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very site. Herodotus adds, that the fountains of bitumen at Is, from 
whence the bitumen used in the construction of Babylon was 
brought, were situated at eight days’ journey above that city : and 
as, according to M. Niebuhr, there are copious fountains of bitumen 
near Hit, a town of the Euphrates, one hundred and twenty-eight 
German miles above Hillah, reckoning the distance along the bank 
of the Euphrates, the learned illustrator of Herodotus thinks there 
can be no doubt, therefore, that Hit is the. place intended by Is, 
which should have been written It. 
M. Beauchamp, whose account is translated in the European 
Magazine for 1792, says — “ The quantity of bitumen that must have 
been employed in building Babylon, is scarcely credible. Most pro- 
bably it was procured from Hit, on the Euphrates, where we still 
find it. The master mason told me, that he found some in a spot, 
which he was digging, about twenty years ago, which is by no means 
strange, as it is common enough on the banks of the Euphrates. 
I have myself seen it on the road from Bagdad to Juba, an Arabian 
village, seated on that river.” 
Major Rennell*, to whose information, on this subject, the learned 
are so much indebted, remarks, in corroboration of this statement, 
that Diodorus saysf, that great quantities of bitumen flow out of the 
ground at Babylon ; that these springs supplied it for the building 
of the city ; and that it was even used for fuel. Major Rennell is 
of opinion, that, perhaps, only such of the public buildings were 
cemented with bitumen, as were exposed to the weather, or to 
inundations. This agrees with a modern custom in these parts ; for, 
on occasion of an inundation, about the year 1733, the walls, in 
Bagdad, were covered with a composition, of which bitumen made 
a part;];. The cement in the remarkable fortress of Alkadder, in the 
* P. 369. 
f Lib. ii. cap. 1. 
J Ives’s Travels, p. 281. 
