Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume I Part 1.djvu/377

 BABYLON, Duunder of the space within the walls htang under cnltivAtioiL Stnbo, as we have seen, looked upon it as a deaert, when he wrote in the reign of Au- gustus, though, at the same time, manifestly as a place still existing, as he draws a parallel between it and Seleuceia, which, he sajs, was at that tune the greater city; so great, indeed, that Plinj (v. 26) asserts it contained 600,000 inhabitants; aiid ac- cording to Eutrop. (v. 8) at the time of its destruc- tian, 500,000. Indeed, it is the magnitude of Se- knoeui that has misled other writers. Thus Ste- phanus B. speaks of Babylon as a Persian metropolis called Seleuoeui, and Sdonius Apollinaris (ix. 19, 20) describes it as a town intersected by the Tigris, When Lucan speaks of the trophies of Crassus which adorned Babylon, he clearly means Seleuceia. A few years later it was, probably, still occuped by' a oonsiderahle number of inhabitants, as it appears firom 1 Peter, v. 13, that the First Epbtle of St. Peter was written from Babylon, which must have been between a. d. 49 — 63. It has indeed been held by many (though we thmk without any suffi- cient proof) that the word Babylon is here used figuratively for Borne; but it is sJmost certain that St. Peter was not at Rome before a. d. 62, at the earliest, while the story of his having been at Ba- bylon is confirmed by Oosmas Indico-Pleustes, who wrote in the time of Justinian. Again, not more than twenty years earlier there was evidently a considerable multitude (probably of Jews) in Babylon, as they were strong enough to attack and defeat two formidable robbers, Anilaeus and Asinaeus, who had ibr some time occupied a fortress in the neighbourhood. ( Jo- neifh. Ant, zviii. 9.) The writers of the succeeding century differ but little in their accounts. Thus Ludan of Samosata (in the reign of M. Aurelius) speaks of Babylon as a dty whidi once had been remarkable for its nu- merous towers and vast circumference, but which would soon be, like Ninus (Nineveh), a subject for investigation. (Lucian, Charon. 23, Pkiiopatr. 29.) In tihe third century, Eusebius of Caesareia states that the people of the surrounding country, as well as strangers, avoided it, as it had become completely • desert. St Jerome believed that the andent walls had. been repaired, and that they surrounded a park in which the kings of Persia kept animals for hunting. He states that he learnt this from an Elamite fathor redding at Jerusalem, and it is certain that he was satisfied that in his time there were few remains of Babylon. St. Cyril of Alexandreia, about A. d. 412, tells us that the canals drawn from the Euphrates having filled up, the soil of Babylon had become nothing better than a marsh. Theodoret, who died a.d. 460, states it was no longer inhabited dther by Assyrians or Chaldaeans, but only by some Jews, whose houses were few and scattered. He adds that the Euphrates had changed its course, and passed through the town by a canal. Procopus of Gaza, in the middle of the sixth century, speaks of Babylon as a place long destroyed. Ibn Hankal, in A.D. 917, calhi Babel a small village, and states that hardly any remains of Ba- bylon were to be seen. Lastly, Benjamin of Tndela (ed. Asher, 1841), in the twelfth century, asserts that nothing was to be seen but the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's palace, into which no one dared enter, owing to the quan- tity of serpents and scorpions with which the place BABYLON. 859 was infested. (Bich, J^oiyZon, Introd. pp. zzvii — xzix.) The ruins of Babylon, which commence a little S. of the village of Mohawill, 8 miles N. of Hillah, have been examined in modem times by several travellers, and by two in particular, at the interval of seven years, the late Resident at BaghdM, Mr. Bich, in 1811, and Sir Robert E. Porter, in 1818. The results at which they have arrived are nearly identical, and the difference between their measure- ments of some of the mounds is not such as to be of any great importance. According to Mr. Rich, almost all the remains indicative of the formor ex- istence of a great ci^ are to be found on the east side of the river, and consist at presoit of three prindpal mounds, in direction from N. to S., called, respectivdy, by the natives, the Mty'ekbi, the JSTcur, and Amran Ibn AH, from a small moHque still ex- isting on the top of it. On the west side of the river, Mr. Rich thought there were no remains of a city, the banks for many miles being a perfect level. To the NW., however, diere is a considerable mound, called Tawareij; and to the SW., at a distance of 7 or 8 miles, the vast pile called the Btn-i-Nimrud. Of the mounds on the £. side, the Mttjekbe is much the largest, but the Kasr has the most perfect masonry. The whole, however, of the ruins present an extraordinaiy mass of confusion, owing to their having been for centuries a quany from which vast quantities of bricks have been removed for the con- struction of the towns and villages in the neigh- bourhood. Mr. Rich subsequently visited the Birs- i-Nimrud, the size of which is nearly the same as that of the Mujekb^f but the height to the top of the wall is at least 100 feet higher; and he then discusses at some length the question which of these two mounds has the best daim to represent the Tower of Babel of the Bible, and the Temple of Bo- lus of pro&ne authors. His general condusions in- cline in fevour of the BirB-i-Nimrud, but he thinks it is impossible satisfactorify^ to accommodate the descriptions of andent authora with what now re- mains; while it is nowhere stated positively in which quarter of the dty the Temple of Bdus stood. Along the E. side of the river, the line of mounds parallel to the Kasr, at the time Mr. Ridi was there, were, in many places, about 40 feet above the river, which had incroached in some places so much as to lay bare part of a wall built of burnt bricks cemented with bitumen, in which urns containing human bones had been found. East of Billahj about 6 miles, is another great mound, called A I Heimar, constructed of bricks, similar to those at* Babylon. On the publication of Mr. Rich's memoir in the Fundgrvben des Orients, Major Rennell wrote an Essay in 1815, which was printed in the Archaeo- logta, vol. xviii., in which he c(Hnbated some of the views which Mr. Rich had stated in his memoir, which produced a rejoinder from Mr. Rich, written in 1817, in which he goes over again more com- pletely the ground mentioned in his first notice, and points out some things in whidi Major Rennell had been misled by imperfect information. The chief points of discussion are, as to how far any of the ex- isting ruins could be identified with things mentioned in the classical narratives, whether or not the Eu- phrates had ever flowed between the present mounds, and whether the Btrs-i^Ntmrvd could be identified with the Temple of Belus. It is sufiident here to mention that Rennell considered that honour to be- long to the Mujekb^j and Mr. Rich to the Birs-i- A A 4