Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 2.djvu/73

 Towns and their Defences. 55 their constructors is to be learnt. Not only has the orna- mentation of palace and temple disappeared, the ruling lines and arrangements of their plans are no longer to be traced. It is this no doubt that has discouraged the explorers. While the sites of Calah, Nineveh, and Dour-Saryoukin have been freed of millions of cubic yards of earth, and their concealed buildings explored and laid bare in every direction, no serious excavations have ever been made at Babylon. At long intervals of time a few shafts have been sunk in the flanks of the Kasr, of Babil and the Birs-Nimroud, but they have never been pushed to any great depth ; a few trenches have been run from them, but on no connected system, and only to be soon abandoned. The plain is broken by many virgin mounds into which no pick- axe has been driven, and yet they each represent a structure dating from some period of Babylonian greatness. It would be a noble undertaking to thoroughly explore the three or four great ruins that rise on the site itself, and to examine carefully all the region about them. Such an exploration would require no slight expenditure of time and money, but it could not fail to add considerably to our present knowledge of ancient Chaldaea ; it would do honour to any government that should support it, and still more to the archaeologist who should conduct the inquiry to completion, laying down on his plan the smallest vestige remaining of any ancient detail, and allowing himself to be discouraged by none of the numerous disappointments and deceptions that he would be sure to encounter. Meanwhile it would be profitless to carry our readers into any discussion upon the topography of Babylon. In the absence of ascertained facts nothing could be more arbitrary and con- jectural than the various theories that have been put forward as to the direction of the city walls and their extent. According to George Smith the only line of wall that can now be followed would give a town about eight English miles round. Now Diodorus says that what he calls the Royal City was sixty stades, or within a few yards of seven miles, in circumference. 1 The difference between the two figures is very slight. " In shape the city appears to have been a square with one corner cut off, and the corners of the walls of the city may be said roughly to front the cardinal points. At the north of the city 1 Diodorus, ii. viii. 4, 5.