And yet Babylon did not disappear from history in a day; she was not destroyed, like Nineveh, by a single blow. Cyrus does not appear to have injured her. She remained, under the Persian kings, one of the chief cities of the empire. But she did not give up her habit of revolting whenever she had a chance, and Darius, the son of Hystaspes, tired of besieging her, ended by dismantling her fortifications, while Xerxes went farther, and pillaged her temples. But the chief buildings remained standing. Towards the middle of the fifth century they excited the admiration of Herodotus, and, fifty years later, that of Ctesias. Strabo, on the other hand, found the place almost a desert.[81] Babylon had been ruined by the foundation of Seleucia, on the Tigris, at a distance of rather more than thirty miles from the ancient capital. Struck by the beauty of its monuments and the advantages of its site, Alexander projected the restoration of Babylon, and proposed to make it his habitual residence; but he died before his intention could be carried out, and Seleucus Nicator preferred to build a town which should be called after himself, and should at least perpetuate his name. The new city had as many as six hundred thousand inhabitants. Under the Parthians Ctesiphon succeeded to Seleucia, to be replaced in its turn by Bagdad, the Arab metropolis of the caliphs. This latest comer upon the scene would have equalled its predecessors in magnificence had the routes of commerce not changed so greatly since the commencement of the modern era, and, above all, had the Turks not been masters of the country. There can be no doubt that the next generation will see the civilization of the West repossess itself of the fertile plains in which it was born and nursed, and a railway carried from the shores of the Mediterranean to those of the Persian Gulf. Such a road would be the most direct route from Europe to India, and its construction would awake Chaldæa to the feverish activity of our modern life. Peopled, irrigated, and tilled into her remotest corners, she would again become as prolific as of old. Her station upon the wayside would soon change her towns into cities as populous as those of Nebuchadnezzar, and we may even guess that her importance in the future would reduce her past to insignificance, and would make her capital such a Babylon as the world has not yet seen.
NOTES
[57] Th. Noeldeke, Histoire littéraire de l'ancien Testament, French version. See chapter vii.
[58] This account of the fabulous origin of civilization in Chaldæa and Assyria will be found in the second book of Berosus. See Fragmenta Historicorum Græcorum of Ch. Müller, vol. i. fr. 4, 13. Book i. is consecrated to the cosmogony, Book iii. to the Second Chaldee Empire.
[59] Genesis xiv.
[60] F. Lenormant, Manuel de l'Histoire ancienne, vol. ii. p. 24. Smith (Assyrian Discoveries, p. 224) puts the capture of Susa in 645, and thus arrives at the date 2280 B.C.
[61] Lenormant, Manuel de l'Histoire ancienne, vol. ii. p. 65, gives an account of the system under which special magistrates gave their name to each year, and of the lists which have been preserved.
[62] This was lately found at Bagdad after long being supposed to be lost. It is now in the British Museum.
[63] It was visited under the best conditions, and has been best described by W. Kenneth Loftus who was in it from 1849 to 1852. Attached as geologist to the English mission, commanded by Colonel, afterwards General Sir Fenwick Williams of Kars, which was charged with the delimitation of the Turco-Persian frontier, he was accompanied by sufficient escorts and could stay wherever he pleased. He was an ardent traveller and excellent observer, and science experienced a real loss in his death. The only work which he has left behind him may still be read with pleasure and profit, namely, Travels and Researches in Chaldæa and Susiana, with an Account of Excavations at Warka, the "Ereich" of Nimrod, and Shúsh, "Shushan the palace" of Esther, 8vo, London: 1857. The articles contributed by J. E. Taylor, English vice-consul at Bassorah, to vol. xv. of the Journal of the Asiatic Society (1855), may also be read with advantage. He passed over the same ground, and also made excavations at certain points in Lower Chaldæa which were passed over by Mr. Loftus. Finally, M. de Sarzec, the French consul at Bassorah, to whom we owe the curious series of Chaldæan objects which have lately increased the riches of the Louvre, was enabled to explore the same region through the friendship of a powerful Arab chief. It is much to be desired that he should give us a complete account of his sojourn and of the searches he carried on.
[64] Lenormant, Manuel de l'Histoire ancienne, vol. ii. p. 30.