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From Les Mines de L' Orient

F. Refs Lith

Views of the Principal Ruins still existing on the Site of the
ANCIENT BABYLON.

"This is the place where Beauchamp made his observations, and it is certainly the most interesting part of the ruins of Babylon; every vestige discoverable in it declares it to have been composed of buildings far superior to all the rest of which any traces are left on the eastern quarter; the bricks are of the finest description, and, notwithstanding this is the grand storehouse of them, and that the greatest supplies have been and are now constantly drawn from it, they appear still to be abundant. In addition to the substances generally strewed on the surfaces of all these mounds, we here find fragments of alabaster, vessels of fine earthenware, marble, and great quantities of varnished tiles, the glazing and colouring of which are surprisingly fresh."* After a detail of walls and subterranean passages, follows the discovery of a lion of colossal dimensions, standing on a pedestal, rudely sculptured in coarse grey granite, and having a circular aperture in its mouth, supposed to be the same block which Beauchamp but imperfectly saw and described.

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On this mound, is the building called by the natives, “El Kasr,' or the palace, the remains of which are so perfectly like the best brick-work of Europe, in colour, form, and construction, that if found in any other situation than its present one, it would be thought to be a work of the century in which we live. Mr. Rich has given a drawing of this, to accompany his Memoir, which has the same claim to fidelity that all his other sketches possess. His description of it is so accurate, that a transcription of it will be better than any thing I could say, since the substance must be the same, however varied the form of words in which it may be expressed.

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"The Kasr is a very remarkable ruin, which, being uncovered, and in part detached from the rubbish, is visible from a considerable distance, but so surprisingly fresh in its appearance, that it was only after a minute inspection of it, that I was satisfied of its being a Babylonian remain. It consists of several walls and piers, (which

* Memoir, in "Les Mines de l'Orient," p. 141.

face the cardinal points) eight feet in thickness, in some places ornamented with niches, and in others strengthened by pilasters and buttresses, built of fine burnt brick, (still perfectly clean and sharp,) laid in lime-cement of such extraordinary tenacity, that those whose business it is to extract these bricks for building have given up working here, on account of the difficulty of extracting them whole. The tops of these walls are broken, and may have been much higher. On the outside, they have in some places been cleared nearly to the foundations, but the internal spaces formed by them are filled with rubbish in some parts almost to their summit.”*

The hanging gardens, (as they are called,) which had an area of about three and half acres, had trees of a considerable size growing in them ; "and it is not improbable," says Major Rennel," that they were of a species different from those of the natural growth of the alluvial soil of Babylonia. Curtius says, that some of them were eight cubits in the girth, and Strabo, that there was a contrivance to prevent the large roots from destroying the superstructure, by building vast hollow piers, which were filled with earth to receive them. These trees, continues the same writer, may have been perpetuated in the same spot where they grew, notwithstanding that the terraces may have subsided, by the crumbling of the piers and walls that supported them."

Such appears to be the fact, for, at the distance of a few paces only to the north-north-east of this mass of walls and piers, the internal spaces of which are still filled with earth and rubbish, is the famous single tree, which the natives call "Athelo," and maintain to have been flourishing in ancient Babylon, from the destruction of which God preserved it, that it might afford Ali a convenient place to tie up his horse, after the battle of Hillah.

This tree is of a kind perfectly unknown to these parts, though Mr. Rich was told, that there was one of the same kind at Bussorah: it is admitted, however, on all hands, to be a very rare species. It is certainly of a very great age, as its trunk, which appears to have * Memoir, in "Les Mines de l'Orient,” p. 143.

been of considerable girth, now presents only a bare and decayed half or longitudinal section, which, if found on the ground, would be thought to be rotten and unfit for any use; yet the few branches which still sprout out from its venerable top are perfectly green; and, as had been already remarked by others, as well as confirmed by our own observation, give to the passage of the wind a shrill and melancholy sound, like the whistling of a tempest through a ship's rigging at sea. Though thus thick in the trunk, it is not more than fifteen feet high, and its branches are very few. It is an evergreen, and is thought to resemble the lignum vitæ, its leaves being formed of long stems, with smaller branching leaves, like those of the pine and cedar, but of a lighter green, and its boughs almost as flexible as the willow.

The fact of these trees perpetuating themselves on the spot, as described by the ancients, seems to be thought possible; and it is certain, that this single tree, standing as it does on the very summit of the mound taken for the hanging garden, and certainly not likely to have been planted, by any subsequent hand, on a mere heap of ruins, very strongly favours such a supposition, as there is no other rational way of accounting for the presence of so unusual a tree as this, in so unusual a situation. It may not be irrelevant to remark, that it was in the heap assumed to be the site of the hanging gardens, that Mr. Rich found the brick with a device on it, resembling the garden spade used by the Arabs of the present day, and that he thought it singular and curious enough to deserve a drawing of it, which accompanied his "Memoir," as no similar brick has been found in any other part of the extensive ruins of this city.

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It was a quarter before nine o'clock, when we departed from hence, to extend our excursion more easterly, to which we had been tempted by the sight of the high mounds in that direction, as well as by the report of there being one of particular interest there, called Al Hheimar, and by the persuasion that vestiges of ruins must exist beyond the boundary line, (A) which we conceived to mark only the enclosure of sixty stadia, that encompassed the castellated palace and its gardens.

We pursued our way to the eastward, over a ground of excellent soil, sometimes covered with pools of water in its hollows, and at others with the drifting sand of the Desert. As we proceeded, we observed patches of soil strewed over with fragments of bricks and

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