275
 

Babi-ilu, Babil, Babylon, the " Gate of God."

When we left the little guest-house at Jumjumah, we
decided to ride over the site of Babylon, and get a general
view of the ruins before we attempted to look at the pits
and trenches made by the excavators, or ask the natives
any questions. It was about eight o'clock in the morning,
and the ruins were brilliantly lighted by the sun, which
had swallowed up the heavy white mist that had covered
the earth an hour earlier. We rode over the mound of
'Amran, and pulled up our horses on a small hill of debris
which stood close by the huge mass of brickwork which
marks the site of the great Fortress of Babylon, or the
" Kasr." At this point we stood well above every other
part of the ruins, and we had a clear, good view of them
and of the surrounding country. In the west, south and
east we saw large sheets of flood-water, with wisps of
mist clinging to their surfaces, and over the land round
about them there was the shimmer of heat which foretold
that the day would be hot. We agreed that Babylon
must have been surrounded by gardens and groves of
date palms, and that the region round the city must have
been very fertile and pretty; but when I saw it that
morning it was a howling wilderness, said by the natives
to be bleak and terrible by night, and scorching and
equally terrible by day. I saw no flocks and herds, and
no people, and there seemed to me to be nothing but
desert everywhere ; and it was almost impossible to say
where the desert ended and the ruins of the city began.
A low ridge of ground about one mile to the east
suggested that the mighty eastern wall of Babylon had
stood there, and there were lower and shorter ridges on the
north and south, which might mark the positions of her
northern and southern walls ; of the western or river wall,
I could see no trace. But when I looked at these low
ridges on the ground, and thought they might represent
the walls of Babylon, I felt that this could hardly be so,

s2