01-20-2015, 09:34 AM
Babylonia and Assyria
Herodotus visited Babylon in the course of his many wanderings about 450 B.C. Babylon was planted in an open plain and formed an exact square of great size, 120 stades (nearly 14 miles) each way; the whole circuit was 480 stades. It was girt with immense brick walls, 340 ft. high and 90 ft. thick, and a broad deep moat full of water, and was entered through 100 gates; arranged symmetrically, 25 in each side. From corner to corner the city was cut diagonally by the Euphrates, which thus halved it into two roughly equal triangles, and the river banks were fortified by brick defences. There was, too, an inner wall on the landward side. The streets were also remarkable:
'The city itself (he says) is full of houses, three or four storeys high, and has been laid out with its streets straight, notably those which run at right angles, that is, those which lead to the river. Each road runs to a small gate in the brick river-wall: there are as many gates as lanes."
In each part of the city (that is, on either bank of the Euphrates) were specially large buildings, in one part the royal palaces, in the other the temple of Zeus Belos, bronze-gated, square in outline, 400 yards in breadth and length.
Herodotus visited Babylon in the course of his many wanderings about 450 B.C. Babylon was planted in an open plain and formed an exact square of great size, 120 stades (nearly 14 miles) each way; the whole circuit was 480 stades. It was girt with immense brick walls, 340 ft. high and 90 ft. thick, and a broad deep moat full of water, and was entered through 100 gates; arranged symmetrically, 25 in each side. From corner to corner the city was cut diagonally by the Euphrates, which thus halved it into two roughly equal triangles, and the river banks were fortified by brick defences. There was, too, an inner wall on the landward side. The streets were also remarkable:
'The city itself (he says) is full of houses, three or four storeys high, and has been laid out with its streets straight, notably those which run at right angles, that is, those which lead to the river. Each road runs to a small gate in the brick river-wall: there are as many gates as lanes."
In each part of the city (that is, on either bank of the Euphrates) were specially large buildings, in one part the royal palaces, in the other the temple of Zeus Belos, bronze-gated, square in outline, 400 yards in breadth and length.