Leaving a name, at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale[120].
And this calls to our recollection the prophecies which had been uttered:—"I will cut off from Babylon the name and remnant." "I will make it a possession for the bittern." "I will sweep it with the besom of destruction." "It shall never be inhabited; neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation."
Such was the fate of this city; insomuch that, in process of time it became entirely forsaken, and the Persian kings made a park among its ruins, in which they kept wild beasts for hunting. Instead of citizens, there were boars, leopards, bears, deer, and wild asses. Nothing remained but portions of its walls, a great part even of these at last fell down. They were never repaired, and for many ages, so great was the ruin, that even the remains of it were supposed to have been swept from the face of the earth[121].
A short time after the death of Alexander, Babylon became a theatre for hostility between Demetrius and Seleucus. Seleucus had got possession of the city. When Antigonus learned this, he sent his son, Demetrius, with an army to drive him out of it. Demetrius, according to his father's order, gathered all the force he could command at Damascus, and marched thence to Babylon; where, finding that Seleucus had gone into Media, he entered the city without opposition; but, to his great surprise and mortification, he found it in great part deserted. The cause was this: Seleucus had left the town under the charge of a governor named Patrocles. When Demetrius was within a short distance, this governor retreated out of the walls into the fens, and commanded all persons to fly from the city. This multitudes of them did; some into the deserts, and others beyond the Tigris. Demetrius, finding the town deserted, laid siege to the castles; for there were two, both well garrisoned and of large extent. One of these castles he took; and, having plundered not only the city, but the whole province, of every thing he could lay his bands on, he returned to his father, leaving a garrison. The robbery, however, did not go unpunished; for the Babylonians were so grievously offended at it, that, at the return of Seleucus, they received him with open arms; and thus began the true reign of Seleucus. That prince, however, did not long make Babylon his capital. He built Seleucia on the western bank of the Tigris, forty miles from Babylon, over against the spot where now stands the city of Bagdad. To this new city, Seleucus invited the Babylonians generally to transplant themselves. This they did, and Babylon became, in process of time, so desolate, that Strabo assures us[122] that, in his time, Babylon, "once the greatest city that the sun ever saw," had nothing left but its walls. The area had been ploughed.
In the fourth century St. Jerome notes, that Babylon was become a park for the Parthian and afterwards for the Persian kings to keep their wild beasts for hunting in; the walls being kept up to serve for a fence for the enclosure. No writer for several hundred years has been found to mention this city from this time, till Benjamin of Tudela[123] (in Navarre) visited the spot, and related, on his return, that he had stood where this old city had formerly stood; and that he had found it wholly desolated and destroyed. "Some ruins," said he, "of Nebuchadnezzar's palace remain; but men are afraid to go near them on account of the multitude of serpents and scorpions there are in the place."
It was afterwards visited by the celebrated Portuguese traveller, Texeira, who says, "That there was, in his time, only a few footsteps of this famous city; and that there was no place in all that country less frequented." In 1574 it was visited by a German traveller, Rauwolf. "The village of Elugo," says he, "lieth on the place where formerly old Babylon, the metropolis of Chaldea, did stand. The harbour lieth a quarter of a league off, where-unto those use to go that intend to travel by land to the famous city of Bagdad, which is situated further to the east on the river Tigris, at a day and a half's distance. This country is so dry and barren that it cannot be tilled, and so bare that I should have doubted very much, whether this potent and powerful city (which once was the most stately and famous one of the world, situated in the pleasant and fruitful country of Sinar,) did stand there; if I had not known it by its situation, and several ancient and delicate antiquities, that still are standing hereabout in great desolation[124]. First, by the old bridge, which was laid over the Euphrates, whereof there are some pieces and arches still remaining, built of burned brick, and so strong, that it is admirable. Just before the village of Elugo is the hill whereon the castle did stand, in a plain, whereon you may still see some ruins of the fortification, which is quite demolished and uninhabited. Behind it, and pretty near to it, did stand the tower of Babylon. This we see still, and it is half a league in diameter; but so mightily ruined and low, and so full of venomous reptiles, that have bored holes through it, that one may not come near it within half a mile, but only in two months in the winter, when they come not out of their holes[125]."
The next traveller that visited Babylon appears to have been Della Valle (A. D. 1616). When at Bagdad he was led, by curiosity rather than business, to visit Babylon, which, says he, was well known to the people in that city, as well by its name of Babel, as by the traditions concerning it. "He found," says Rennell, "at no great distance from the eastern bank of the Euphrates, a vast heap of ruins, of so heterogeneous a kind, that, as he expresses it, he could find nothing whereon to fix his judgment as to what it might have been in its original state. He recollected the descriptions of the tower of Belus, in the writings of the ancients, and supposed that this might be the ruins of it." He then proceeds to give measurements; but better accounts have been received since.
The remains of Babylon have been visited in our times by several accomplished travellers, amongst whom may be especially noted Mr. Rich and Sir Robert Ker Porter. The former of these travellers has given the most distinct and circumstantial account; but, before we state what he has afforded us, we afford space for that passage of Sir Robert, in which he describes his first entry into the scene.
"We now came to the north-east shore of the Euphrates, hitherto totally excluded from our view by the intervening long and varied lines of ruin, which now proclaimed to us, on every side, that we were indeed in the midst of what had been Babylon. From the point, on which we stood, to the base of the Mujelibé, large masses of ancient foundations spread on our right, more resembling natural hills in appearance, than mounds covering the remains of former great and splendid edifices. The whole view was particularly solemn. The majestic stream of the Euphrates wandering in solitude, like a pilgrim monarch through the silent ruins of his devastated kingdom, still appeared a noble river, even under all the disadvantages of its desert-tracked course. Its banks were hoary with reeds, and the grey osier willows were yet there, on which the captives of Israel hung up their harps, and, while 'Jerusalem was not,' refused to be comforted. But how is the rest of the scene changed since then! At that time, these broken hills were palaces; those long, undulating mounds, streets; this vast solitude, filled with the busy subjects of the proud daughter of the East! now, 'wasted with misery,' her habitations are not to be found; and, for herself, 'the worm is spread over her.' The banks of the Euphrates are, nevertheless, still covered with willows, as they were in ancient times[126]."
For the following particulars we are, principally, indebted to Mr. Rich, several years British minister at Bagdad. "The town of Hillah, enclosed within a brick wall, and known to have been built in the twelfth century, stands upon the western banks of the Euphrates (latitude thirty-two degrees, twenty-eight minutes). It is forty-eight miles south of Bagdad. The country, for miles around, is a flat, uncultivated waste; but it is traversed, in different directions, by what appear to be the remains of canals, and by mounds of great magnitude; most of which, upon being excavated, are found to contain bricks, some of which were evidently dried in the sun, others baked by a furnace, and stamped with inscriptions in a character now unknown." "The soil of the plains of ancient Assyria and Babylonia," says Major Keppell, "consists of a fine clay, mixed with sand, with which, as the waters retire, the shores are covered. This compost, when dried with the heat of the sun, becomes a hard and solid mass, and forms the finest materials for the beautiful bricks for which Babylon was celebrated." Hillah is built of such bricks; but there are others of more ancient appearance, which, no doubt, belonged to ancient Babylon; since they are stamped with characters, which have been ascribed to the Chaldeans. Hillah, then, stands upon the site of ancient Babylon: that is, a portion of it.