THE WITNESS OF AKCHiEOLOGY TO THE BIBLE. 215 



the world." The rest of his inscriptions nearly all relate to his 

 immense building operations. " To astonish mankind, I re- 

 constructed and renewed the wonder of Borsippa, the temple 

 of the seven spheres of the world." The boast is echoed in the 

 book of Daniel. " Is not this great Babylon which I have 

 built for the house of my kingdom, by the might of my power, 

 and for the honour of my majesty? 



The Arabs have been using, and still use the ruins of Babylon 

 as a huge quarry, carrying off the bricks to sell to others for 

 building purposes. Nine out of every ten of these bricks are 

 stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar. Specimens may 

 be seen in the British Museum. 



The palace school at Babylon, the fact that captive princes 

 were trained there; the court customs of officials, the enumera- 

 tion of the different classes of the wise men of Babylon ; the 

 Babylonian imagery of the dreams and visions; the garments 

 mentioned; the method of punishment for impiety against the 

 gods by burning alive in a furnace, and of casting men to the 

 lions as an instrument of royal vengeance — all these details, re- 

 corded so vividly in the book of Daniel, reappear in the records 

 of the monuments of the great city of Babylon. 



How could a writer of fiction in the second century e.g. pos- 

 sibly have reproduced so faithful a picture of the life of a city 

 in the seventh century b.c. when the civilization of that city 

 had been overthrown for four hundred years? 



The Eimpire of Medo-Persia. 



The second world-empire was a double one, corresponding to 

 the breast and arms of the image, and to the ram with two 

 horns of Daniel's vision (Dan. viii. 20). " The ram which thou 

 sawest with two horns are the kings of Media and Persia." 



Who was " Darius the Median "? He is unknown in 

 secular history. There was a coin in use among the Persians 

 called the Baric. A note to a play by Aristophanes says that 

 the Darics were named not from Darius the father of Xerxes, 

 but from another more ancient king." A new dynasty no doubt 

 made a new coinage expedient. The Eev. Andrew Craig 

 Eobinson, in his interesting paper for the Victoria Institute 

 last December, brings out very clearly his view that Xenophon 

 and the cuneiform inscriptions are agreed in telling us that 

 Darius is Cyaxares, the uncle of Cyrus, and that he shared the 

 double kingdom with his nephew. Prof. Pinches, who was 

 acting as chairman, said that " the Babylonian inscriptions only 

 speak of Gobryas — there is no reference to Cyaxares as either 

 king or even governor of Babylon." But he added that further 

 discoveries in the East m-ay, however, modify his conclusions. 



