Under the protection of the common head the caravans of the Phenicians travelled in peace along secure roads from the Syrian Sea to the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Persian Gulf, and the east coast of the Red Sea. The impulse which the trade thereby acquired might cause the supremacy of Nebuchadnezzar to appear to the Phenician cities not only tolerable, but advantageous. The easier and more secure connection with Babylon might, at any rate, teach them to forget in part the loss which their market had suffered by the fall of Nineveh. The increased productiveness of agriculture, the livelier trade, and consequent growth of industry, could not but raise the power and resources of the Babylonian kingdom. The more lively the intercourse between the two great halves of the kingdom separated by the desert, the more passable the desert became, the easier was it for troops to march from Babylon to Gaza, from Harran to Hamath. And if the canals of the Babylonian plain carried the ships of the Euphrates to the Tigris, and left no field without irrigation, they at the same time largely increased the means of defence in the native land.
The numerous invasions which Babylonia had suffered from the Assyrians must have been held in lively recollection, and the founder of the new kingdom could not omit to bestow his earnest attention on the mode of preventing such dangers for the future. They were only possible on the side of Media. So far as the difference of force in comparison with Media was not removed by the better frontier, the more homogeneous population, and the greater productive power in Babylonia, it was necessary to attempt to remove it by the erection of fortresses in the land. As the attacks of the Assyrians had taken place from the North, the attacks of the Medes were also to be expected from that quarter. Mesopotamia might, in case of necessity, be abandoned, if the native land were made secure. Babylonia had excellent bulwarks on the East and West in the Euphrates and the Tigris; in the North the line of canals, especially the new and broad canal, Nahr Malka, formed a similar protection. The basin of Sippara was not merely constructed with a view to the cultivation of the soil and the navigation; it was at the same time calculated that the supply of water contained in it was sufficient to change the most northern of these canals into deep watercourses. The sluices were guarded by the fortress of Sippara.[692] How destructive this basin would one day be to his metropolis, how it would render vain the fruit of all his labours, Nebuchadnezzar never dreamed. If every hostile power in the East and West had to cross a wide river in the face of the Babylonian army, the two rivers from Sippara downwards could now be filled by opening the great reservoir and by closing the sluices of the Pallakopas in such a manner that it became more difficult than ever to cross them. The same was the case with the canals. But the difficulties here were not so great, and they did not satisfy Nebuchadnezzar. In order to strengthen the defence of the northern border, in order to protect the basin of Sippara, on which depended the filling of the upper canals and the feeding of the lower course of both streams, to make more secure the fertile part of Babylonia, Nebuchadnezzar built a strong wall, extending from the Euphrates to the Tigris, above the four canals and the fortified Sippara. This fortification the Greeks call "the Median wall." It was, in fact, intended to meet the attacks of the Medes. Had Nebuchadnezzar chosen for the line of the wall the point at which the two rivers most nearly approach each other, the length of it would have been little more than 25 miles; but as Sippara and all the land of the canals had to be protected, the wall must have been placed farther to the north. It appears to have left the Euphrates at Ssifeira below the modern Feludsha, and, extending in a north-easterly direction, it reached the Tigris at some distance above the modern Bagdad. The length was thus from 60 to 75 miles. The wall was constructed of burnt bricks joined together by mortar of asphalt; according to Xenophon,[693] who saw parts of it still standing, the breadth was 20 feet and the height 100 feet. The native land, the centre of the kingdom, was thus protected; and even when it was lost, in spite of the protection of the two streams, the canals, and the long wall, the metropolis was intended to present impregnable fortresses to the enemy.
Babylon had no doubt suffered the most severe wounds in all the land of Chaldæa through the capture by Assurbanipal. Berosus says: "Nebuchadnezzar restored the old city, and also built a new one, and that the besieger might not enter the city by averting the stream, he surrounded the inner city as well as the outer with three walls, one of burnt bricks, the other two of unburnt bricks and bitumen, and thus he fortified it in a very striking manner, and adorned the gates with great splendour."[694] Herodotus, who saw the city more than one hundred years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, when it had been four times captured by Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, describes it thus: "The city is situated in a wide plain, and forms a square of 120 stades on each side, so that the whole circuit reaches 480 stades. It is divided into two parts, and the river Euphrates flows through the middle. It is surrounded by a broad and deep trench, which is always filled with water. The soil taken from this trench was made into bricks, and burnt; and these bricks were applied, first to lining the trench and then to building the wall. The wall is 50 Babylonian cubits in thickness and 200 cubits in height. The bricks are held together by bitumen-mortar, and at every thirtieth course they are separated by a layer of reeds. On the wall are houses of a single chamber, built on either side opposite each other, and yet sufficient space is left between them for a chariot and four to pass. In the wall are one hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side-posts. The wall has wings which run along the river on either side, and the banks are cased with masonry of burnt bricks. The city itself is filled with houses of three and four stories, through which are straight streets—both those which lead to the river and the rest. Those which run down to the river have each a brazen gate in the masonry on the river, through which you pass on steps of burnt brick into the water.[695] And within this wall, which is as it were the corslet of the city, is another wall, not much inferior in strength to the other, but less in extent. Of the two parts of the city the centre of the one is occupied by the royal citadel, the centre of the other by the temple of Belus with the gates of brass."[696] In another passage Herodotus gives the names of some of the gates of Babylon; he mentions the gate of Belus, the gate of Semiramis, the gate of Ninus, the gate of the Chaldæans, and the gate of the Cissians.
