievements

of his administration.

And there was reason for attaching so much importance to the

cultivation of the palm, because it is not only “the prince of the

vegetable world,” as Humboldt declared, but also the most useful of

all known trees. For it not only supplies the oriental with one of his

chief articles of diet but also furnishes him with bread and wine, meal

and vinegar, sugar and fuel, matting and cordage, cages and baskets,

chairs, benches, beds, and other articles of household furniture and

material for the construction of the house in which he lives. So

manifold, indeed, are the uses of the date palm that Strabo informs us

that a Persian poem enumerates no fewer than three hundred and sixty

valuable properties of the palm.

We have seen how dependent the oriental is on the horse and the camel,

especially the latter. But the date palm is no less essential to his

well-being than the camel. What an incomparable blessing it is in his

eyes is evinced by an eastern saying: “The palm is the camel and the

camel the palm of the desert.” And so highly does he revere it as a

gift of God that he would regard the wanton injury of the palm tree as

nothing less than a mortal sin.

“Honor the palm,” enjoins Mohammed, “for it is your maternal aunt;

on the stony soil of the desert it offers you a fruitful source of

sustenance.” And it is to be noted that this noble tree has followed

Islam in all its conquests and is now to be found in every clime which

is favorable to its growth in which the followers of the Prophet have

made their homes. But the high estimation in which this useful tree

is universally held in the East is shown by an Arabian legend which

declares that it was from the slime that surrounded a date palm that

God formed the first man.

It is not, then, surprising that a tree that plays so important a

rôle in the life of the oriental should never be long absent from his

thoughts, especially when away from the land of his fathers. For, as

the Swiss when abroad longs for his native mountains, so does the Arab

pine for the stately palms whose feathery and umbrageous crowns are to

him synonyms of home and sweet repose.

Abd-er-Rahman I, the founder of the Ommiad Caliphate of Cordova, was

unable to endure in Spain the absence of the beautiful tree which

had been the delight of his youth. He, accordingly, had a young palm

brought from Syria and planted in the garden of his villa at Rusafah.

It was to this tree, the lovely reminder of his native land, that the

homesick Caliph addressed these pathetic verses:

_Oh, Palm, like me a stranger here,_

_An exile in the alien west,_

_Driven from home and dispossessed--_

_But, ah! thou’rt mute, nor canst thou shed a tear._

_Happy to have no sentient soul!_

_Heart-ache like mine thou canst not know;_

_Could’st thou but feel, thy tears would flow_

_In yearning love and grief, without control._

_Aye, homesick tears for eastern groves_

_That shade Euphrates; but the tree_

_Forgets; and I, compelled to flee_

_By hate, almost forget my former loves._

When one reads these impassioned verses, one recalls the touching

lines of the poet Juvenal who, in his exile in Dyene, wrote:

_Mollissima corda_

_Humano generi dare se Natura fatetur_

_Quæ lacrymas dedit; hæc nostri pars optima sensus._[488]

The words of the exiled Roman seem almost a commentary on those of the

homesick Arab.

As we were leaving Hillah for the ruins of Babylon, our attention

was arrested by a group of happy, laughter-loving children. Having

always been specially interested in the children of the Near East,

particularly in those of Anatolia and Mesopotamia, we stopped to learn

the cause of their mirth. We found them intently engaged in various

games which seemed to afford them the keenest delight. But what was our

surprise to find that the favorite games of these sunburnt children in

the immediate vicinity of the ruins of Babylon were just the same as

the games that are so popular among the boys and girls of America. And

stranger still, many of them were quite the same as I had frequently

seen played by Indian children on the plateau of the Andes and in

the wilds of Brazil. The boys played ball and marbles and leap-frog,

while the girls were equally preoccupied with tag, cat’s cradle, and

hopscotch.

It would be interesting to know if there was any Babylonian blood

in these Hillah children--they seemed to be pure Arabs--and if the

games which afforded them such exquisite pleasure were in vogue among

the young folk of Babylon in the days of Paltasar and Hammurabi. I

commend these subjects to those ardent folklorists who love to trace

the nursery tales which so delight the child of to-day back to times

primeval.[489]

Our first objective, after leaving Hillah, was the mound of Babil which

lies in the northern part of the ruins of Babylon. Most of the land

between Hillah and the ruins of the ancient world capital is desolate

in the extreme. Not a single human habitation is visible. And yet we

were traversing what was during thousands of years the richest and most

carefully cultivated tract of land in the world and the one, too, that

had the densest population. Now it is untilled and as abandoned as the

Arabian desert but a few miles to the westward. The only evidence that

we were actually on the site of a once great city were the fragments of

pottery and inscribed bricks and the heaps of rubbish which cumbered

the ground and the innumerable mounds, high and low, which covered a

region many square miles in area.

We saw nothing to remind us of the majestic ruins of Pæstum or

Girgenti; no magnificent temples, no stately columns, or impressive

pediments or friezes or entablatures. In the mounds which have not yet

been changed by the pick and spade of the explorer we could note only

occasional traces of brick walls but not the slightest vestige of stone

or marble. No remains of temples or palaces or buildings of any kind.

All the marvelous structures described by Ctesias and Herodotus had

long since disappeared beneath the drifting sands of the desert.

As one contemplates these mounds, beneath which lay the ruined palaces

and temples and strongholds of the proud Kings of Chaldea, they have,

in the words of the illustrious German explorer, Dr. Robert Koldewey,

“the appearance of a mountainous country in miniature; heights,

summits, ravines and tablelands are all here.”[490] The landscape is,

indeed, such as one might fancy to exist on the planetoid Ceres or

Vesta.

We asked an Arab who accompanied us how the potsherds and fragments

of vitrified bricks which littered the ground were brought here and

he promptly replied--“By the Deluge.” “A foolish answer,” one will

say, but it is the same answer that was given by learned men only a

few generations ago to account for the occurrence of fossils on the

summit of the Alps. And it is the same explanation that was given by

the distinguished geologist, Buckland, of the remains of early man,

which were found in many of the caverns of Europe. They were _reliquæ

Diluvianæ_--relics of the Noachian Deluge--and the majority of the

scientific men of his day were disposed to accept his conclusion as

correct. It is, then, not so long ago that savants gave answers to

questions that were quite as naïve as that of the untutored Arab of

to-day.

But the Arabs who live in the neighborhood of Babylon tell more

fantastic stories. They assure one that the ruins are haunted by evil

spirits and by malignant jinn and that it is dangerous to wander among

the ruins after nightfall.

They also declare that there is at the foot of one of the mounds here

a rocky pit, although quite invisible to mortals, in which the wicked

angels Harut and Marut were condemned by the Almighty to be suspended,

in punishment for their sins, until the day of judgment.[491]

But more remarkable is their belief in the existence hereabouts of

satyrs--creatures which are usually supposed to be creations of the

mythologies of Greece and Rome. The natives are said to hunt them with

dogs and to eat their lower half, although they decline to partake of

the upper part on account of its resemblance to the human species.

As one contemplates the utter ruin and desolation which are here so

overpowering and listens to the strange stories of the Arabs, one

recalls the words of Isaiah--I quote from the King James version:

And Babylon, the glory of the kingdoms, the beauty of the

Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and

Gomorrah.

It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from

generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent

there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses

shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there,

and satyrs[492] shall dance there.

