212 CURIOUS TREE. might have made me pay dearly for my te merity. The prophecy of Isaiah, that Babylon should be inhabited by wild beasts, was fulfilled after the extinction of the Seleucida; for their successors, the Parthians, turned the city into a park, and stocked it with wild beasts, for the purpose of hunting. Amongst these, the wild boar is enumerated.* It has been supposed that many curious trees are to be found on the site of the hanging gardens. This is not the case; there is but one, and that is in the most elevated spot. It is a kind of cedar, possibly one of the xeopiva of Diodorus. One half of the trunk is standing, and is about five feet in circumference. Though the body is decayed, the branches are still green and healthy, and droop like those of the willow. With the exception of one at Bussorah, there is no tree *St. Jerome. like it throughout Irak Arabia. The Arabs call it Athelè. Our guides said, that this tree was left in the hanging gardens for the purpose of enabling Ali to tie his horse to it after the battle of Hilleh. Not far from this tree, we saw indications of a statue, of which only the upper part had 214 STATUE OF A LION. been seen by Beauchamp and Rich. We set our men to work, and in two hours found a colossal piece of sculpture, in black marble, representing a lion standing over a man. When Rich was here, the figure was entire; but when we saw it, the head was gone. The length of the pedestal, the height of the shoulders, and the length of the statue, measured, in each of their respective parts, nine feet. THE PROPHET DANIEL. 215 I would venture to suggest that this statue might have reference to Daniel in the lion's den, and that it formerly stood over one of the gates, either of the palace, or of the hanging gardens. It is natural to suppose that so extraordinary a miracle would have been celebrated by the Babylonians, particularly as Daniel was afterwards governor of their city. The prophet was also governor of Susa (the Shushan of Scripture), where he frequently went in the discharge of his official duties, and at which place he died. A short time ago, Susa was visited by some French officers in the service of the Prince of Kermanshah: amongst other antiquities, they found a block of white marble covered with Babylonian characters, having sculptured on it the figures of two men and two lions. This may also allude to the same event. The finest specimen of Babylonian structure is a large building, called by the workmen the Kasr, or Palace. Its form is quadrangular, 216 THE KASR, OR PALACE. and it faces the cardinal points. It is composed entirely of kiln-burnt bricks of the finest description, which are laid in with a cement of the utmost tenacity. The workmen have long left this untouched, from the impossibility of detaching the bricks from the cement. As the palace is in the midst of other elevated ruins, the precise height cannot be ascertained, though it is possible that the foundation may be on a level with the plain. The walls are eight feet thick; they are rent throughout, but evidently not by the hand of man, as nothing but some violent convulsion of nature could produce the vast chasms observable in this ruin. The freshness of the brick work is such, that we should have had difficulty in identifying it with the ruins of Babylon, had we not found it situated in the midst of other buildings, instead of being detached from them. The solid appearance of the original structure impressed the mind the more strongly with the image of devastation that it now presents. |