That gates in Babylon could not be named after Ninus and Semiramis, i. e. after fictitious rulers, and hardly after the Chaldæans, needs no proof in detail. But the narrative of Herodotus, in which these names are found, goes back in other respects to Medo-Persian poems, which, as we already found, could tell of Ninus and Semiramis. The Babylonians were better acquainted with the history of Assyria. It is more striking that in the description of the city Herodotus speaks of the walls and gates of Babylon as if they were uninjured; and yet, some twenty years after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus took Babylon by storm; and scarcely twenty years afterwards Darius overcame the city, after a siege which lasted nearly two years. A new rebellion quickly followed, to be crushed by a third capture of the city; and even after this a new rising of the Babylonians was again repressed by Xerxes. After this series of struggles the walls and gates could not have remained uninjured, and Herodotus himself tells us that Darius destroyed the gates after the long siege.[697] Were Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes likely to allow the Babylonians, after each capture of the city, to restore the walls in which the city trusted?—were they not rather likely to take care that after each capture long portions of the wall should be destroyed, and so remain?
Next to Herodotus in point of time, Xenophon and Ctesias are our informants about Babylon. Xenophon did not see the city; he only came within 45 miles of it. He contents himself with remarking that Babylon, the wealthiest city in Asia, was surrounded by strong and lofty walls; that the Euphrates flowed through it; that it contained a palace and citadels, that the doors of the houses were made of palm-wood.[698] Ctesias, who had been in Babylon, gives to the wall of the city, "through which the Euphrates flows," a circuit of 360 stades (45 miles). The wall, built of burnt brick and bitumen, broken by numerous large towers, was 50 fathoms in height; and on either bank of the river ran a protecting wall, equal in strength to the city wall. The length of these walls was about 160 stades. His description of the two royal citadels, "both of which lay on the river," one on the west side, the other on the east—the former was surrounded by a triple wall, and had a circuit of 60 stades, while the other on the east side was only half the size—his description of the golden statues of gods in the temple of Belus, and the golden altar and furniture, is already known to us (I. 293). About half a century after Ctesias, Cleitarchus and the companions of Alexander of Macedon inform us that the wall of Babylon had a circuit of 365 stades; the height they give at 50 cubits; the width allowed ample room for two wagons to pass each other. Two hundred and fifty towers rose above the wall, of a corresponding height and thickness. Between the wall and the houses was left a clear space of two plethra.[699] That the number of towers was so small in comparison with the circuit of the wall is no reason for wonder—so Diodorus or his authority adds—for the city was surrounded by a wide belt of marshes, and it did not appear to be necessary to build towers where the marshes afforded sufficient protection.[700]
The accounts which have been preserved of the stay of Alexander of Macedon in Babylon also prove the existence of two royal citadels, one on each bank of the Euphrates. In the last days of his life Alexander lived in the king's palace, from which the house of Bagoas, with whom on one occasion he banqueted, was distant ten stades.[701] From the banquet-hall in this palace, where he had given his commands to his generals, and rested till the dusk of the evening, he was carried in a litter to the river, and conducted on board ship to the park on the other side of the river, where he bathed and rested. After spending three days there in his chamber—on the first day he played at dice with Medius; on the second he listened to the account of Nearchus about the voyage from the Indus through the great sea; on the third he bade his generals enter to receive instructions for setting out in three days—he caused himself to be brought into the house near "the large bath;" he gave orders for the generals to keep watch in the portico, and the Chiliarchs and the Pentacosiarchs before the doors. When more seriously ill he was conveyed from the garden into the more distant royal palace, where the generals entered, and the soldiers forced their way into his presence.[702]
Leaving out of sight what may have remained, and did remain uninjured, of the outer walls and towers of the city, when Herodotus and Ctesias were in Babylon, and when the Macedonians of Alexander saw the city, it is clear that in the fifth and fourth centuryB.C. so much remained standing that the line of the trenches and the wall could be clearly traced. If the circuit of 365 stades, given by Cleitarchus, is clearly a fiction derived from the number of days in the Babylonian year, we shall still be able to give the preference to the 360 stades of Ctesias over the 480 stades of Herodotus, though Aristotle remarks, "Babylon reached the extent of a nation, not of a city."[703] Since, as Ctesias also tells us, the two walls on the Euphrates were nearly 160 stades in length, the wall on each bank would be nearly 80 stades in length, i. e. about 10 miles. Supposing that the Euphrates passed diametrically through the city, which was not the case, the city wall, if we also suppose that the city, as Herodotus says, was an exact square, would at the utmost have a circuit of 320 stades, i. e. of about 40 miles. We cannot therefore avoid the conclusion that in the 480 stades of Herodotus the 160 stades of the two walls on the river were included; if he inquired about the total length of the city walls the answer may very well have included the walls by the river.