Babil is one of the loftiest eminences in southern Babylonia and it is

for this reason that we visited it before any of the other parts of the

ruined Chaldean capital. From its summit, which towers seventy-one feet

above the surrounding plain, one has a magnificent view not only of the

ruins as a whole but also of many notable features in their immediate

vicinity. To the west and southwest are the palm-fringed Euphrates and

a number of Arabian villages and gardens along its banks. Several miles

southward is Hillah with its gleaming minaret, while some six miles

towards the southwest of it is the famous tower of Borsippa, called by

the natives Birs Nimrud, and long supposed by many European travelers

to be identical with the tower of Babel “the top whereof was to reach

to heaven.”[493]

The prospect that greets the vision of the spectator from Babil is

always interesting, but to the student of sacred and profane history

the word _interesting_ but feebly expresses one’s emotions. This

is particularly true when, at the hour of sunset, the long amethystine

shadows cast on the dun-colored plain, bring out into bold relief

the rich golden lines of the spell-weaving ruins of that great city

which, in her glory, ruled over the kings of the eastern world. Then

the prospect is absolutely thrilling. Then one loves to be _in media

solitudine_--such a solitude as Babylon is to-day--to watch the

magnificent sunset--a burnished-gold splendor shading up starward into

delicate rubies and emeralds--to be alone with one’s thoughts while

musing on the vanished glories of what was once earth’s proudest and

most powerful capital, where for centuries

_The gorgeous East with richest hand_

_Show’red on her Kings barbaric pearl and gold_--

but of which all we can now say is contained in the words of a Greek

comic poet, quoted by Strabo,--“the great city is a great desert.”[494]

Babil--from the old Semitic name Bab-ili--which signifies “The Gate of

the Gods,” was the ancient name of the city of Babylon. As locally used

it now designates the most northerly mound of the great city. It is,

doubtless, because of its name that many travelers have mistaken it for

the Tower of Babel spoken of in the eleventh chapter of Genesis.

Thus John Eldred, an English merchant-traveler, who, in the sixteenth

century, made three journeys from Aleppo to Bagdad--which he calls New

Babylon--speaks of seeing not only “at his goode leisure many olde

ruines of the mightie citie of Babylon” but also of having “sundry

times” visited “the olde tower of Babell.”[495] From his description,

however, one would infer that the ruin which he took for the tower of

Babel, was not the Babil of which we have been speaking but rather

the imposing ruin of Akerkuf which is a few miles to the northwest of

Bagdad, and which is locally called Nimrod’s Tower.[496]

The first European to give an elaborate description of Babil was Pietro

della Valle.

Its situation and form [he writes] correspond with that pyramid

which Strabo calls the Tower of Belus.... The height of this

mountain of ruins is not in every part equal, but exceeds the

highest palace of Naples. It is a misshapen mass, where there is

no appearance of regularity. In some places it rises in sharp

points, craggy and inaccessible; in others it is smoother and

of easier ascent. There are also traces of torrents, caused by

violent rains, from the summit to the base.[497]

The picture of this mound, which he had made by an artist who

accompanied him, gives one a very good idea of what has been considered

by many to be the Tower of Babel but which, after the noble Roman’s

visit to it, was long known as Della Valle’s Ruin.[498]

But the excavations of the “Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft” under the

direction of Dr. Koldewey have completely exploded all the theories

that have hitherto obtained regarding the mound of Babil. Far from

being the Tower of Babel, or Nimroud or Belus, as has been asserted

by many writers and travelers, it is now demonstrated to be the ruin

of one of the numerous palaces of Nebuchadnezzar. And it is highly

probable that it is the structure to which this monarch refers in one

of his inscriptions, in which he declares:

On the brick wall towards the north my heart inspired me to

build a palace for the protection of Babylon.... I raised

its summit ... with bricks and bitumen. I made it high as a

mountain. Mighty cedar trunks I laid on it for roof. Double

doors of cedar wood overlaid with copper, threshholds and hinges

made of bronze did I set up in its doorways. That building I

named “May Nebuchadnezzar live, may he grow old as the restorer

of Esagila.”[499]

There were, however, other ruins that have at various times been

identified with the Tower of Babel. Among these, as has been stated,

was that of Borsippa, commonly called Birs-Nimrud, which lies some

six miles southwest of Hillah. Benjamin of Tudela, who visited these

parts in the twelfth century, speaks of it as “the tower built by the

dispersed generation” and declares that it was struck by a heavenly

fire which “split it to the very foundation”[500]--a description that

is quite applicable to its present appearance.

The distinguished explorers Carsten Niebuhr, Claudius Rich, and Robert

Ker Porter were also of the opinion that in Birs-Nimrud “we see the

very tower of Babel, the stupendous artificial mountain erected by

Nimrod in the plain of Shinar and on which in after ages Nebuchadnezzar

raised the temple of Belus.”[501]

That the tower of Babel and that of Belus [writes Porter, in

the work just quoted from] were one and the same, I presume

there hardly exists a doubt. And that the first stupendous work

was suddenly arrested before completion we learn not only from

the Holy Scriptures but from several other ancient authors in

direct terms ... and almost every testimony agrees in stating

that the primeval tower was not only stopped in its progress but

partially overturned by the Divine wrath, attended by thunder

and lightning and a mighty wind, and that the rebellious men who

were its builders fled in horror and confusion of face before

the preternatural storm.... In this ruined and abandoned state

most likely the tower remained till Babylon was refounded by

Semiramis; who, in harmony with her character, would feel a

proud triumph in repeopling the city with a colony from the

posterity of those who had fled from it in dismay and, covering

the shattered summit of the great pile with some new erection,

would there place her observatory and altar to Bel.[502]

But the tradition which identifies the tower of Birs-Nimrud with

that of Babel, which is often spoken of as “the oldest building in

the world,” rests on no better foundation than does that which would

make Babil the tower whose progress was arrested by “the confusion of

tongues.” The researches of Assyriologists, which have thrown such a

flood of light on many Scriptural subjects, have so far been unable to

identify the Tower of Babel, or to indicate where the famous structure

was located. Neither the renown of the tower of Babil nor that of

Borsippa proves that either of them was the famous tower begun by the

ambitious descendants of Noah in the plain of Shinar, for the populace,

especially in the East, “is fickle-minded in this as in other matters

and holy fanes have the periods when they are in the fashion, just like

everything else.”[503]

Incredible as it may seem, as much ignorance long prevailed among the

learned of Europe respecting the site of the city of Babylon as about

that of the tower which was generally supposed to be located either

within its walls or in its immediate neighborhood. Writing about the

famed capital of Nebuchadnezzar at the beginning of the last century,

a learned English scholar declared, “Well indeed may the glory of this

renowned place be said to have departed when even its site cannot

with precision be ascertained and when the antiquary and the traveler

are alike bewildered amid the perplexity of their researches.”[504]

The same author expresses the same opinion in different words when he

writes of Babylon, called Babel by the Arabs, that “its vast remains

lay for ages in the depths of time as much forgotten by the learned of

Europe as if it had been a city of the antediluvians.”[505] Even the

Turkish geographer, Djihannuma, was so in the dark about the location

of the ruins of Babylon that he placed them at Teluja, nearly eighty

miles northwest of their actual site.

How great was the ignorance of Europeans during the Middle Ages

regarding the capital of the ancient world may be gathered from a

statement of Sir John Mandeville, who tells his readers that “Babylone

is in the grete desertes of Arabye, upon the waye as men gon toward the

kyndome of Caldee. But it is fulle longe sithe ony man durste neyhe

to the toure, for it is alle deserte and full of dragons and grete

serpentes and fulle deverse veneymouse bestes alle abouten.”

Even in the second part of the last century the distinguished

Orientalist, Oppert, head of the French expedition to Mesopotamia in

the years 1851 to 1854,[506] was entirely in error as to the site of

Babylon. Influenced, no doubt, by the accounts of Herodotus, Diodorus

Siculus, and other classical writers regarding the vast extent of

Babylon, he made it to embrace both Babil and Birs-Nimrud, which are

full fifteen miles apart from each other, and to include an area that

the researches of the “Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft” have demonstrated

to be preposterously large.[507]

But, in order fully to realize how greatly the size of Babylon was

exaggerated by the ancient writers and to understand how this capital

of thousands of years was able, throughout the ages, to cast so great a

spell upon the peoples of the earth, one must briefly consider some of

their statements respecting its vastness and magnificence. Only in this

way is it possible to appreciate the glamour that has so long attached

to it and to discover the reasons for the countless legends and

romances to which it has given rise since the days of Nebuchadnezzar

and Semiramis.

