mised him as a reward for the toil he and his army had undergone before Tyre. He accordingly made a conqueft of that country, as we have related in the hiftory of the Egyptians, and brought from thence an immenfe booty, and an incredible number of captives. Probably at this time he alfo conquered the Ethiopians, Lybians, and the other nations mentioned by the prophet *.

He adorns This prince, whom we have feen a warrior beyond all the and enBabylonian monarchs who went before him, having happily larges Pa- finifhed all his wars, put the laft hand to the building, or rather byl.n. to the embellishing of Babylon, which under him attained that fplendor which raised it above all the cities of the eaft. To dwell particularly on the varieties in the authors that have spoken of this city, would be both endless and fruitless. We fhall therefore chiefly adhere to the accurate defcription given us by the learned Prideaux. Semiramis is faid by fome t, and Belus by others, to have firft founded this city; but by whomsoever it was founded, it was Nebuchadnezzar that made it one of the wonders of the world. The most famous works in and about it, were the walls of the city, the temple of Belus, Nebuchadnezzar's palace, the hanging gardens, the banks of the river, the artificial lake and canals.

Fabylon

defcribed.

The city was furrounded with walls, in thickness 87 feet, in height 350 feet, and in compafs 480 furlongs, or 60 of our miles. Thus Herodotus, who was himself at Babylon, and is the antienteft author that hath wrote of this matter. Thefe walls formed an exact square, each fide of which was fifteen miles in length, and all built of large bricks cemented together with bitumen, a glutinous flime which iffues out of the earth in that country, and in a fhort time grows harder than the very brick and stone which it cements. The city was encompaffed without the walls with a vaft ditch, filled with water, and lined with bricks on both fides; and as the earth that was dug out of it ferved to make the bricks, we may judge of the largeness of the ditch from the height and thickness of the walls. In the whole compafs of the wall there were 100 gates, that is, twenty-five on each of the fides, all made of folid brafs. Between every two of thefe gates, at proper diftances, were three towers, and four more at the four corners of the great square, befides three betwixt each of these corners, and the next gate on either fide, and each of these towers was ten feet higher than the wall. But this is to be understood only of those parts of the walls where towers were needful for defence; for fome parts of them being upon a morafs, and inacceffible by an enemy, there the labour and coft was fpared, fo that the whole number of the towers amounted only to 250. From each of the 25 gates in the fides of this fquare went a ftrait ftreet to the correfponding gate in the oppofite wall, fo that the grand streets

Ezek. xxx. 4. + Herod. Ctef. Juftin.

+Q Curt.

werc

were 50 in number, and 150 feet broad, each 15 miles long, 25 of them croffing the other 25 exactly at right angles. There was alfo four grand ftreets round the city next to the walls, zoo feet broad, having houses on one fide, and the walls on the other. By the interfection of the 50 ftreets the city was divided into 676 fquares, each two miles and a quarter in compaís. Round thefe fquares on every fide towards the streets tood the houses, all of three or four ftories in height, and beautified with all manner of ornaments, and the space within each of these squares was all void, and taken up by yards and gardens, and the like, either for pleasure or convenience. A branch of the Euphrates divided the city into two, running through the midst of it from north to fouth, over which in the very middle of the city was a bridge a furlong in length, and 30 feet broad. At each end of this bridge was a magnificent palace, the old palace on the eaft fide, which took up four of the fquares above-mentioned, and the new palace on the west fide nine. The temple of Belus, which ftood next to the old palace, took up another of the fame fquares. The whole city tood in a moft extenfive plain of a deep and fat foil. That part or half of it on the eaft fide of the river was the old city, and the other on the weft was added by Nebuchadnezzar. The form of the whole was feemingly borrowed from Nineveh, and its wall was of the fame circuit, but being an exact fquare, it was more capacious than the other, which was a parallellogram, or oblong fquare. Nebuchadnezzar having, in conjunction with his father, deftroyed that old royal feat of the Affyrian empire, propofed that this new imperial feat fhould rather exceed it than not. It plainly appears however that the city was never wholly inhabited, it never having time to grow up to what Nebuchadnezzar vifibly intended to have made it; for about twenty-five years after his death, Cyrus removing the feat of the empire to Shufhan, Babylon fell by degrees into utter decay. When Alexander came to Babylon, Quintus Curtius tells us no more than ninety furlongs of it was then built, which can no otherwise be understood than of fo much in length, and if we allow the breadth to be the fame, which is as much as can be allowed, it will follow that no more than 8100 fquare furlongs were then built upon. The 6300 remaining fquare furlongs, Curtius tells us, were plowed and fown. Befides, that the air might be freer and more wholefome, the houses were not built contiguous, but void fpaces were left between them. So that putting all this together it will appear that Babylon was fo large a city in defign rather than reality, the much greater part of it, according to this account, being never built. In this refpect therefore it muft give place to Nineveh, which appears to have been fully inhabited from the number of its infants mentioned in Jonah, namely 120,000, which reckoning in thofe of two years of age, will be more than three times as many as there are in London of the fame age.

