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Updated: May 17, 2025
That would still be inferior to the Pyramid of Cheops, which is 764 feet square at the base, and yet the diameter of 600 feet for Babil is, no doubt, in excess of its original dimensions. The accumulation of rubbish must have enlarged its base in every direction.
The northern portion of the wall, outside the Babil mound, is the place where the work of destruction is now most actively going on, and this in some places has totally disappeared." LAYARD, Discoveries, &c. p. 110. LAYARD, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 279. LAYARD, Discoveries, &c. p. 503. LAYARD, Discoveries, pp. 499 and 506. This mortar is still employed in the country; it is called kharour.
Koldeway, began excavations on a large scale and with systematic care. The mound Babil is thought to be the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II. An inscription reads: "On the brick wall towards the north my heart inspired me to build a palace for the protecting of Babylon. I built there a palace, like the palace of Babylon, of brick and bitumen."
If, then, all the principal ruins on the east bank of the river, with the exception of the Babil mound and the long lines marking walls or embankments, be accepted as representing the "great palace" or "citadel" of the classical writers we must recognize in the remains west of the ancient course of the river-the oblong square enclosure and the important building at its south-east angle the second or "smaller palace" of Ctesias, which was joined to the larger one, according to that writer, by a bridge and a tunnel.
In conclusion, the mounds of Babil and Kasr and others near them seem to represent the Babylon alike of fact and of Herodotus. It was a smaller city than the Greek historian avers; its length and breadth were nearer four than fourteen miles.
Now these two circumstances, which do not belong at present to the Babil mound, attach to a ruin distant from it about eleven or twelve miles a ruin which is certainly one of the most remarkable in the whole country, and which, if Babylon had really been of the size asserted by Herodotus, might possibly have been included within the walls.
This vale swalloweth vp all heauie things that come vpon it. The people of the countrey call it in their language Babil gehenham, that is to say, Hell doore. As we passed through these deserts, we saw certaine wild beasts, as wild asses all white, Roebucks, wolfes, leopards, foxes, and many hares, whereof we chased and killed many.
It is quite possible that a conical mass of crumbled brick may have been removed from the top of the mound at this time. The difficulty remains that the Babil mound is on the same side of the Euphrates with the ruins of the Great Palace, whereas Herodotus makes the two buildings balance each other, one on the right and the other on the left bank of the stream.
At Babil no explorations have thrown the least light upon the disposition of the building. In the whole of its huge mass, which rises to a height of some 130 feet above the plain, no trace of the separate cubes or of their dimensions is to be found. All the restorations that have been made are purely imaginary.
The only other ancient work of any importance of which some remains are still to be traced is a brick embankment on the left bank of the stream between the Kasr and the Babil mounds, extending for a distance of a thousand yards in a line which has a slight curve and a general direction of S.S.W. The bricks of this embankment are of a bright red color, and of great hardness.
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