Of the ancient writers who have given us the most minute descriptions

of Babylon, Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus are the most deserving of

notice. As Herodotus spent some time in the city and was an eye-witness

of what he describes he is, notwithstanding the charges of credulity

and exaggeration which have frequently been made against him in certain

of his statements, more trustworthy than are those authors who wrote

only from hearsay.

What most impressed the writers of antiquity who have given us the most

graphic descriptions of the Babylonian capital was its stupendous walls

and the vast area which the city embraced. According to Herodotus, who

is followed by Pliny, who evidently accepted the measurements of the

Greek historian, the wall which girdled this wonderful metropolis was

seventy-five feet in thickness and three hundred feet in height.

On the top, along the edges of this wall were constructed

buildings of a single chamber facing one another, leaving

between them room for a four-horse chariot to drive round. In

the circuit of the wall are a hundred gates, all of brass, with

brazen lintels and side-posts.[508]

Such a prodigious wall seems impossible, but when we remember the

Great Wall of China, which has nearly thirty times the length of that

which Herodotus says surrounded Babylon, we cannot insist that the

historian’s account is inherently improbable. But when we know that the

Babylonian wall was composed almost exclusively of sun-dried bricks

we feel compelled to doubt the writer’s measurements for the simple

reason that it was quite impossible for the material used to support

a structure of so great a height. It is true that Nebuchadnezzar,

in a notable inscription, describes his wall as “mountains high,”

but this is a bit of hyperbole in which the self-glorifying monarch

was wont frequently to indulge. His statement is quite as much of an

exaggeration as that of Diodorus Siculus,[509] who declares that

Semiramis, to whom he attributes this colossal work, employed two

million men in building the wall of Babylon and that she built it at

the rate of a furlong a day and had it completed in the space of a

single year.

The circumference of the immense wall of Babylon, according

to Herodotus, measured no less than four hundred and eighty

statia--somewhat more than fifty-three miles. Ctesias, however, makes

the circuit of the city but a trifle more than forty miles. In either

case the area enclosed by the wall was enormous and far greater than

that included within the extended walls of Paris or within those of

Nanking, which is the largest city site in China.

The city of Babylon [writes Herodotus] is an exact square, but

certain recent investigators maintain that it was in the form

of a rectangle twelve miles wide and fifteen miles long. But

whatever the form of the city, the estimates given of its area

by ancient authors have appeared to many modern scholars so

staggering that they have contended that it was an inclosed

district rather than a regular city, the streets which are said

to have led from gate to gate across the area being no more

than roads through cultivated land over which buildings were

distributed in groups and patches.[510]

Quintus Curtius asserts positively “that the enclosure contained

sufficient pasture and arable land to support the whole population

during a long siege.”[511]

If such was the case we should be forced to conclude that the

population of the city was out of all proportion to its size. The

English geographer, Rennell,[512] is disposed to allow to Babylon

during its most flourishing period a population of a million and a

quarter, but this is but a surmise, and all estimates of the number of

inhabitants in the great city are, at best, the merest conjectures.

For nearly twenty-five centuries the accounts of Ctesias, Strabo,

Herodotus, and the writers who accompanied Alexander the Great to the

East were our sole authorities respecting the size and the magnificence

of the great capital on the Euphrates. Since, however, the “Deutsche

Orient-Gesellschaft” have begun to publish the results of their

carefully conducted excavations we find that we must greatly modify

many of our views concerning the city about which there has been so

much legend and romance, and envisage it in the light of the cold,

scientific facts which have been submitted to us, as the results of

long research, by Dr. Koldewey and his scholarly associates. While many

of the descriptions of Herodotus and other early writers are found to

be accurate, it is now clear that many of their measurements require

very considerable revision. Thus, in lieu of the fifty-three miles

which Herodotus has given as the circuit of the city and the forty

miles at which Ctesias has estimated it, Dr. Koldewey finds that these

figures must be reduced to eleven miles. The learned investigator

noting that the circumference given by Ctesias approximates closely to

four times the correct measurement is lead to suspect that the Greek

writer “mistook the figures representing the whole circumference for

the measure of one side of the square.”[513]

The excavations of the “Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft” seem, therefore,

to prove conclusively that Babylon, far from covering an area so

large that both Paris and London could find place within it, side by

side, was in reality, as Delitzsch declares, no larger than Munich or

Dresden.[514]

But in spite of the great reduction that Koldewey found himself

compelled to make in the measurements of the classical writers he

does not hesitate to declare “that, in any case, the city, even in

circumference, was the greatest of any in the ancient East, Nineveh,

which in other respects rivalled Babylon, not excepted.” He also

pertinently observes that “it must always be remembered that an

ancient city was primarily a fortress of which the inhabited part

was surrounded and protected by the encircling girdle of the walls.

Our modern cities are of an entirely different character; they are

inhabited spaces open on all sides. A reasonable comparison can,

therefore, only be made between Babylon and other walled cities and,

when compared with them, Babylon takes the first place, as regards the

extent of its enclosed and inhabited area, not only for ancient but

also for modern times.”[515]

After spending some time on and round about the mound of Babil we

proceeded to explore the ruins in the southern part of the city. On our

way thither we strolled along the east bank of the Euphrates which, in

places, is fringed with stately palms whose feathery crowns are always

a delight to the eye. Indeed, the palm is so indispensable a feature

of an eastern landscape that no picture of a town or a river seems

complete without groves and clumps of this most picturesque of oriental

trees. I was glad to find so many of them bordering the Euphrates and

the western ruins of Babylon, as I had always imagined that they must

here, more than anywhere else, be an essential part of the environment.

But, although I was delighted to find so many of these noble trees,

it was not for them that I was then specially looking. I was seeking

rather a specimen of the weeping willow--the graceful _Salix

Babylonica_--which, in my mind, has always been associated with what

is the most pathetic threnody ever written in any language. I refer to

the plaintive elegy of the Children of Israel during their captivity

in Babylon. Seating myself under an umbrageous palm near a cluster of

delicate weeping willows, I said to myself: “This is the one place in

the world where one can best appreciate the overmastering sadness of

the homesick exiles when their captors asked them to sing the songs

of their native land.” And, taking my breviary from my pocket, I read

again and again what then seemed to me the most affecting lines ever

composed. Put yourself, in fancy, gentle reader, on the bank of the

Euphrates in sight of the ruined palace of Nebuchadnezzar and read

aloud the lamentation of the disconsolate Hebrews, as given in Psalm

137:

Upon the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept: when we

remembered Sion:

On the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our instruments.

For there they that led us into captivity required of us the

words of songs.

And they that carried us away said: Sing ye to us a hymn of the

songs of Sion.

How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten.

Let my tongue cleave to my jaws if I do not remember thee:

If I make not Jerusalem the beginning of my joy.

Is it possible to put in words a more soul-subduing “Home Sweet Home”

than this affecting _Super flumina Babylonis_ of the heart-broken

captives of Israel? But it is only when it is sung in its beautifully

rhythmic Hebrew that one can fully appreciate its depth of pathos and

exceeding beauty of expression.

Our walk from Babil southward was one of rare delight and interest. It

was through gardens and cultivated fields and attractive palm groves

which occupied the greater part of the narrow strip of fertile land

which separates the Euphrates from the great city of ruins. The methods

employed in tilling the soil here are the same as those used in the

days of the Jewish Captivity. There is the same primitive plow, the

same process of treading out and winnowing grain, the same methods of

irrigating the land as obtained when the prophets Daniel and Ezekiel

were here the teachers and the consolers of their exiled countrymen.