Berosus told us above that Nebuchadnezzar surrounded the old city as well as the new, the inner city as well as the outer, with a triple wall. By the outer city we must understand the new city, which, according to Berosus, Nebuchadnezzar built. The old city lay, like the old citadel (I. 298), on the west bank of the Euphrates. Of this old citadel the remains of a square keep on the river, now called Abu Ghozeilat, are still in existence. Herodotus, and the Greek authorities after him, know nothing of an old and a new city, they only knew a city divided into two parts by the Euphrates. Herodotus does not speak of three walls but only of two, an outer and an inner wall, "hardly inferior in strength to the other, but of less extent," (p. 369). If to these two walls of Herodotus we reckon the walls which enclosed the fortresses on each side of the Euphrates, Herodotus would be in agreement with Berosus. But Ctesias and the companions of Alexander know of one wall only, enclosing Babylon. It would be very remarkable that within half a century or even a century after the time of Herodotus, no trace was left of the two inner walls mentioned by him. Herodotus allows for the outer wall a height of 200 cubits, i. e. of 300 feet, and a breadth of 75 feet: Ctesias mentions the same height, (50 fathoms). Moreover, Ctesias allows a similar height for the second wall of the old citadel, and a height of 70 fathoms for the towers; the third wall was higher still (I. 298). The companions of Alexander allow a height of only 50 cubits for the walls of Babylon. The walls of the island city of Tyre, on the side turned towards the mainland, were 150 feet in height. Xenophon saw strips of wall 150 feet in height still standing on the site of ancient Nineveh. We saw above that the Median wall of Nebuchadnezzar, the first line of defence for the land, was 100 feet in height, and 20 feet in breadth; hence we may conclude that the walls of Babylon must certainly have been stronger and higher. A Hebrew contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar speaks emphatically of the "broad walls," "the lofty gates" of Babylon; he tells us that "Babylon reached to the heavens, and the height of the fortress none could climb."[704] As neither Cyrus nor Darius with all their siege material could make any impression on the walls of Babylon; as Nebuchadnezzar would certainly make the walls of Babylon stronger than the walls of Chalah and Nineveh, so that neither battering-rams nor besieging-towers could injure them, neither arrows nor scaling-ladders could over-top them, we have good ground for assuming that Nebuchadnezzar strengthened the wall already in existence, and raised it to a height of 200 feet, (Pliny gives it a height of more than 200 feet);[705] that the towers rose to 300 feet. It was the standing walls of towers of this height which caused Herodotus and Ctesias to believe that the wall was once of the same height throughout. A height of 200 feet presupposes a corresponding breadth of about 40 feet, which leaves for the gangway behind the towers breadth sufficient for a chariot and four horses, or for two wagons of burden.
We may maintain the assertion of Berosus, that it was Nebuchadnezzar who added a new city on the eastern bank of the Euphrates to the old city on the western bank, so that the Euphrates henceforth flowed through the city. We have already seen that the great temple of Bel Merodach, Bit Saggatu, the tower of Babel, was on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, opposite to the old city and the citadel of the ancient kings, who ruled over Babylon before the times of the Assyrian dominion; we recognised the remains of it in the most northern heap of the ruins of Babylon on that bank of the river, the heap of broken bricks now called Babil. In the ruins we can recognise the traces of a square structure, the sides of which are directed to the four quarters of the sky. Its extent reaches 1500 or 1600 feet; the ruins now rise 140 feet above the level of the Euphrates. Herodotus allows a stadium (600 feet) for each side of the tower; the outer wall with the gates of brass was two stades on each side.[706] Berosus tells us: "Nebuchadnezzar built a second palace beside the palace of his father, which abutted upon it. To describe its height and splendour would be superfluous: it was large and quite extraordinary."[707] Since the bricks of a ruin-heap to the south of the remains of the tower of Belus, on the east bank of the Euphrates, now called El Kasr—bricks which are twelve inches long and as many broad, and three inches in thickness—bear on the under side the stamp of Nebuchadnezzar, we are certain that the restorers of the kingdom, Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, built their residences on this side of the Euphrates, opposite to the palace of the ancient kings. It is these which Ctesias has described to us as the smaller royal citadel, lying on the eastern bank, and enclosed by a wall of 30 stades in length. He dwells on the statues of brass to be found here, and the descriptions of battles and hunting-scenes (I. 298). So far as the fragments allow us to see, the palaces of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar formed a square structure, which, 1600 feet in length, ran from north to south, close along the bank of the river: from the bank towards the east the breadth of the ruins is 1200 feet. The remains still rise about 70 feet above the river. Slabs of stone discovered in these ruins bear the inscription: "Great palace of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babel, son of Nabopolassar, king of Babel, the worshipper of Nebo and Merodach his lords."[708] Among tiles and bricks, yellow and white, we find here a number of glazed tiles, with brightly-coloured remains of pictures in relief, of horses' hoofs, and lions' paws, of parts of the human body, curled beards, and long hair, which prove that the walls of the palace or the sides of the rooms were adorned with reliefs, in mosaic, of hunting-scenes and battles. Like Assyrian plastic work, these remains are heavy, and mostly exaggerated in the modelling. The lion of granite, already mentioned, (I. 302) was discovered in the ruin-heap of Kasr.
