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REV. ANDREW CRAIG ROBINSON, M.A., ON 



the mighty city. He would find himself confronted by the 

 Eiver Euphrates — in breadth not much short of 200 yards — that 

 is to say, about the width of the Thames at Chelsea — its further 

 shore lined with immense embankments — behind which was the 

 real Babylon. 



King Nebuchadnezzar, some 70 years before in one of his 

 inscriptions would seem to have described the position by 

 anticipation. Boasting of the fortifications which he had thrown 

 up to defend Babylon, he says — 



"Great waters like the might of the sea I brought near in abun- 

 dance, and their flowing by was like the sweeping past of the billows 

 of the Western ocean — passages through them there were none, but 

 mounds of earth I heaped, and embankments of brickwork I caused 

 to be constructed."^ — Records of the Fast, 1st Series, p. 128. 



There, m that eastern part of the city, secure for the moment 

 from the enemy, Belsliazzar, son of the king, reigned — and 

 there the merchants of Babylon carried on their business 

 transactions, and dated their tablets on which those transactions 

 were recorded — safe from any interference of Gobryas — on such 

 a day of the month " in the 17th year of Nabonidos, King of 

 Babylon." Three months then elapsed before Cyrus " entered 

 Babylon" — and those three months afforded time for the siege 

 recorded by the classical writers, during which the soldiers of 

 Cyrus round Babylon were digging the trenches — no very great 

 task for a large army in the alluvial soil of Babylonia — whilst 

 Cyrus himself — as recognized in the Annalistic Tablet — was 

 ^tbsent — employing (so Herodotus says) the inefficient part of 

 his army in further reducing the waters of the Euphrates by 

 turning them into a marshy lake. 



Then on the third of the month Marchesvan (Oct.-Nov.) — 

 the tablet says — " Cyrus entered Babylon " — and soon the 

 •decisive blow was struck ; for after this occur the words in the 

 Annalistic Tablet — "on the 11th Marchesvan during the 

 night Gubaru (Gobryas) made an assault (?) and slew the king's 

 son (?)." 



That was the night when the trenches were opened, the 

 Persian troops, under the shadow of the mighty mounds 

 defending the eastern bank of the river, stealthily advanced 

 through the shallower waters — entered the city by the river 

 gates — and Babylon was taken, and Belshazzar slain. 



That this was the night on which Babylon really came into 

 the power of Cyrus is shown to demonstration by the fact that 

 all the contract tablets dated previous to the 11th Marchesvan 