The width of the Euphrates varies according to the season. As the

rainfall in this subtropical land is rarely more than three inches a

year, the river is quite shallow, except when its bed is filled by the

annual flood from the mountains of Armenia. At Babylon it is rarely

more than four hundred feet wide; and during the dry season its surface

is considerably below its banks. For this reason the inhabitants from

the earliest times have, in order to irrigate their lands, had recourse

not only to canals but also to various devices for lifting water from a

lower to a higher level. Among these contrivances are the _dolab_

or chain pump, the _na’ura_ or water wheel, and the _djird_,

a huge leather bag, which, when filled with water is, by means of

a simple machine operated by an ox, lifted the desired height and

automatically emptied into the channel by which the field or garden is

irrigated. The strident notes of these various water elevators and the

accompanying songs of the native attendants are often the only sounds

that penetrate the solemn stillness which reigns amid the venerable

ruins that cover the ground from the mound of Babil on the north to the

village of Djumdjuma in the southern part of Babylon.

Herodotus tells us that in his time the Euphrates divided the city

into “two distinct portions.” But the present bed of the shifting

river is considerably to the westward of that which existed in his

day. As a result of this shifting, the western part of the city has

almost completely disappeared, for nothing of it now remains on the

right side of the present channel except slight vestiges of its once

massive walls. The same writer also tells us that the two halves of

the city were connected by a stone bridge which spanned the river near

the center of the metropolis. He attributes this feat of engineering

to Queen Nitocris, but, as there is no record of this queen, either

in Berosus or in the Babylonian inscriptions, it is probable that

Herodotus was misinformed about her existence, or that he had in

mind Queen Amuita, the Median wife of Nebuchadnezzar, who is said to

have suggested to her royal consort the construction of the famous

hanging gardens which were long ranked among the seven wonders of

the world. Diodorus,[516] however, will have it that the bridge was

due to Semiramis, to whom antiquity ascribes many other of Babylon’s

most notable works. But in spite of the determination of the ancient

historian to give the credit of this remarkable achievement to a woman,

and in spite of the denials of many modern writers that such a bridge

ever existed, or that its construction was even possible in the age in

which it is said to have been built, the “Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft”

in 1910 actually discovered incontestable remains of the much disputed

bridge and demonstrated that its construction was due not to Nitocris,

or Amuita, or Semiramis, but to the renowned Nebuchadnezzar or to his

father, Nabopolassar.

At the spot once occupied by the eastern bridgehead of this notable

structure we found ourselves on the famous Procession Street which

was long one of the most remarkable features of Babylon. This was the

street along which passed the great processions of Marduk-Merodach--the

tutelar deity of the Chaldean capital, and of Nabu-Nebe--his son. In

this respect it served the same purpose as the magnificent _Via

Sacra_, which extended from Athens to Eleusis and which was used

by the solemn Panathenaic procession which was annually held for the

celebration, in the great Elusinian temple, of the impressive mysteries

of Demeter, Iacchus, and Persephone. An inscribed brick recently found

informs us of the part Nebuchadnezzar had in the construction of the

Sacred Way of Babylon and gives us the characteristic prayer that he

addressed to his gods, which reads:

Nabu and Marduc, when you traverse these streets in joy, may

benefits for me rest upon your lips; life for distant days and

well being for the body.... May I attain eternal age.[517]

Passing eastwards along Procession Street we soon find ourselves

between the two ruins of the great temple of Merodack and of the famous

Tower of Babylon.

In the temple, according to Herodotus, there was a sitting statue of

Zeus--the name he gives to the god Merodach--all of gold. “Before the

figure stands a large golden table and the throne whereon it sits and

the base on which the throne is placed are likewise of gold”--the

weight of the gold of these divers objects aggregating eight hundred

talents.

Nebuchadnezzar, speaking of this temple, of which he calls himself

“the fosterer,” says he adorned it with the wealth of the sea and the

mountains and all conceivable valuables,--gold and silver and precious

stones. The shrine of Merodach, he declares, “I made to gleam as the

sun. The best of my cedars that I brought from Lebanon, the noble

forest, I sought out for the roofing of the chamber of his lordship,

which cedars I covered with gleaming gold. For the restoration of this

temple I make supplication every morning to Merodach, the king of the

gods, the lord of lords.” To judge from his inscriptions, it would be

difficult to find a pagan king who was more prayerful or who exhibited

greater devotion to his gods than did this proud ruler of old Babylonia.

It was in one of the sanctuaries of this temple, apparently in that

of the god Ea, lord of wisdom and life and healer of the sick--whom

the Greeks identified with Serapis--that the generals of Alexander the

Great “asked the god whether it would be better and more desirable

for Alexander,” who was then lying critically ill in a palace but a

bowshot away, “to be carried into his temple in order as a suppliant

to be cured by him. A voice issued from the god saying that he was

not to be carried into the temple but that it would be better form to

remain where he was. This answer was reported by the Companions and

soon after Alexander died as if, forsooth, this were now the better

thing.”[518]

Alexander had planned to make Babylon the capital of his world empire,

but, shortly after taking possession of the city, his meteoric career

in the prime of youthful manhood, was cut short by death, the only

invincible foe he had ever encountered. His death was the downfall of

the city whence he purposed to rule both Asia and Europe. One of his

generals, Seleucus Nicator, succeeded him as ruler of Babylonia and

soon thereafter transferred his capital from the banks of the sluggish

Euphrates[519] to a new city, Seleucia, named after himself, which

he had founded on the banks of the swift-flowing Tigris. And it was

not long after this that the great metropolis of Babylonia, which for

nearly two thousand years had been the leading capital of the ancient

world and which had so long been “the glory of the kingdoms and the

beauty of the Chaldees excellency” had literally, in the words of

Isaiah, become the habitation of the wild beasts of the desert and was

reduced to such a state of decay that, according to St. Jerome,[520]

its walls, once the marvel of the world, served only to enclose a

hunting park for the diversion of the Parthian Kings.

A furlong to the north of the temple of Merodach is the ruin of the

famous tower of Babylon, which by many has been considered identical

with the Tower of Babil. So colossal was it that the Babylonians called

it “the foundation stone of heaven and earth,” and Nebuchadnezzar,

who contributed materially towards its restoration and enlargement,

declared in an inscription that he had raised the top of the tower

“to rival heaven,” but this was a form of oriental exaggeration in

which this monarch frequently indulged. Herodotus tells us that it was

a stadium--six hundred feet “in length and breadth, upon which was

raised a second tower and on that a third, and so on up to the eighth,

above which there is a great temple.”[521] According to Strabo,[522]

this quadrangular pyramid was “five hundred feet high”--nineteen feet

higher than the great pyramid of Gizeh. As, however, the existing ruin

of the tower of Babylon has not yet been excavated it is impossible,

by actual measurements, to control the statements of ancient writers

regarding its magnitude. But, from an old inscribed tablet which has

been translated by the noted Orientalist, G. Smith, and more recently

by Father Scheil, the distinguished French Dominican, we gather that

the estimates of the Greek writers were probably excessive, for,

according to the tablet in question, the summit of the tower was only

three hundred feet above the surrounding plain.

Diodorus[523] informs us that this tower was used by the Chaldeans as

an astronomical observatory. In the thick, dust-laden atmosphere of

Babylonia, where sand storms are so frequent, such a lofty structure

would be quite a necessity for the successful observations of the

priest astronomers of Babylonia. “The greatly renowned clearness of

the Babylonian sky,” as Koldewey truly observes, “is largely a fiction

of European travelers who are rarely accustomed to observe the night

sky of Europe without the intervention of city lights.”[524] Cicero,

therefore, was quite as mistaken as modern travelers when he thought

that the broad plains of Chaldea, where the sky was visible on all

sides,[525] were specially favorable to star-gazing and the cultivation

of astronomy. Equally misled was the poet who sang of Chaldean

shepherds who

_Watched from the centre of their sleeping flocks_

_Those radiant Mercuries that seemed to move,_

_Carrying through ether, in perpetual round,_

_Decrees and resolutions of the gods;_

_And, by their aspects, signifying works_

_Of dim futurity to man revealed._

No, it was not those shepherds “in boundless solitude” who “made report

of stars,” but the Babylonian priests who, from the summits of their

zikurrats, or temple-towers, laid the foundations, broad and deep,

of the sublime science of astronomy centuries before Hipparchus and

Ptolemy began those admirable investigations which have rendered them

immortal.

