Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/410

BABYLON. tions, called by the natives Babil, Mujellibeh el-Kasr, Amran-ibn-ali, covering in all a terri- tory of about 50 square miles. These ruins are now being systematically excavated by German explorers, a beginning having been made in 1899 at el-Kasr, beneath which the remains of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar and the temple E-sagila have been discovered. The results show that, while in Herodotus's account (Book I. §§178-187) there are some exaggerations, the city merited the admiration and envy it excited. Its palaces and temples were huge structures on which the skill of ancient civilization was lavished; its marts brought the products of the entire known world together, and traders of many nations gathered in its streets. The site of the 'hanging gardens' — a creation of Nebuchadnezzar — has been located with tolerable certainty at the northern end of the city; and it turns out that this construction, reckoned among the marvels of the world, was a series of terraces, heaped up of earth-mounds, and laid out as a beautiful park. It is a commonly accepted account that Babylon extended over the west bank of the Euphrates.

For the history of Babylon, which is closely bound up with that of the country of which it was so long the capital, see.

See articles and ; and consult: Delitzsch, Babylon (second edition, Leipzig, 1901); Baumstark, "Babylon und Babvlonien," in Pauly Wissowa's Real-Encyklopädie (Stuttgart, 1894-99); Jastrow, "The Palace and Temple of Nebuchadnezzar," Harper's Monthly (1902).

BABYLON. A village in Suffolk County, N. Y., incorporated in 1893; on Great South Bay, here crossed by steam ferry to Fire Island, and on the Long Island Railroad, 37 miles east of New York City (Map: New York, G 5). The village is a popular summer resort, having an admirable beach, and is well known to sportsmen for its fishing. Population, in 1900, 2157.

BAB'YLO'NIA. An ancient country in the district of Mesopotamia, included between the Arabian Desert on the west, the Tigris on the east, and the Persian Gulf on the south, while the northern boundary, never definitely determined, may he roughly fixed above the point (near the modern Bagdad) where the Euphrates and Ti- gris first approach one another. The term Babylonia is not the name given to the country by the Babylonians themselves, but is derived from the name of the capital city Babylon, and because of the importance of the capital is ap- plied in the Old Testament to the entire country, just as, in the north, the city Asshur gives its name to the country Assyria. In the Babylonian inscriptions, the district consists of several di- visions, the southern part being in earliest days known as Shumer, the equivalent of the Hebrew word Shinar, the northern part as Akkad (or Accad). Another designation of a portion of the country was Karduniash, and in the days of the Kassite dynasty (Eighteenth to Twelfth Century B.C.) this was extended to include the whole of Babylonia. In the later Neo-Baby- lonian period, again, the term Akkad was ex- fended to all Babylonia. In the Old Testament we find still another name for all of Babylonia, namely, Chaldæa (Heb. Kasdim) (e.g. Gen. xi. 28; Jer. l. 10; li. 24, etc.). This corresponds

to Kaldu, found in cuneiform inscriptions, which properly belongs to the district southeast of Shinar, bordering directly on the Persian Gulf. Its capital was Bit-Yakin, and its more common name was Tamtim, i.e. 'Sea-Land.' Besides furnishing a dynasty (the Kassite) which ruled Babylonia proper, it retained a position of independence at all times, and the founder of the Neo-Babylonian Kingdom, Nabopolassar (c. 626 B.C.) was a Kaldu or Chaldæan. It was this fact which led the Old Testament writers to make Chaldæa an equivalent of Babylonia, and classical writers fell into the same error. While Babylonia was an exceedingly fertile country, its prosperity was dependent upon a careful control of the annual inundations to which the land was subject by the swelling of the Euphrates and Tigris during the prolonged rainy season, which lasts from November till April. This was accomplished by embankments and the building of canals to direct the waters into the fields, so that in the days of her glory Babylonia presented the appearance of a network of canals. The principal products of the country were wheat and dates. Barley, millet, and vetches were also cultivated in large quantities, and likewise the vine and such fruits as apples, oranges, and pears. Among domestic animals of Babylonia may be mentioned camels, oxen, sheep, goats, horses, and dogs; among wild animals, lions, wild oxen, wild boars, and jackals.

The ancient Babylonians were a people of primitive Semitic stock, physically and linguistically, who moved from the Upper Tigris-Euphrates region some 10,000-8000 B.C. into the valley of the lower rivers, and, mingling with peoples of Aryan and Caucasic race, developed, by 5000 B.C., a remarkable urban civilization, curiously anticipating maiy of the phenomena and problems of modern city life. A number of authorities, Sayce, Schrader, Haupt among others, hold that Babylonian city life, institutions, science, art, literature, and other culture phenomena, including the famous cuneiform writing, were borrowed from a non-Semitic race usually styled Sumerian, or Sumero-Accadian. It is claimed that the inscriptions present evidence that the cuneiform writing was first used for a non-Semitic language. But certain scholars whose opinions are entitled to respect, following the lead of Halévy in 1874, maintain that this so-called Sumerian language was really a sacerdotal dialect of the Semitic. The question is not settled; and it must be admitted that the Sumerian language, if it ever existed, is still imperfectly understood (for further discussion see the article ). Those who accept Halévy's theory also maintain that the Babylonian culture, including the religion, in its oldest form known to us, is so distinctively Semitic that we must for the present rest content with the hypothesis which ascribes the origin of the culture to Semites or to the predominance of the Semitic element in the population. The language spoken by the inhabitants of Babylonia in times that fall within our historical horizon is likewise Semitic; and the Assyrian spoken in the north presents merely dialectical variations from that of the south.

The non-Semitic elements of the population of this region were almost beyond a doubt related to the primitive Aryan tribes of Asia Minor and the peoples of the Caucasus; and if one is to go