[215] This inscription was obtained from some ruins near Baghdad by Sir Harford Jones, and is now in the Museum of the East India Company. A facsimile of it has been published.
[216] Nineveh and its Remains, vol. ii. 2d part, chap. ii.
[217] The usual dimensions of the Babylonian bricks are as nearly as possible one foot square, by three and a half inches thick. Rich says thirteen inches square. Mr. Birch has conjectured that they may represent multiples of some Babylonian measure, perhaps the cubit.
[218] Mr. Birch has found more than one notice of Babylon on Egyptian monuments of the time of Thothmes III.
[219] Ezekiel, xvii. 4.
[220] Daniel, v. 30, 31. This event took place B. C. 538. Whether the Darius of the book of Daniel be Cyrus himself, or a Median who commanded the armies of that monarch, and was afterwards appointed viceroy of Babylon, is one of the many disputed points of ancient history.
[221] Arrian, Exp. Alex. 1. vii. c. 17. See Jeremy’s Epistle in the Apocryphal hook of Baruch, vi. 10, 11, and 28, for instances of the cupidity of the Babylonian priests. They had even stripped the idols of their robes and ornaments to adorn their wives and children. This epistle contains a very curious account of the idol worship of the Babylonians.
[222] Isaiah, xiv. 23. Jeremiah, li. 42.
[223] See an interesting Memoir on Babylon, by M. de St. Croix, in the 48th vol. of the Transactions of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, in which all the authorities on the subject of the gradual decay of the city are collected.
[224] Isaiah, xliii. 14.