Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume II.djvu/205

 BABOON BABYLON 185 nearly as fierce and powerful as the mandrill. The color above is greenish brown, tinged with gray, beneath white; the face is a uniform Drill (Cynocephalus leucophseus). .dull black, and the muzzle has no furrows; the under lip is red. The females are smaller in size, and of a duller color. Other baboons are described, but not with sufficient exactness and authority to admit of a general recogni- tion. Some species of the genus macacus, in- habiting India and its archipelago, have been incorrectly called baboons ; among these may be mentioned M. silenus, Geoff. ; M. rhesus, Geoff. ; M. nemestrinus, Geoff. ; and M. niger, Desm. These, with others, are intermediate between the guenons and the baboons, and in some respects resemble the true cynocephali. A peculiar species has recently been intro- Gelada (G. EuppelUi). duced to the notice of naturalists by Dr. Rilp- pell in his work on the fauna of Abyssinia. This is the gelada (gelada Ruppellii), a large brown baboon, having, when full grown, a very remarkable shaggy mane around his neck and shoulders. About the paws the hair is nearly black. The young gelada is entirely destitute of the hairy mane, and is much lighter in color than the adult animal. BABYLON (Gr. BapvMv, Heb. Babel), an an- cient city in what is now Turkey in Asia, in lat. 32 39' K, Ion. 44 30' E., lying on both banks of the Euphrates, or rather, perhaps, of a broad bayou flowing eastward of the main channel, which formerly ran five or six miles to the west of its present course, close under the walls of Borsippa, the site of the mound of Birs Nimrud, identified as the ancient Babel, about 300 miles above the junction of the Eu- phrates with the Tigris, near the modern vil- lage of Hilleh. According to this view it stood on the E. bank of the Euphrates proper, and at such distance from it as to be- above reach of its inundation ; but the bayou itself, flowing directly through the city, lined with quays, and bordered by great buildings, came to be re- garded as the main river. (For the origin and import of the name, see BABEL ; for the general history of the city, see ASSYEIA, BABYLONIA, and CHALDEA.) Babylon owed its chief great- ness to Nebuchadnezzar, who describes it as " the great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom of my power, and for the honor of my majesty." Herodotus, who saw it about 100 years after the death of that mon- arch, describes it thus : " The city stands on a broad plain, and is an exact square 120 stadia in length each way, so that the entire circuit is 480 stadia. It is surrounded by a broad and deep moat, full of water, behind which rises a wall 50 royal cubits in width and 200 in height (the royal cubit is longer by three fingers' breadth than the common cubit). . . . On the top, along the edges of the wall, they constructed buildings of a single chamber fa- cing one another, leaving between them room for a four-horse chariot to turn. In the circuit of the wall are a hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side posts." As 120 stadia are equal to 14 miles, the walls would measure 56 miles, enclosing an area of 196 sq. m. X)ther writers reduce the circuit of the walls by a fourth, making it 360 stadia. As wo learn that within the walls were included gardens and pasture grounds, it is not be- yond belief that their circuit may have been as great as represented. But the height given for the walls seems incredible. It is agreed that the royal cubit was equal to 22'4 inches. The height of the walls would then have been 373 ft. 4 in., thickness 93 ft. 4 in. For all purposes of defence a wall of 60 feet is as good as one of any greater height. Strabo and the historians of Alexander reduce the 200 cubits to 50, which has led some to sus- pect that Herodotus wrote palms instead of cubits. "My own belief," says Sir Henry Rawlinson, "is that the height of the walls of Babylon did not exceed 60 or 70 feet."