All the ruins of Babylon which we had hitherto inspected had greatly

impressed us, but we did not yet have a concrete idea of the greatness

and splendor of the capital of the Babylonian Kings until we visited

that part which the Arabs still call the _Kasr_, or castle. It was

the great palace which was begun by Nabopolassar and completed by his

illustrious son, Nebuchadnezzar. By the Roman historians it was called

the Arx, by the Greeks the Acropolis. It served not only as a citadel

but also as the favored residence of the king and as the approach to

the great temple of Merodach, already referred to, which was the most

famous sanctuary in Babylonia.

Not until we saw the wonderful ruins of the Kasr, which have in great

measure been excavated, were we able to appreciate the enormous amount

of work which Dr. Koldewey and his associates have here accomplished

and the splendid contributions which they have made to the science of

Assyriology and to our knowledge respecting the greatest capital of the

ancient world.

The massiveness of the walls of the citadel--some of them more than

fifty feet in thickness--and the vastness of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace

with its countless chambers were amazing. But even more noteworthy were

the remnants of the Sacred Way, which were once adorned with scores

of life-size figures of lions made of brilliantly enameled bricks, and

the great Ishtar Gate which spanned Babylon’s _Via Sacra_, where

it entered the older city. The hundreds of bulls and dragons, in brick

relief, which cover the walls, and the delicate modeling of the figures

prove conclusively that the glyptic art of the Neo-Babylonian period

must have attained a very high degree of perfection.

Before the discovery of these wonderful works of art, Koldewey was

disposed to be quite skeptical about the traditional splendor of

Babylon, but, when he unearthed the marvels of the Sacred Way and the

Ishtar Gate, which is “the largest and most striking ruin of Babylon,”

he was compelled to admit that the fabled splendor of the city was not

without foundation.

Adjoining Ishtar Gate are what are supposed to be the remains of the

famous Hanging Gardens which antiquity classed among the Seven Wonders

of the World. But a view of the semicircular arches which are said

to have supported these gardens makes it difficult to understand why

they were called hanging--_pensiles hortus_--as described by

Quintus Curtius[526] and other ancient writers. So far as one can judge

by an inspection of the ruins now visible, this wonder of antiquity

was nothing more than an elevated garden court and far less of a

_miraculum_, as the Roman historian calls it, than is an ordinary

roof garden on one of our modern “sky-scrapers.”

In the same palace, of which the Hanging Gardens formed so conspicuous

an ornament, is shown the large throne room of the Babylonian Kings.

Speaking of this Dr. Koldewey does not hesitate to say that “it is

so clearly marked out for this purpose that no reasonable doubt can

be felt as to its having been used as their--the Kings’--principal

audience chamber.” And he furthermore adds: “If anyone should desire

to localize the scene of Belshazzar’s eventful banquet, he can surely

place it with complete accuracy in this immense room.”[527]

Among the other objects of interest among the marvelous complexus of

ruins are a huge lion of basalt, the remains of Persian and Parthian

buildings and the débris of a Greek theater which, one may believe,

was founded by Alexander the Great for the benefit of his countrymen

who, in this remote capital of the East, would have been quite loath to

forego those intellectual amusements to which they had been so devoted

in the land of their birth.

So much has our knowledge of Babylon been increased by the excavation

of one-half of the city that we hope that Dr. Koldewey and his

scholarly associates will be able to uncover the other half. Should

anything interfere with their completion of the great undertaking in

which they had already achieved such splendid results, both science and

history would suffer a loss that cannot easily be estimated.

From an examination of the ruins of Babylon, that which most impresses

one is the immense size of the city, of its walls and palaces and

temples, and that tower of Belus which “the Jews of the Old Testament

regarded as the essence of human presumption.” Compared with these

colossal ruins the remains of such celebrated cities as Delphi and

Sparta and Olympia fade almost into insignificance.

From the descriptions of the Babylonian capital left us by the writers

of antiquity, the dominant impression made on us is that of the

wealth and splendor and magnificence of this famous metropolis. This

impression is emphasized by the inscriptions of its kings, who tell us

how lavishly their palaces and temples were embellished by the rarest

woods of the East and by vast quantities of ivory and silver and gold.

Thus Asurbanipal proudly declares, “I filled Esagilla with silver and

gold and precious stones and made Ekua to shine as the constellations

in the sky.” And Nebuchadnezzar rejoices in the treasures of art and

learning which he had accumulated in his palace for “the amazement of

mankind.”

But how are these grandiloquent statements of monarchs and

historians substantiated by the investigations of the “Deutsche

Orient-Gessellschaft”? That Babylon

_Far

Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind_;

that, as a trade center, its activities extended from

_Indus to the Nile

Or Caspian wave or Oman’s rocky shore_,

there is no room for doubt. But from the glowing descriptions of the

Greek and Latin writers, we are also led to infer that the buildings

of the city--especially its temples and palaces--rivaled in beauty

and grandeur the imposing structures of Athens under Pericles and the

sumptuous edifices of Rome under Augustus. The discoveries, however, of

the German excavators compel us greatly to revise many of our notions

regarding the famed palm-embosomed capital on the Euphrates.

One of their most startling revelations is that, so far as their

investigations enable them to determine, hewn stone was employed “in

bulk for building,” only in the construction of the northern wall of

the Kasr, the Sacred Way, the bridge over the Euphrates and in the

arches that supported the Hanging Gardens. In this respect Babylon was

far behind Nineveh, its great Assyrian rival, where stone was a common

building material. Nearly all of its buildings, even its most lauded

temples, were composed chiefly of sun-dried bricks. Only in certain

parts of the larger temples were kiln-dried bricks employed. What a

contrast between such mud structures and the superb marble temples of

Baalbec and Palmyra, or the highly polished granite fanes of Thebes

and Abydos on the banks of the Nile! What a contrast, even, between

the mud temple of Marduk--the greatest in Babylonia--and the immense

stone Temple of the Sun erected by the Incas of Peru in their capital

of Cuzco!

The dwelling houses of Babylon, according to Herodotus, were mostly

three or four stories high. So far, however, the evidence based on

excavations goes to prove that private houses were of but a single

story. They were probably, like most of the one-story houses in

Babylonia to-day--with flat mud roofs which served as dormitories

during the intense heat of summer. Such dwellings were almost exactly

like the modern one-story adobe houses everywhere visible in New and

Old Mexico. The Mexican houses, however, have windows, while those

in Babylon had none--at least on the side facing the street. In this

respect, however, they were not unlike so many dwelling houses seen in

the Near East to-day.

As I contemplated the large mud buildings of ancient Babylon, I could

not but compare them with those of the Great Chimu, whose ruins are

now among the most remarkable remains of pre-Hispanic Peru. To look

at them one would imagine that some jinnee had picked up a section of

the Babylonian city and transported it to the far-distant shore of the

South Pacific.[528]

With the exception of the Sacred Way and a few other streets, the

thoroughfares of Babylon were unpaved. But none of them, not even the

great _Via Sacra_, although polished by long and continuous use,

exhibits any trace, as do the pavements of Pompeii, of having ever

been used for wheeled traffic. This would seem to indicate that such

traffic, even in the Neo-Babylonian period, was rare or nonexistent.

Still more surprising is the fact that the excavations, outside of some

of the larger buildings, show but few traces of a drainage system. How

so large and flourishing a city could have endured so long without one

is a mystery that remains to be solved.

In the light, then, of the German excavations, it is apparent that

Babylon, on whose splendor and magnificence the old classical writers

so loved to dilate, and concerning whose beauty and grandeur legend and

tradition have long spun such wonderful fairy tales, was a city that

was remarkable rather for the vastness of its public buildings than for

their elegance of design or beauty of execution. Even the temples and

palaces were low, squat structures with flat mud roofs and were, from

an architectural point of view, quite inferior to many caravanseries

that one may now find in various parts of the East. Such ornaments as

they possessed were evidences of barbaric richness and prodigality and

showed none of the purity of taste that so characterized the matchless

creations of Phidias and Ictinus.

