180 NOTES OF MR. BUCKINGHAM^ 



being " an exceeding great city, of three days' journey. " 

 But we are not to judge of a day's journey in those early 

 times, and in that country, by the distance which a man 

 can walk in England at the present time, when the roads 

 are so good. In Syria twelve miles is considered about 

 a day's journey for a camel, and eight or ten miles 

 a good day's journey for a man. According to this 

 statement Nineveh would have been thirty miles 

 in length. * The ruins now extend over a space of 

 25 miles, so that it is not improbable that the houses 

 were scattered, and that Nineveh was more like ,i 

 walled province than like one of our English citi< <. 

 It is there culled \eeno ellateek which means \ineveh 

 the old. 



BABYLON, f 



The remains of Babylon are more distinct than 

 of Nineveh. The River Euphrates flowed through the 

 middle of the city, which was fifteen miles square. 

 Mr. Rich of Bagdad, with whom Mr. B. spent some 

 time, has made a ground plan of it. Herodotus (I. 179) 

 says that the walls were built of large bricks, cemented 

 with bitumen, a pitchy substance, which issues out of 

 the earth in that country ; and that they were sur- 

 rounded by a broad ditch. This account Mr. Bucking- 

 ham was enabled to corroborate. He separated some 

 of the layers of brick, and brought to England some of 

 the substance which he found between them, which 

 was analyzed by a chemist in London and found to be 

 bituminous. 



On the western side of the river is the Temple of 

 Belus, which is thought by many to be the same which 

 is in the Bible (Gen. XI.) called the Tower of Babel. + 



* Some suppose, however, that the city of Nineveh was in chn>m- 

 /mwv, not in length ^ a " three days' journey. " 



t Babylon is said to have been founded by Semirainis, Diodor. II. 

 7. but Grotius says that this is a false tradition of the Greeks. 



I Lamy, in his Apparatus Biblicus p. o<), says, " I am persuaded 

 that the tower which Herodotus describes in his first book, was this 

 tower, which the sons of Noah left unfinished ; and it continued so 



