MikhailT/lj-speech huggingface dataset:
However, several decades ago, an Oriental appeared at the Berlin Museum,
offering for sale a small cameo engraved with a helmeted head of a Greek type.
About the head was an inscription in Greek characters saying that the face was that of Nebuchadnezzar.
The museum authorities believed that the cameo was one of the many spurious objects which the Eastern forgers were constantly sending to Europe,
yet they took an impression of it, and returned it to its owner.
Years later, when the archaeologists could readily distinguish the false from the true,
it was recognized that the cameo was genuine, and that it bore the likeness of the great King.
Unfortunately, the little stone seal, perhaps the only one to preserve for us his features, appears to have been lost for ever.
Its impression shows the face of a beardless young man, intelligent and refined.
The eyes are suggestive of the Semitic; the nose is of the Greek type;
the lips are thin, the chin prominent; the neck is that of a strong vigorous man.
Such was the appearance of the builder of the walls of Babylon.
Religion and cruelty frequently go hand in hand, and Nebuchadnezzar was exceedingly religious.
Though a great warrior, it was not for his military deeds that he was best known.
He was fond of restoring the ruined temples of the old Babylonian cities,
and most of the records which have come from his time speak chiefly of his deeds of piety.
Read the introduction to any of his inscriptions, of which the following is one, and you will call him vain and proud,
but his scribe wrote it in the manner customary for the scribes of those days to write of their royal masters.
Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, the exalted prince, the favorite of Marduk, the lofty patesi,
the beloved of Nabu, the arbiter, the possessor of wisdom, who seeks out the path of their divinity,
who reverences their lordship; the untiring governor, who ponders daily concerning the maintenance of Esagil and Ezida,
and is continually anxious for the shrines of Babylon and Borsippa;
the wise, the pious, the maintainer of Esagil and Ezida,
the first-born son of Nabopolassar, King of Babylon, am I.
However cruel and religiously intolerant Nebuchadnezzar may have been, he was undoubtedly the greatest builder the world has ever seen.
There is scarcely one of the thousands of ruin mounds in Babylonia which does not contain bricks bearing his name.
There is scarcely a royal record from his reign which is not chiefly occupied with descriptions of his building operations.
He rebuilt scores of the ancient temples, surrounded many cities with walls,
lined the shores of the rivers with embankments, and spanned the rivers with bridges.
Tradition says that to please his foreign wife from the mountainous country he built the famous hanging gardens, but that may be only a tradition.
His palace in Babylon was one of the world's largest buildings, but the walls with which he protected his palace and city were the wonder of the whole world.
The ancients never tired of describing them.
Fortunately in several of his long inscriptions, recently discovered in the Babylonian mounds, Nebuchadnezzar speaks of the building of the walls.
In one of them he says:
I completed Imgur-Bel and Nimitti-Bel, the great walls of Babylon, the mighty city, the city of his exalted power.
At the entrance of the great gates I erected strong bulls of bronze, and terrible serpents standing upright.
My father did that which no previous king had done.
With mortar and bricks he built two moat-walls about the city,
and I, with mortar and bricks, built a third great moat-wall, and joined it and united it closely with the moat-walls of my father.
I laid its foundation deep to the water level;
I raised its summit mountain high. I constructed a moat-wall of burned bricks about the west wall of Babylon.
My father built the moat-wall of the Arachtu canal securely with mortar and bricks.
He built well the quays along the opposite shore of the Euphrates, but he did not finish all his work,
but I, his first-born, the beloved of his heart,
built the moat-walls of Arachtu with mortar and bricks, and, joining them together with those of my father, made them very solid.
A thing which no king before had ever done:
To the west of Babylon, at a greater distance from the outer wall, I constructed an enclosing wall four thousand cubits in length about the city.
I dug its moat to the water level.
I walled up its side with mortar and burned bricks, and I united it securely with the moat-walls of my father.
Along its edge I built a great wall of mortar and burned bricks mountain high.
Berossus, a priest of the temple of Bel at Babylon, writing about 250 B.C.,
was living in the city while the walls were still standing, though in a ruinous condition.
His brief description of them should not be omitted. He says that Nebuchadnezzar
built three walls round about the inner city, and three others about that which was the outer; and this he did with burnt brick.
And after he had walled the city, and adorned its gates, he built another palace before his father's palace; but so that they joined to it:
to describe whose vast height and immense riches it would perhaps be too much for me to attempt.
Yet as large and lofty as they were, they were completed in fifteen days.
He also erected elevated places for walking, of stone; and made it resemble mountains: and built it so that it might be planted with all sorts of trees.
He also erected what is called a pensile paradise:
Of all the ancient descriptions of the famous walls and the city they protected, that of Herodotus is the fullest.
Perhaps Herodotus had never been in Babylon;
perhaps the tales that travelers told him were exaggerated as travelers' tales are likely to be,
yet he at least tried to be accurate. He says:
The city stands on a broad plain, and is an exact square, a hundred and twenty furlongs in length each way,
so that the entire circuit is four hundred and eighty furlongs.
While such is its size, in magnificence there is no other city that approaches to it.
It is surrounded, in the first place, by a broad and deep moat, full of water, behind which rises a wall
fifty royal cubits in width, and two hundred in height.
And here I may not omit to tell the use to which the mould dug out of the great moat was turned, nor the manner wherein the wall was wrought.
As fast as they dug the moat, the soil which they got from the cutting was made into bricks,
and when a sufficient number were completed they baked the bricks in kilns.
Then they set to building, and began by bricking the borders of the moat, after which they proceeded to construct the wall itself,
using throughout for their cement hot bitumen, and interposing a layer of wattled reeds at every thirtieth course of the bricks.
