EFFECTS OF TURNING THE RIVER. 
399 
Major Rennel’s calculation of Herodotus, we get only six miles 
on this side; and hence A1 Hymer would have lain nearly two 
miles distant from the utmost limits. I, however, am one of 
those who think that Babylon was so far from being exactly 
divided by the river, that its greatest extent lay to the west. 
From the situation of Birs Nimrood on the western plain, and 
the chain of building-remains, intersected by patches of verdure, 
which connect the bank of the river from beyond Anana with 
that extraordinary pile, the stretch of the city that way seems 
fully equal to the prescribed bounds; and wherever the old 
Tower of Babel could be traced, there we should doubtless look 
for the most ancient portion of the city : that which had com¬ 
prised the capital, until Nebuchadnezzar, despising the palace 
of his ancestors, and “ the boundaries of their habitations,” 
erected a vaster and more magnificent structure on the opposite 
bank of the river, and spread the walls of the city yet farther 
towards the rising sun. The eastern bank certainly has pre¬ 
served more remains than the west; but if the Kasr, Mujelibe, 
&c., are the ruins of the new palace and its citadel, then we 
have the natural solution ; wherever the court was, there would 
the population draw, till the opposite side be comparatively 
deserted. The aggrandisement of the Temple of Belus in that 
quarter, by the same monarch who had given a rival to its 
ancient palace, would in some measure act as a counterpoise. 
But when Cyrus for his own immediate object so effectively 
stopped the course of the river, the consequences of the haste in 
which it was done, are said to have broken down certain defensive 
dykes to the west of the city, and hence those parts ever after¬ 
wards became a marsh. No person can doubt that all who 
could, would withdraw from such unwholesome quarters ; and 