The tem

ple of Belus.

The two palaces.

The hang

ing gardens.

The next great work of Nebuchadnezzar was the temple of Be us. The wonderful tower however that stood in the middle of it was built many ages before him, that and the famous tower of Babel being generally fuppofed to be the fame ftructure, a defcription of which we have already given. Till the times of Nebuchadnezzar it is thought this tower was all the temple of Belus; but as he did by the other antient buildings of the city, fo he did by this, making great_additions thereto by vaft edifices erected round it, in a fquare of two furlongs on every fide, which exceeded the fquare at the temple of Jerufalem by 1800 feet. Thefe buildings were inclofed by a wall, which is fuppofed to have extended round one of the great fquares of the city. In this wall were feveral gates leading into the temple all of folid brafs, which it is thought may have been made out of the brazen fea, and brazen pillars, and other veffels and ornaments of that kind, which Nebuchadnezzar had tranfported from Jerufalem, and is faid to have dedicated in the temple of Bel. In this temple were feveral images or idols of mafly gold, one of them mentioned by Diodorus 40 feet in heighth, which the learned Prideaux thinks may have been the fame with that fet up in the plain of Dura. Its height is faid to have been 60 cubits; but as the breadth is only reckoned fix, to bring it to any degree of proportion, we must fuppofe that in the account of the heighth, the pedeftal on which the image flood was alfo included. Nine feet, or fix cubits breadth, between the fhoulders, according to the common proportions of a man, would have required the height of the image to have been but 40 feet and a half, which is very near the account of Diodorus.

Next this temple, on the fame eaft fide of the river, ftood the old palace of the kings of Babylon; and exactly oppofite to it on the other fide of the river was the new palace, eight miles in circumference, and four times as big as the other. It was furrounded with three walls, one within another, and ftrongly fortified according to the way of thofe times.

But what was moft wonderful in it were the hanging gardens which Nebuchadnezzar made in complaifance to his wife Amyite, who being a Mede, and retaining a strong inclination for the mountains and forefts of her own country, defired to have fomething like them at Babylon. They are faid to have contained a fquare of four plethra, or 400 feet on each fide, and to have confifted of terraces one above another, carried up to the height of the wall of the city, the afcent from terrace to terrace being by ftairs ten feet wide. The whole pile confifted of fubftantial arches upon arches, and was ftrengthened by a wall furrounding it on every fide twenty-two feet thick. The floor of every terrace was thus formed. The arches were firft covered with ftones fixteen feet long and four broad, and over thefe were laid reeds mixed with a great quantity of bitumen, which was again covered with two courfes of bricks, clofely cemented together, with plafter; and sheets of lead being laid over these, ferved for a bottom to the mould of the garden, which was

deep

deep enough to give root to the greatest trees, and fuch were planted in every terrace, befides other trees, plants, and flowers that were proper for a garden of pleasure. Upon the uppermost of these terraces was a refervoir, fupplied by a certain engine with water from the river, which ferved to water all the gardens.

The

39

tificial ca.

nals, and

lake.