But, although Babylon was, in its architectural features, a much

overrated city, it has, nevertheless, deserved well of the world and

has contributed to the advance of civilization as did few other cities

before the rise of Athens and Rome. For, as has been observed, Babylon

is “the oldest seat of earthly empire.” And “when the West was shrouded

in a darkness that neither history nor tradition can penetrate, ...

while wild beasts or naked savages roamed over the future sites of

Athens and Rome and Florence and London,”[529] Babylon was laying the

foundations of art and science, of law and literature and of that

civilization which was subsequently developed and elaborated by the

great nations of the West.

Trade and commerce and agriculture [asserts Delitzsch] were at

their prime and the sciences--geometry, mathematics, and, above

all, astronomy, had reached a degree of development which again

and again moves even the astronomers of to-day to admiration and

astonishment. Not Paris, at the outside Rome, can compete with

Babylon in respect to the influence which it exercised upon the

world throughout two thousand years.[530]

It has been the custom, time out of mind, to speak of Egypt as the

cradle of civilization. And there was reason for this. For her

venerable monuments--her pyramids and temples and obelisks and colossal

rock--sculptures--which seemed to be coeval with the dawn of history,

appear to justify the theory that our race here took its first steps

forward in its great career of material and intellectual development.

But recent investigations among the ruins along the Euphrates prove

that Babylonia is entitled to the honor which has so long been so

freely accorded to the valley of the Nile.

The proofs of this thesis are as numerous as interesting; and, so

far as inductive evidence goes, are practically conclusive. But most

of them are of so recondite a character that they can be properly

discussed only in special works bearing on the archæology and

prehistory of the two countries in question. One may, however, be

permitted to indicate a few of the more obvious reasons which have

led Orientalists to conclude that the civilization in the land of the

Pharaohs had its origin in Babylonia.

Thus, recent discoveries in Upper Egypt seem to prove beyond doubt

that there was intercourse between the two countries in prehistoric

times and that, as a result of this early communication, wheat was

first introduced from the valley of the Euphrates to that of the

Nile. Another consequence of the intercourse between the two lands

was that the Egyptians became acquainted with the Babylonian system

of irrigation--a system which had rendered the soil of Babylonia the

most productive in the then known world. Babylonian engineers, there is

reason to believe, introduced into Egypt the shadoff and the sakieh or

water wheel, both of which were Babylonian inventions, as is clearly

attested by early Assyrian bas-reliefs and by still earlier Sumerian

inscriptions.

Yet more exhaustive researches regarding the early script used in the

two countries and the relations of the language of Babylonia, which was

a Semetic tongue, to that of Egypt lead to the same conclusion as do

investigations respecting the introduction of wheat from the land of

the Euphrates, where it still grows wild, into that of the Nile, and

the identity of the irrigation machines which have been in continuous

use in both lands for thousands of years.

It may, indeed, be admitted that no one of these facts is, of itself,

sufficient to demonstrate that the culture and the engineering science

of Egypt were Babylonian in origin; but, when they are all found

to point in the same direction, the argument based on them has a

cumulative force that is quite unassailable. Dr. Sayce gives judgment

in a single sentence when he declares “it is difficult to avoid the

conclusion that the Semitic-speaking people who brought the science of

irrigation and the art of writing to the banks of the Nile came, like

the wheat they cultivated, from the Babylonian plain.”[531]

Those, however, who are interested in this fascinating theory, which

ascribes to Babylonia not only Egyptian civilization but also the

ancestors of the historical Egyptians, should read the remarkable work

on the subject by Professor Hommel--a work[532] of profound scholarship

and one which has convinced many of the most eminent Orientalists that

there can no longer be any doubt that the civilization and culture of

Egypt came originally from Babylonia.

But interesting as are the discoveries respecting the cultural

relations between the two countries in question, no notice of Babylonia

would be complete without some reference to her contributions to the

science of astronomy. Here we have more positive information than has

hitherto been available regarding the primeval intercourse between the

peoples of the Euphrates and the Nile. As one might expect, however, in

dealing with subjects carrying us back into the mists of antiquity, we

find that the question of Babylonian astronomy is one that is deeply

involved in myth and legend, but such myths and legends as help to

corroborate the findings of historians and archæologists concerning the

labors of the astronomers of old Chaldea.

Even in the question regarding the origin of astronomy, as in that

concerning the beginnings of civil engineering in Egypt, we note the

same old debate among the learned as to who were the more ancient

astronomers, the Egyptians or the Babylonians. The people of the

Nileland boasted that Hermes or Osiris was the founder of their

astronomical system, while the Chaldeans, that is the Babylonians,

claimed that the first astronomer was Belus,[533] the son of Nimrod,

who was the grandson of Noah and the reputed builder of the Tower of

Babel. This tower, often confused with the tower of Bel described by

Herodotus, was, according to Chaldean legend, the first astronomical

observatory.

It was not, however, thousands of years before the Christian era,

as certain writers would have us believe, that Chaldean astronomy

became an exact science. This was not possible and for a very simple

reason--the absence of a strict chronology to which the Chaldean

observers of the heavens did not attain until 747 B. C., when they

adopted what is known as the era of Nabonnassar. Previously there could

be no certainty regarding the calculation of time. Not, indeed, until

the first recorded eclipse, March 21, 721 B. C., was astronomy raised

to the dignity of an exact science.

In fact, during the first twenty or thirty centuries of

Mesopotamian history [writes the distinguished Belgian savant,

Franz Cumont] nothing is found but empirical observations,

intended chiefly to indicate omens, and the rudimentary

knowledge which these observations display is hardly in advance

of that of the Egyptians, the Chinese or the Aztecs.[534]

It is only during the last quarter of a century that we have been

able to determine the advances made by astronomy at different periods

of Babylonian history and we owe this knowledge almost entirely to

the persistent labors of three Jesuits, Fathers Epping, Kugler,

and Straszmaier.[535] By a long and careful study of the cuneiform

inscriptions bearing on astronomy, many of which they have deciphered,

interpreted, and published, they have, for the first time, put the

history of Babylonian astronomy on a firm, scientific basis. And they

have at the same time completely dissipated the poetical fancy of

“Chaldean shepherds discovering the causes of eclipses while watching

their flocks” and the oft repeated fable that it was Babylonian

astronomers who discovered the precession of the equinoxes--an

achievement that was due to the genius of Hipparchus of Nicæa.

Thanks, however, to the researches of the three savants named, it

must now be conceded that certain discoveries which have hitherto

been attributed to Hipparchus should be credited to the astronomers

of Babylonia. Among these were discoveries regarding the inequalities

of the lengths of the seasons, the methods of determining in advance

the phenomena of the five known planets, the duration of their synodic

revolutions, and the dates of the phases and eclipses of the moon. In a

remarkable cuneiform inscription, dated as early as 523 B. C., is given

what is practically a monthly ephemeris not only of the sun and moon

and eclipses but also the more notable phenomena of the planets. With

reason does Father Kugler consider this “the oldest known document

of the scientific astronomy of the Chaldeans.” And so greatly is he

impressed by the marvelous astronomical tables which were constructed

by the priest astronomers of Babylonia that he declares:

One does not know which to admire the more, the extraordinary

accuracy of the periods which is implied by the drawing up of

each of the columns of figures or the ingenuity with which

these old masters contrived to combine all the factors to be

considered.[536]

Recent research has also shown that some of the very accurate

calculations of lunar periods which, from the time of Ptolemy, have

been attributed to Hipparchus, should in reality be ascribed to the

astronomers of Babylonia.[537] That these ancient observers, who had

none of the instruments of precision which are now available in our

observatories, should have been able to make so exact calculations is

marvelous in the extreme.

Equally noteworthy were the discoveries of the hellenized Chaldean,

Seleucus, who proved that the movement of the tides is due to the

action of the moon and who, contrary to the view which then generally

prevailed, taught the helio-centric theory of the solar system--nearly

two thousand years before the epochal achievements of Copernicus and

Galileo.

