Museum of Antiquity: A Description of Ancient Life

by L. W. Yaggy; T. L. Haines

It may be conjectured that, in their general plan, the Babylonian palaces and temples resembled those of Assyria. We know that the arts, the religion, the customs, and the laws of the two kindred people were nearly identical. They spoke, also, the same language, and used, very nearly, the same written characters. One appears to have borrowed from the other; and, without attempting to decide the question of the priority of the independent existence as a nation and of the civilization of either people, it can be admitted that they had a certain extent of common origin, and that they maintained for many centuries an intimate connection. We find no remains of columns at Babylon, as none have been found at Nineveh. If such architectural ornaments were used, they must have been either of wood or of brick.

Although the building materials used in the great edifices of Babylon may seem extremely mean when compared with those employed in the stupendous palace-temples of Egypt, and even in the less massive edifices of Assyria, yet the Babylonians appear to have raised, with them alone, structures which excited the wonder and admiration of the most famous travelers of antiquity. The profuse use of color, and the taste displayed in its combination, and in the ornamental designs, together with the solidity and vastness of the immense structure upon which the buildings proudly stood, may have chiefly contributed to produce this effect upon the minds of strangers. The palaces and temples, like those of Nineveh, were erected upon lofty platforms of brickwork. The bricks, as in Assyria, were either simply baked in the sun, or were burned in the kiln. The latter are of more than one shape and quality. Some are square, others are oblong. Those from the Birs Nimroud are generally of a dark red color, while those from the Mujelibe are mostly of a light yellow. A large number of them have inscriptions in a complex cuneiform character peculiar to Babylon. These superscriptions have been impressed upon them by a stamp, on which the whole inscription was cut in relief. Each character was not made singly, as on the Assyrian bricks, and this is the distinction between them. Almost all the bricks brought from the ruins of Babylon bear the same inscription, with the exception of one or two unimportant words, and record the building of the city by Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nabubaluchun. We owe the interpretation of these names to the late Dr. Hincks.

It may not be out of place to add a few remarks upon the history of Babylon. The time of the foundation of this celebrated city is still a question which does not admit of a satisfactory determination, and into which we will not enter. Some believe it to have taken place at a comparatively recent date; but if, as the Egyptian scholars assert, the name of Babylon is found on monuments of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, we have positive evidence of its existence at least in the fifteenth century Before Christ. After the rise of the Assyrian empire, it appears to have been sometimes under the direct rule of the kings of Nineveh, and at other times to have been governed by its own independent chiefs. Expeditions against Babylon are recorded in the earliest inscriptions yet discovered in Assyria; and as it has been seen, even in the time of Sennacherib and his immediate predecessors, large armies were still frequently sent against its rebellious inhabitants. The Babylonian kingdom was, however, almost absorbed in that of Assyria, the dominant power of the East. When this great empire began to decline Babylon rose for the last time. Media and Persia were equally ready to throw off the Assyrian yoke, and at length the allied armies of Cyaxares and the father of Nebuchadnezzar captured and destroyed the capital of the Eastern world.

Babylon now rapidly succeeded to that proud position so long held by Nineveh. Under Nebuchadnezzar she acquired the power forfeited by her rival. The bounds of the city were extended; buildings of extraordinary size and magnificence were erected; her victorious armies conquered Syria and Palestine, and penetrated into Egypt. Her commerce, too, had now spread far and wide, from the east to the west, and she became "a land of traffic and a city of merchants."

But her greatness as an independent nation was short-lived. The neighboring kingdoms of Media and Persia, united under one monarch, had profited no less than Babylon, by the ruin of the Assyrian empire, and were ready to dispute with her the dominion of Asia. Scarcely half a century had elapsed from the fall of Nineveh, when "Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldæans, was slain, and Darius, the Median, took the kingdom." From that time Babylonia sank into a mere province of Persia. It still, however, retained much of its former power and trade, and as we learn from the inscriptions of Bisutun, as well as from ancient authors, struggled more than once to regain its ancient independence.

After the defeat of Darius and the overthrow of the Persian supremacy, Babylon opened its gates to Alexander, who deemed the city not unworthy to become the capital of his mighty empire. On his return from India, he wished to rebuild the temple of Belus, which had fallen into ruins, and in that great work he had intended to employ his army, now no longer needed for war. The priests, however, who had appropriated the revenues of this sacred shrine, and feared lest they would have again to apply them to their rightful purposes, appear to have prevented him from carrying out his design.

This last blow to the prosperity and even existence of Babylon was given by Seleucus when he laid the foundation of his new capital on the banks of the Tigris (B.C. 322). Already Patrocles, his general, had compelled a large number of the inhabitants to abandon their homes, and to take refuge in the desert, and in the province of Susiana. The city, exhausted by the neighborhood of Seleucia, returned to its ancient solitude. According to some authors, neither the walls nor the temple of Belus existed any longer, and only a few of the Chaldæans continued to dwell around the ruins of their sacred edifices.

Still, however, a part of the population appear to have returned to their former seats, for, in the early part of the second century of the Christian era, we find the Parthian king, Evemerus, sending numerous families from Babylon into Media to be sold as slaves, and burning many great and beautiful edifices still standing in the city.

In the time of Augustus, the city is said to have been entirely deserted, except by a few Jews who still lingered amongst the ruins. St. Cyril, of Alexandria, declares, that in his day, about the beginning of the fifth century, in consequence of the choking up of the great canals derived from the Euphrates, Babylon had become a vast marsh; and fifty years later the river is described as having changed its course, leaving only a small channel to mark its ancient bed. Then were verified the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah, that the mighty Babylon should be but "pools of water," that the sea should come upon her, and that she should be covered with the multitude of the waves thereof.

In the beginning of the seventh century, at the time of the Arab invasion, the ancient cities of Babylonia were "a desolation, a dry land and a wilderness." Amidst the heaps that alone marked the site of Babylon there rose the small town of Hillah.