In this citadel, so Berosus informs us, "Nebuchadnezzar erected platforms on stone pillars, which he caused to have the appearance of mountains, inasmuch as he so arranged them that they were planted with trees of every kind. This hanging garden (paradisus), as it was called, he built to please his wife, who had been brought up in the Median district, and wished to have a scene like her own home."[709] Nebuchadnezzar might gladly pay honour to Amyite, the daughter of Cyaxares, whose hand had been the seal of the league between Media and Babylonia against Assyria. Abydenus narrates, after Berosus, that "Nebuchadnezzar adorned the royal citadel with trees, and called the work the hanging gardens."[710] Diodorus also describes what he too calls the paradisus, by the name in use for such things in Iran: "To please a Persian lady these gardens were intended to imitate the mountain meadows and the tree-gardens of her land." "The paradisus" so we are told in Diodorus, "was 400 feet on every side; it had an ascent like a mountain, and stories, one over the other, so that it looked like a theatre. Under the ascent were vaults, which bore the weight of the garden, in moderate height one over the other. The highest vault, which supported the highest layer of the garden, was 50 cubits in height, so that it was of an equal height with the towers of the outer wall (of the citadel). The walls of the pleasure-garden were artificially strengthened; they were 22 feet in width; the passages were 10 feet in width: the caps of the vaults were covered with stone slabs of 16 feet in length and 4 feet in breadth. On these were layers of reeds, with a large amount of bitumen, and upon this a double layer of burnt tiles united with gypsum; on this followed a third layer of plates of lead, that the moisture of the earth might not penetrate into the masonry. On the lead plates was then placed as much earth as was sufficient for the roots of the largest trees. This earth was then smoothed and planted with trees of every kind, which could give pleasure by their size and grace. In the vaults were various objects of the royal household economy; one of the uppermost contained the machines by which the water was raised through pipes from the river in such a manner that no one could observe it from the outside."[711] Strabo gives the following description: "The garden lies on the river. It is a square plantation, 400 feet on every side. The garden is supported by vaults which rest on arches, one of which is supported on another by means of cube-shaped pillars. The pillars are hollow and filled with earth, so that they can receive the roots of the largest trees. The vaults and arches are built of burnt tiles and bitumen. The uppermost story has an ascent like a stair-case, and abutting on this are pumping-works by which the persons appointed for the office continually raise water from the Euphrates into the garden."[712] This hanging garden is the paradisus into which Alexander was brought from the old citadel on the other side of the river. We saw above that one side of the garden adjoined the great bath and the other the palace, i. e. the palace of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar. In the third and most southern heap of ruins in Babylon, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, now called Amran ibn Ali, modern explorers believe that they have discovered the site of the hanging gardens which rose from the Euphrates. The bricks of the ruins bear the name of Nebuchadnezzar, but one has been found among them bearing the name of Esarhaddon of Asshur. We saw that Esarhaddon built much in Babylon, but hardly on this site; the inscription of the brick speaks of buildings at Bit Saggatu, but the brick itself has no doubt been brought to this site from some other place owing to the changes which Babylon underwent after the reign of Esarhaddon. According to the position of these ruins the buildings of which they are the remains formed an irregular square; the side on the river measures more than 1800 feet in length: the eastern side is about 1100 feet, the depth about 1300 feet. If this is really the site of the terrace gardens, the other ruins may be the remnants of the great bathing-house, of which we heard above (p. 372). The corpses found in the vaults of these ruins, of which the coffins are formed by bricks placed together, belong to the period of the rule of the Parthians over Babylon.[713]