The other works attributed to Nebuchadnezzar by Berofus and Abydenus were the banks of the river, the artificial canals, and the great artificial lake, faid to have been funk by Semi- banks, arramis. The canals were cut from the Euphrates to carry off the water when it overflowed into the Tigris. The lake was on the weft fide of Babylon, and according to the lowest computation, forty miles fquare and 160 in compafs, and in depth thirty-five feet, as we read in Herodotus; or according to Megasthenes, feventy-five. This lake was dug to receive the waters of the river, while the banks were building on each fide of it. But both the lake and the canal that led to it were preferved after that work was completed, being found of great ufe, not only to prevent all overflowings, but to keep water all the year, to be let out on proper occafions by fluices, for the improvement of the land. The banks or keys on each fide of the river were built of brick and bitumen from the bottom of the river, and of the fame thicknefs with the walls of the city itfelf. They extended, according to Berofus, twenty miles, probably reaching two miles and a half above the city, and as much below. Oppofite to each street on either fide the river was a brazen gate, with ftairs leading down to the river, the banks having been raised confiderably above the level of the ftreets. Thefe gates were open by day, and fhut by night. Berofus, Megafhenes, and Abydenus, attribute all these works to Nebuchadnezzar; but Herodotus tells us, the bridge, the banks, and the lake, were the work of Nitocris his daughter-in-law *. Whilft nothing feemed wanting to compleat Nebuchadnezzar's happiness, a frightful dream difturbed his repofe, and nezzar's filled him with great anxiety. He dreamed that he faw a great dream of tree, the height of which reached unto heaven, and the fight thereof to all the earth. While he was contemplating the tree, he faw a watcher come down from heaven, and order the tree to be cut down, but to leave the ftump of it in the earth, which was to be expofed for fome time to the dew of heaven. His wife men, aftrologers, and Chaldeans, whom he confulted in the first place, not being able to give him any fatiffactory interpretation of fuch an extraordinary vifion, he at length revealed it to Daniel, who no fooner heard the dream, than he was aftonifhed for one hour, and his thoughts troubled him. He at length told the king, who was very follicitous with him to utter the truth without fear or difguife, that the tree he faw was meant of himself, and by the fall of the tree was fignified,

Prideaux's Connect. v. 1. and the authors cited by him.

Nebuchad

the tree.

and down

fal.

that he should be driven out from the fociety of men, and become as a beaft, in which state he should continue till he fhould be brought to a due fenfe of the fupremacy and omnipotence of God, when the kingdom should revert to him once more, which was meant by the ftump he saw left in the ground. He then concluded with exhorting him to abftain from fin, and to fhew mercy to the poor, that fo he might procure to himself a prolongation of peace and tranquillity.

66

Whether he was really penitent for fome time upon Daniel's admonition, and on that account obtained a refpite of the fentence, is uncertain; but we find that the dream was not fulfilled till about a twelvemonth after, when as he was walking in his palace, or as fome think the fact may have been on the uppermost of the terraces of his hanging garden, and contemplating the glories of the city he had adorned, unable to contain the His pride pride of his heart, he cried out, " Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majefty?" He had no fooner vented himself in this infolent manner than there fell a voice from heaven, faying, "O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee "it is fpoken, the kingdom is departed from thee;" and trait he was driven from the fociety of men, and dwelt with the beasts of the field, and eat grafs as an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles feathers, and his nails like birds claws. It is generally fuppofed, that immediately lofing his fenfes, he wandered about in the fields, and there took up his abode with the cattle, till feven times, or feven years, paffed over his head; but concerning this aftonifhing change, and the duration of it, there is a great variety of opinions. After the expiration of the appointed time he recovered his fenfes, and the ufe of his understanding, and being reftored to his throne, became greater and more powerful than ever. Being hereupon made fully fenfible of the almighty power of the God of heaven and earth, who alone doth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabi tants of the earth, he did, by public decree, make acknowledgment hereof through all the Babylonish empire, praifing his almighty power, and magnifying his mercy. During his diforder, it is faid, his fon Evil-merodach adminiftered the government, and that he behaved fo ill as to draw his father's moft heavy difpleasure on him, when he came to understand what he had done. To fatisfy his injured fubjects, he threw him into the prifon where Jehoiachin the captive king of Judah had lain thirty-feven years*. After this he lived only one year, and died in the 43d year of his reign, or the 45th, reckon ing from the time of his being taken into partnership with his father. He was one of the greateft princes that had reigned in the east for many ages before him. Megafthenes prefers him

His death.

• Hieron. in Ifaiah, xiv. 19.

for