Page:Herodotus and the Empires of the East.djvu/22

16 water. Above this there is a framework sustaining two block wheels, about which the ropes run. From this a decline is cut landward, which the oxen (ordinarily there are two wheels together) descend to drag up the skins and ascend to lower them. To the bottom of each skin is attached a long rope, and to the neck a shorter one; so that the neck is held up and the water held in until the wicker platform is reached, on which, by the action of the ropes themselves, it is poured out. From this platform it is distributed, sometimes to a great distance, by little mud-built channels. The wheels are in operation from before sunrise until after sunset." ("Nippur; or, Explorations and Adventures on the Euphrates." Peters. Vol. I., 135 fg.)

The cuneiform inscriptions, thus far discovered, show that canals, dikes, and aqueducts were constructed by Ḫammurabi (c. 2250 B.C.), Samsu-iluna (2232–2197), Tiglath-Pileser (c. 1120–1100), Ashur-dan II. (c. 930–911), Ashur-naṣirpal (884–860), Sennacherib (705–681), and Nebuchadrezar (605–562). In the place above quoted (I., 193) Herodotus mentions a great navigable canal. This may be the canal Pallacopas, mentioned by several classic writers—e. g., Arrian VII., 21—which excited the astonishment of Alexander the Great. It began below Babylon and stretched westward from the Euphrates in the direction of northwest to southeast as far as the Persian Gulf. But perhaps Herodotus may have meant the great "royal canal" (cf. Strabo, XVI., I, 27; Pliny, H. N. VI., 120), navigable for grain transports, which connected the Tigris and Euphrates and whose construction Berossus assigns to Nebuchadrezar.

The two streams to which Mesopotamia is so much