THE EUPHRATES AND THE TIGRIS. PART I. The Euphrates: and the Ruins of Babylon. CHAPTER I. 66 MIGHTY BABYLON." HE ancient kingdom of Babylonia included a considerable portion of those districts of Asia known by the ancients under the name of Mesopotamia, from their position between the Euphrates and the Tigris. In its narrowest limits it stretched along the former river for about one hundred and fifty miles (or in a northwesterly direction from the point now indicated by the modern town of el-Shuyukh to the ruins of Babylon), and thence, in the same direction, fer two hundred and eighty-seven miles, to Kabuch on the Khabur. 10 SITE OF BABYLON. Its capital was that mighty Babylon which occupied a place so conspicuous and so memorable in the history of the ancient world; the name of which is, to this day, a synonym for colossal pride and power, and a text on which to hang the old, old lesson of the instability of human things, the "vanitas vanitatum." Babylon was situated on the Euphrates, which, indeed, divided it into two parts; while it was connected with the Tigris by canals that extended across the great Babylonian plain. Though at one time the most famous of the world's famous cities, its ruin was so absolute, so complete, that modern research has experienced no little difficulty in determining its exact site. To what remote period shall we trace its annals? & Well, it is not without good reason that some authorities suppose it to have occupied the situation, or, at least, to have stood in the immediate vicinity, of that Babel which the Book of Genesis describes as the beginning of Nimrud's kingdom; as the scene of man's impious attempt to raise a tower which should reach to the very heavens, and of his consequent punishment by the dispersion of tongues. From this last incident its name is generally derived; |