362 
RUINS OF BABYLON. 
rested upon Ctesias, (who, like himself, had never seen Baby¬ 
lon in any of its states;) and Ctesias having confused his 
accounts of the Tigris with the Euphrates, gives sufficient 
grounds for estimating his knowledge of their banks, as very 
secondary evidence. Indeed we have no positive document in 
the page of history, for asserting that the great fortified palace 
stood west or east of the river; Herodotus, the only historian 
who visited Babylon, and that hardly thirty years after its vi¬ 
sitation by Xerxes, not saying a word concerning which side of 
the Euphrates the “ fortified palace” occupied. I do not, now, 
make any remark on the probable site of the alleged old, or 
lesser palace; but proceed to describe the more modern and 
greater, the remains of which I consider this to be. 
We are told by all the writers who speak of two palaces, that 
the extreme dimensions of the new, built by Nebuchadnezzar, 
were twice as large as those attributed to the royal residence of 
the more ancient Babylonian monarchs. Its outer wall em¬ 
braced 60 stadia, (six miles.) Within that circumference were 
two other embattled walls, besides a great tower. Three brazen 
gates led into the grand area. Indeed, it appears from all de¬ 
scriptions of Babylon in general, that every gate of consequence 
throughout the walls of the city, were of this massy fabric; 
and Isaiah, in the name of Jehovah, promises Cyrus that they 
shall fall before him : — “ I will open before him the two-leaved 
gates; and the gates shall not be shut. I will break in pieces 
the gates of brass.” This prophecy was fulfilled to the letter, 
when Cyrus made himself master of the city in the dead of 
night; first having turned the river, by means of its canals, into 
the great dry lake west of Babylon ; and then marching through 
the emptied channel, he made his way to the outer walls of the 
