The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

Three times Leander returned to visit this splendid vestige of antiquity; and on the last of these occasions, being well escorted, he proceeded to the distance of about a mile, to the foot of the mountains of Damascus, whence the stones employed in its construction were brought. He measured the stone which remained there, and which has already been noticed as having been intended for the fifth in the construction of the wall: it had been hewn out on all sides, was lying on the ground, and was simply attached to the rock at the lower part. Its length and dimensions were such that he could not conceive how it would have been possible to detach it, and still less with what machines to move, transport, and raise it to the hight at which other stones are placed, more especially as the sites, the roads, and the masses of rock are such, as to exceed in roughness and difficulty whatever the imagination can picture to itself. In the vicinity of the cave whence the stones were drawn is a very beautiful sepulcher supported by columns of porphyry, over which is a dome of the finest symmetry, and of great beauty.

RUINS OF BABYLON.

The ruins of Babylon are deeply interesting, not only on account of their great antiquity, but from the associations connected with them. They have been visited and described by Mr. Rich, resident for the East India company at Bagdad; and the result of his researches is given by the Rev. Mr. Maurice, author of “Indian Antiquities,” and assistant librarian to the British museum, in his elaborate work entitled “Observations connected with Astronomy and Ancient History, Sacred and Profane, on the Ruins of Babylon.”

TOWER NEAR BABYLON.

Babylon was situated in a plain of vast extent, and bisected by the noble river Euphrates. Over this river was thrown a bridge of massive masonry, strongly compacted with iron and lead, by which the two sides of the city were connected; and the embankments on each side, to restrain its current, were lofty, and formed of the same durable materials as the walls of the city. The city itself is represented by Herodotus to have been a perfect square, inclosed by a wall in circumference four hundred and eighty furlongs. It is stated to have abounded in houses three or four stories in hight, and to have been regularly divided into streets, running parallel to each other, with tranverse avenues occasionally opening to the river. It was surrounded with a wide and deep trench, the earth dug out of which was formed into square bricks and baked in a furnace. With these, cemented together with heated bitumen, intermixed with reeds to bind the viscid mass, the sides of the trenches were lined; and of the same solid materials the walls of the vast dimensions above described were formed. At certain regular distances on them, watch-towers were erected; and below they were divided and adorned with a hundred immense gates of brass. As you float down the river from Bagdad, you pass a plain that hears the name of Dura, which tradition says, is the very place where Nebuchadnezzar set up the golden image, and commanded all to bow down and worship it: it is now a wilderness, with here and there a shapeless mound, the remains of some ancient habitation. And still further down, as you approach the city, is a tower, some two hundred feet high, on the east bank of the river, with an ascending way winding round it on the outside, like the spiral of a screw, as seen in the cut below, reminding the traveler of the common ideal pictures of the tower of Babel. It marks the site of the ancient city of Samarrah, where the Roman army under Jovian rested after marching and fighting a long summer’s day. It was afterward the capital of the eighth caliph of the Abbasside dynasty.

In the center of each of the grand divisions of the city itself, a stupendous public fabric was erected. In one (the eastern side) stood the temple of Belus, and in the other, (or western division,) in a large or strongly fortified inclosure, the royal palace, intended, doubtless, for defense as well as for ornament. The temple of Belus was a square pile, on each side of the extent of two furlongs. The tower erected in its center was a furlong in breadth, and as much in hight, the latter of which (taking the furlong at only five hundred feet) is enormous, being higher, by twenty feet, than the great pyramid of Memphis. On this tower, as a base, seven other lofty towers were erected in regular succession; and the whole was crowned, we are told by Diodorus, with a brazen statue of Belus, forty feet high! The palace, intended also as a citadel, was erected on an area a mile and a half square, and was surrounded with three vast circular walls, which, as we are informed by Diodorus Siculus, were ornamented with sculptured animals resembling life, richly painted in their natural colors on the bricks of which they were composed, and afterward burnt in. This may be mentioned as nearly the earliest specimen of enameling on record. Indeed, it was scarcely possible for a nation, who were so well practiced in the burning of bricks even to a vitreous hardness, to have been ignorant of this fine art; and that they could also engrave upon them, is evident, as we may soon see, from the characters at this day sculptured upon those that have been dug up and brought to Europe, many of which are preserved in the British museum. On the far-famed hanging gardens, and the subterraneous vault or tunnel constructed by Semiramis, or Nitocris, or the founder of Babylon, whoever he was, there is no necessity to dilate, as every trace of them, except what the idle fancy of travelers has surmised, must long since have disappeared; but such, in its general outline, was the mighty Babylon—Babylon the great.