The foregoing paragraphs clearly evince that it was the Babylonians

who laid the foundations of astronomy, and not, as Buckle, Draper, and

others would have us believe, the Arabians under the Caliphate. “The

place of honor in science, therefore,”--a place which for ages was

conceded to the Babylonians and which, through Father Epping’s studies,

has been won for them anew--“will henceforth remain to them uncontested

and incontestable.”[538]

In order, however, to have a correct idea of the far-reaching influence

of Babylonian civilization, one must know more about it than its

contribution to science, art, and literature. One must know something

about the social condition of the people and of their manners and

customs as described in their history and reflected in their laws. For

this a few words will suffice and these will be based on the wonderful

code of Hammurabi, the king who ruled over Babylonia more than two

thousand years before our era and who was the real founder of her

greatness.[539]

It is true that the great legal code which bears his name was, like

all other ancient codes, based to a great extent on precedent and on

earlier collections of laws, some of which, there is reason to believe,

antedated Hammurabi’s great compilation by more than a thousand years.

But it is because it is chiefly a codification of preëxisting laws that

the great code of the Babylonian King is so valuable and instructive.

We find that, unlike the warlike Assyrians, the Babylonians were not

only a peaceable and intelligent but also a very humane and deeply

religious people. In the words of one who has made a special study of

the history and laws of the people over whom Hammurabi bore rule for

forty-three years:

It is startling to find how much that we have thought distinctly

our own has really come down to us from that great people who

ruled the Land of the Two Streams. We need not be ashamed

of anything we can trace back so far. It is from no savage

ancestors that it descends to us. It bears the “hall mark”

not only of extreme antiquity but of sterling worth.... A

right-thinking citizen of a modern city would probably feel more

at home in ancient Babylon than in mediæval Europe.[540]

Among the laws of the great Babylonian legislator that are especially

remarkable are those which safeguard the rights and privileges of

married women. That such laws should have been enacted and enforced

more than four thousand years ago shows better than anything else the

high plane of social progress to which the Babylonians had thus early

attained. To quote from the distinguished Orientalist, L. W. King, they

“throw an interesting light on the position of the married woman in the

Babylonian community, which was not only unexampled in antiquity but

compares favorably in point of freedom and independence with her status

in many countries in modern Europe.”[541]

One of the many results of the discovery of Hammurabi’s Code was,

curiously enough, completely to demolish a favorite argument of

certain Biblical critics respecting the laws of Moses. So elaborate

a legislative code as that attributed to the Jewish lawgiver was,

they contended, quite improbable at the early date assigned to it,

and it must, therefore, have had its origin at a subsequent period

when society was more highly organized. It must, then, the critics

maintained, have been the work of the Jewish priesthood in the later

days of Israel, who, in order to give it the necessary sanction,

falsely attributed it to Moses. What then must have been their surprise

and confusion, on the appearance of Father Scheil’s translation of

Hammurabi’s Code, to find that it was more than five hundred years

older than that of Moses, and that with its two hundred and eighty-two

enactments it revealed a more elaborate social organization than that

described in the violently attacked Book of Exodus? But this is only

one of many similar surprises which the Higher Critics have found

in the monuments of Babylonia. And in proportion as the cuneiform

inscriptions continue to disclose their long-withheld secrets, so also,

we may feel sure, will they, in all essential matters, be found to

verify and corroborate the declarations of the Sacred Text.

Our last bird’s-eye view of the abomination of desolation that was

Babylon was from the highest accessible point of the great royal palace

on the Kasr. It was at the hour when the noonday sun was pouring his

irradiating beams on the scattered and crumbling ruins of temples

and palaces and citadels, which seemed to have been blasted by the

lightnings of a wrathful heaven and to be lying under a major anathema

maranatha of an offended Deity. In this accursed haunt of serpents

and scorpions,--and the Arabs add--dragons and satyrs--the earth was

absolutely verdureless. No four-footed thing trod the earth; no winged

creature circled through the air; not a tree or a shrub adorned the

brown, sun-baked mound. Where once stood the Hanging Gardens that

were the glory of an arrogant potentate and the wonder of a marveling

world; where once were gorgeous halls, with throne of ivory and gold;

where kings and nobles feasted in bejeweled robes; where loud choruses

swelled to the joyous notes of harp and cymbal and psaltery; where

brazen bacchanals drank to Bel from golden goblets looted from Salem’s

desecrated temple, there now was the silence and the vacuity and the

oblivion of the tomb. Desolation was everywhere made desolate. Of a

truth has Babylon the great, “the mother of the abominations of the

earth,” “been thrown down and shall be found no more at all.”[542]

We stood on a spot which must have been near that occupied by

Nebuchadnezzar when, in the pride of his heart, he exultantly exclaimed:

Is not this the great Babylon which I have built to be the seat

of the kingdom, by the strength of my power and in the glory of

my excellence?

And while the word was yet in the King’s mouth a voice came down

from heaven: To thee, O King Nebuchadnezzar, it is said: Thy

kingdom is taken from thee.[543]

But before this word was uttered the Prophet Jeremias, speaking with

all the detail of an eye-witness, had foretold what would be the fate

of the proud and wicked city on the Euphrates. How literally true are

his predictions, let the reader judge from the following verses:

Thus saith the Lord of hosts: That broad wall of Babylon shall

be utterly broken down, and her high gates shall be burnt with

fire, and the labors of the people shall come to nothing, and of

the nations shall go to the fire and shall perish.[544]

And Babylon shall be reduced to heaps, a dwelling place for

dragons, an astonishment and a hissing, because there is no

inhabitant.[545]

Thou shalt say: O Lord, thou has spoken against this place to

destroy it; so that there shall be neither man nor beast to

dwell therein, and that it should be desolate forever.[546]

Reading these graphic words of the inspired prophet in the presence of

the ruins of Babylon as they appear to-day, one can but exclaim with

the Royal Psalmist:

“Forever, O Lord, thy word standeth firm in heaven.”[547]