Mr. Rich, whose residence at the court of Bagdad, with the powerful protection of the pacha, afforded him every facility for comprehensive investigation, describes the whole country between Bagdad and Hella, a distance of forty-eight miles, as a perfectly flat, and, for the greater part, uncultivated waste; though it is evident, from the number of canals by which it is traversed, and the immense ruins that cover its surface, that it must formerly have been both well peopled and cultivated. About two miles above Hella, the more prominent ruins commence, among which, at intervals, are discovered, in considerable quantities, burnt and unburnt bricks and bitumen: two vast mounds in particular attract attention from their size, and these are situated on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. At the time of his visit, there were scarcely any remains of ruins visible, immediately opposite on the western bank, but there were some of stupendous magnitude on that side, about six miles to the south-west of Hella.

The first grand mass of ruins described by Mr. Rich, extends one thousand one hundred yards in length, and eight hundred in its greatest breadth, its figure nearly resembling that of a quadrant; its hight is irregular; but the most elevated part may be about fifty or sixty feet above the level of the plain, and it has been dug into for the purpose of procuring bricks. On the north is a valley of five hundred and fifty yards in length, the area of which is covered with tussocks of rank grass, and crossed by a line of ruins of very little elevation. To this succeeds the second grand heap of ruins, the shape of which is nearly a square, seven hundred yards in length and breadth, and having its south-west angle connected with the north-west angle of the mounds of Amran, by a ridge of considerable hight, and nearly one hundred yards in breadth. This he thought the most interesting part of the ruins of Babylon; every vestige discoverable in it declaring it to have been composed of buildings far superior to all the rest which had left traces in the eastern quarter: the bricks were of the finest description; and, notwithstanding this was the grand storehouse of them, and that the greatest supplies had been and then were constantly drawn from it, they appeared still to be abundant. But the operation of extracting the bricks had caused great confusion, and contributed much to increase the difficulty of deciphering the original design of this mound, as, in search of them, the workmen had pierced into it in every direction, hollowing out deep ravines and pits, and throwing up the rubbish in heaps on the surface. In some places they had bored into the solid mass, forming winding caverns and subterraneous passages, which, from their being left without adequate support, sometimes fell and buried the workmen in the rubbish. In all these excavations, walls of burnt brick, laid in lime mortar of a very good quality, are seen; and, in addition to the substances generally strewed on the surfaces of all these mounds, here are found fragments of alabaster vessels, fine earthenware, marble, and great quantities of varnished tiles, the glazing and coloring of which are surprisingly fresh. In a hollow near the southern part, Mr. Rich found a sepulchral urn of earthenware, which had been broken in digging, and near it lay some human bones, which pulverized with the touch.

“Not more than two hundred yards,” he says, “from the northern extremity of the above mound is a ravine hollowed out by those who dig for bricks, in length nearly a hundred yards, and thirty feet wide, by forty or fifty deep. On one side of it, a few yards of wall remain standing, the face of which is very clean and perfect, and which appears to have been the front of some building. The opposite side is so confused a mass of rubbish, that it would seem as if the ravine had been worked through a solid building. Under the foundations at the southern end an opening is made, which discovers a subterraneous passage seven feet in hight, and winding to the south, floored and walled with large brick, laid in bitumen and covered over with pieces of sandstone, a yard thick, and several yards long, on which the whole pressure is so great as to have given a considerable degree of obliquity to the side walls of the passage. The superstructure is cemented with bitumen, other parts of the ravine with mortar, and the bricks all have writing on them. The northern end of the ravine appears to have been crossed by an extremely thick wall of yellowish brick, cemented with a brilliant white mortar, which has been broken through in hollowing it out; and a little to the north is sculptured a lion of colossal dimensions, standing on a pedestal, of a coarse kind of gray granite, and of rude workmanship; in the mouth is a circular aperture, into which a man may introduce his fist.”