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INDEX

“Aaron the Just,” 418

Abbasside Caliphate, the, 172

Abd-el-Kader, Algerian ruler, 249

Abd-er-Rahman I, 473

Abdul Hamid I, Sultan, 110, 159

Abdul Hamid II, Sultan, 50, 110, 268

Abgar, King, 285, 296

Abraham, Patriarch, 253, 275, 294

Abydas, Strait of, 77

Abyssinia, 312

Achilles, Ashes of, 36

Adadinari IV, 386

Adana, commercial center, 197

Aegean Sea, 90

Afium-Kara-Hissar, 122

Agamemnon, “King of Men,” 87

Agostino, Padre, 263

Aimée Dubuc de Rivery, 110

Albertus Magnus, 6

Alcæus, 105

Aleppo, 255, 263

Alexander I, of Russia, 78

Alexander the Great, 27, 46, 78, 83, 194, 217, 400

Alexandria, 289

Alfold, great central plain of Hungary, 19

Ali, first legitimate Caliph, 445

Al-Khader, 260

Allah, 237

Al-Mamun, Caliph, 420

Al-Mansur, founder of Bagdad, 409

Ameghino, Dr., 453

America, does not know or care about the truth about Turkey, 211

Ammianus Marcellinus, 297

Amru, 316

Amuita, Queen, 488

Anadoli Kavak, 45

Anathema Maran-atha, 327

Anatolia, 183

life of the Osmanlis, 121

ruins of, 106

Anatolian Railway, 99, 121, 157

Anazarbas, 199

Andrae, Dr. Walter, 379

Angel de Villarubbia, Fra, 292

Anglo-French press, hostile to Bagdad railway, 166

Antakia, 255

Anthimos VII, Œcumenical Patriarch, 336

“Antioch the Beautiful,” 218, 255, 289

Antipater, 201

“Apostle and Proto-Martyr among Women,” 172

“Apostle of the Gentiles,” St. Paul, 202

Arabian horses, 441

Arabians, life of the, 442

Arab robbers, protection against, 266

Aracca, the Erech of Scripture, 461

Aramaic language, 272

Aratus, 201

Archimedes, 201

Argonauts, 42

_Argos_, 44

Arianism, 232

Aristarchus of Samothrace, 106

Aristotle, 83

Armenian question, 208

Armenians, business ability of, 271

massacre of 1909, 205

responsible in great part for massacres, 207

Arrians, 101, 305

Artemidorus, 201

Ashbelkala, 380

Ashurnasirpal III, 380

Asia Minor, 183

great trouble of, 149

rich in natural resources, 184

Aspasia, wife of Pericles, 104

Asshur, city of, 294

“Association Laws,” 292

Assuerus, King, 353

Asur, builder of Nineveh, 345, 379

Assyrian Empire, 347

Astronomy, foundations and practice of, by Babylonians, 501

Asurbanipal, the Grand Monarch of Assyria, 353

“A Thousand Nights and a Night,” 261

Attica, 104

Attila, 23

Augustine of Hippo, 369

Augustus, Emperor, 11

Aurelian, Emperor, 217

Babil, mound of, 475, 477

Babylon, 471–508

bird’s-eye view of desolation of, 506

descriptions of, by ancient writers, 483

great wall of, 483

hanging gardens of, 282, 494

present day, 486

tower of, 491

Bagdad, 41, 260, 402–436

ancient glories of, 412

bazaars of, 432

Carmelite priests of, 403

etymological names of, 410

fall of, 425

founding of, 409

modern, 427

periodically visited by the plague, 431

population one-fourth Jewish, 432

the future of, 435

the women of, 432

Bagdad railway, 151

aim and purpose of, 168

completion of, held up by World War, 370

Germany gets concession for, 158

meeting of Czar and Kaiser in 1910 in regard to, 164

source of far-reaching political cataclysm, 169

splendidly built, 167

tunnels of the, 255

Balkan peninsula, 22

peoples of, hated one another, more than the Turks, 22

Barbarossa, Frederick, 78, 121

Barmecides, Slaughter of the, 419

Barnabas, 171

Basra, 264

Bayazid I, Sultan, 46

Bazaars of Bagdad, 432

Beaconsfield, Earl of, 63

Beames, William, 265

Bedouins, 268

life of, 442

Beirut, 310

_Beith Allah_, house of God, 235

Belgrade, 19

Belus, first astronomer, 501

Benjamin of Tudela, 414, 480

Berosus, priest of Bel, 348

Berlin, 1

Bessarion, Cardinal, 335

Bethsabee, 275

Bianca Capello, 110

Bilejik, 122

Bir, 281

Birs-Nimrud, 477

Black Forest, 5

Black Obelisk of Salmanasar II, 200

Black Sea, 30

Black Stone, worshiped by Mohammedans, 235

“Blue Mosque,” 175

Bohadin, 417

Borsippa, 480

Bosphorus, 161

plan for tunnel under, 166

proposed bridge over, 166

Bossuet of Meaux, 369

Botta, Paul Emil, 349

Bourse, the, 163

Bozanti Khan, 188

Bralia, 31

Bréau, Quaterfages de, 456

Bronze Horses of Lysippus, 58

Bruin, Cornelius de, 358

Brusa, 94

Budapest, 18

Bukcovitz, Stephen, 114

Bukharest, city of, 29

Bulgar Dagh, the, 189

Burckhardt, discovers black basaltic block, 275

Burnouf, Eugène, 362

Byron, Lord, 43

Byzantine liturgy, 313

Byzantines, 305

Byzas, son of Neptune, 67

Cæsaropapism, 326

Caetani, Prince, 466

Caliphs, triumphs of the, 281

Callicolone, 87

Calmet, Dam, the Benedictine, 459

Calycadnus, the, 191

Camels, trains of, 185

Canals,

Danube-Elbe, 34

Danube-Oder, 34

Danube-Salonica, 34

Ludwig, 33

Suez, 153

Canon law of Mohammedanism, 244

Cantacuzenos, introduces the Osmanlis into Europe, 113

Capistrau, St. John, 20

Capuchins, the, 291

Caravans, 186

kept in communication with friends by homing pigeons, 267

protection against Arab robbers, 266

trade, 264

Carchemish, the, 276, 282

Carmelite priests, of Bagdad, 403

Cassandra, 91

Castle of Simeon, 256

Catherine de Medici, 110

Catherine II, of Russia, 61, 383

Caulaincourt, French Ambassador, 79

Cerularius, Michael, 325

Chalcedon, 97

Chaldean church, 307

Champollion, Jean François, 356

Chansans de Geste, untruths in, concerning Mohammedanism, 222

Chardin, Jean, 358

Charlemagne, 10, 324

Chateaubriand, 52

Chesney, Colonel, 152

Chilat, 298

Chosroes I, 194, 281, 287

Christianity,

in relation to Mohammedanism, 247

need of change of attitude of the West toward the East, 251

Chrysopolis, the golden city, 96

Chrysostom, St. John, 71

Churches of the East, 303–340

Church of Holy Wisdom, 56

Cicero, 171

Cilician Plain, or _Cilicea Campestris_, 189

population of, 198

the Garden of Eden, 214

three decisive battles of the world fought on, 194

Citadel, at Aleppo, 273

“City of Delight,” the, 29

“City of the Blind,” the, 97

“City of the Saints,” Bagdad, 260

Cleopatra, 204

Code of Hammurabi, 345, 364, 504

Coffee, great beverage of the Moslems, 179

Coffeehouse, Oriental, 181

Columbus, 452

Comnena, Princess Anna, 72

Conquest of Constantinople, 328

Constantine IX, Emperor, 325

Constantine Paleologus, 68

Constantine Porphyrogenitus, 414

Constantine the Great, 68, 321

Constantinople, 51

people of, 65

Constanza, 37

Consul Lirius, 84

Coptic church, 312

Copts, of Egypt, 312

Corinth, 217

Cos, 105

Council of Florence, 327

Crassus, 297

Creation, one of the oldest accounts of, discovered, 462

Crescent and the Cross, 27

Crimean War, 99

Crœsus, King of Lydia, 184

Cross and the Crescent, 27

Crusaders,

castles built by, 257

in Phrygia and Lycaonia, 187

in the footsteps of the, 171

route of the, 257

Crusade, Fourth, 327

time has come for a new but different, 252

Cunaxa, battle of, 375

Cyaxares, 345

Cydnus, 203

Cydnus, the, 190

Cyrus, Bishop, 297

Cyrus the Great, 433

army of, 171

Cyrus the Younger, 281

Dacia, 26

Dacians, the, 30

Damascus, 289, 313

Damoclean sword, 331

Dandolo, Henricus, 68

Dante Alighieri, 247, 295

Danube, 4, 31

Darius, 194, 281

Darius Hystaspes, 31

“Dates of Akkad,” 472

Dati, Leonardo, 457

David, King, 275

Dawson, J. W., 463

Debora, nurse of Rebecca, 298

Deggendorf, 8

De Lesseps, and the Suez Canal, 165

Delitzsch, Friedrich, 363, 369, 448

Delta of the Nile, 317

Dervishes,

dancing or whirling, 173

howling, 96

_Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft_, 387

Devil’s Wall, 9

Diana, Temple of, 217

Diering, Professor, on the Germans, 168

Diocletian, 100

Diodorus Siculus, 201, 483

Dionysides, 201

Dioscur, Patriarch of Alexandria, 315

Disraeli, and the Suez Canal, 153

Djerabis, 282

“Doctrine of Addai,” 286

Dominican Sisters of the Presentation of Tours, 308

Dominicans of Mosul, 307

_Drang nach osten_, Trend toward the East, 155

Duke Leopold, of Austria, 10

Dunkelboden, 7

Earthquakes, 218

Eastern Churches, 303–340

reunion with the Mother Church, 334

Edessa, 284

legend connected with, 284

school of, 297