On the top, along the edges of the wall, they constructed buildings of a single chamber facing one another,
leaving between them room for a four-horse chariot to turn.
In the circuit of the wall are a hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and sideposts.
The bitumen used in the work was brought to Babylon from Is, a small stream which flows into the Euphrates
at the point where the city of the same name stands, eight days' journey from Babylon.
Lumps of bitumen are found in great abundance in this river.
The city is divided into two portions by the river which runs through the midst of it.
This river is the Euphrates, a broad, deep, swift stream, which rises in Armenia, and empties itself into the Erythraean Sea.
The city wall is brought down on both sides to the edge of the stream,
thence from the corners of the wall there is carried along each bank of the river a fence of burned bricks.
The houses are mostly three and four stories high;
the streets all run in straight lines, not only those parallel to the river, but also the cross streets which lead down to the waterside.
At the river end of these cross streets are low gates in the fence that skirts the stream,
which are, like the great gates in the outer wall, of brass, and open on the water.
The outer wall is the main defense of the city.
There is, however, a second inner wall, of less thickness than the first, but very little inferior to it in strength.
The center of each division of the town is occupied by a fortress.
In the one stood the palace of the kings, surrounded by a wall of great strength and size;
in the other was the sacred precinct of Jupiter Belus,
a square enclosure two furlongs each way, with gates of solid brass; which was also remaining in my time.
In the middle of the precinct there was a tower of solid masonry, a furlong in length and breadth,
upon which was raised a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight.
The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path which winds round all the towers.
When one is about halfway up, one finds a resting place and seats, where persons are wont to sit sometimes on their way to the summit.
Other ancient descriptions of the walls have been left us by Ctesias of the fifth century B.C., and by Strabo of the beginning of the Christian era,
but they add little to our knowledge.
Should we compare these ancient descriptions of the walls, we should find them hopelessly conflicting.
However, they teach us that in those early days when most cities were surrounded by enormous walls,
the walls of Babylon were so long and wide and high that all who saw them were amazed.
It is only from their ruins that we may hope to obtain accurate information of the strongest fortifications in the ancient world.
In the year 562, after a long reign of forty-three years, Nebuchadnezzar died.
He was followed by three kings whose reigns were short,
and in 555 Nabonidus, the father of the Biblical Belshazzar, came to the throne.
Cyrus, the King of Persia, was rising to power, and after he had defeated the Medes
he extended his empire to the Mediterranean and even to Egypt.
Perhaps Babylon was so strongly fortified that at first he made no attempt to add it to his empire,
but when Nabonidus joined with the King of Egypt and with the wealthy Croesus of Lydia in an alliance against him,
Cyrus decided that Babylon must be taken.
In 538 the city fell, and for a time it became the home of the Persian King.
The fall of Babylon with its lofty walls was a most important event in the history of the ancient world.
A great empire which had existed for more than three thousand years was brought to an end.
The old enemies of Babylon rejoiced.
When the news came to the Hebrews, who were held there in exile, they excitedly rushed about the streets, crying: "Babylon is fallen,"
and to them came hope of returning to Jerusalem.
But how did the "mighty city" fall? How could Cyrus take Babylon whose walls were strong enough to resist any army?
It is a long story. Poets have sung it. Historians have written it. Prophets have preached it. Legends have gathered about it.
Every child knows the story of "the writing of the hand on the wall." It was the night that Babylon fell.
Belshazzar, the King, he was really the King's son, gave a feast to a thousand of his nobles.
In the great banquet hall of the palace, when the guests were drinking from the golden cups, and the revelry was at its highest,
there suddenly appeared upon the wall an armless hand.
High up, where all might see it, the armless hand wrote the King's fate.
"Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting."
"In that night," so the story ends, "Belshazzar, the Chaldean King, was slain."
Less picturesque than this Hebrew legend is the royal record of Babylon, which fortunately was inscribed upon a clay cylinder from the ruins of the city.
It refers to the death of the King's son, possibly to Belshazzar of the Bible story.
In the month Tammuz, when Cyrus fought the troops of Akkad (Babylonia) at Opis on the river Salsallat,
he subdued the people, and wherever they collected, he slew them.
On the fourteenth day Sippar was taken without a battle.
Nabonidus fled.
On the sixteenth day the troops of Cyrus entered Babylon without a battle.
Nabonidus was taken prisoner in Babylon. On the third of Marchesvan Cyrus entered Babylon and proclaimed peace to all the city.
He appointed Gobrias governor of Babylon.
On the night of the eleventh day Gobrias killed the son of the King.
Nor does the royal record of Babylon contain the only contemporary account of the fall of the city,
for upon a barrel-shaped cylinder of clay bearing a long inscription we have Cyrus's account of his capture of Babylon. Extracts from it are as follows:
Marduk, the great lord, looking with joy on his pious works and upright heart,
commanded him (Cyrus) to go forth to his city Babylon, and he went by his side as a friend and companion.
His many troops, whose number, like the waters of the river, could not be counted, marched in full armor at his side,
Without a skirmish or a battle, he permitted them to enter Babylon, and, sparing the city, he delivered the King Nabonidus to him.
All the people of Babylon prostrated themselves before him, and, kissing his feet, rejoiced in his sovereignty, while happiness shone on their faces.
The inscription continues: I am Cyrus, king of the world.
When I made my gracious entry into Babylon, with exceeding joy I took up my abode in the royal palace.
My many troops marched peacefully into Babylon.
I gave heed to the needs of Babylon and its cities, and the servitude of the Babylonians, whatever was oppressive, I removed from them.
I quieted their sighings and soothed their sorrows.
A much longer account of the capture of Babylon by Cyrus appears in the writings of Herodotus.
Though Herodotus wrote nearly a hundred years after Babylon fell, his story seems to bear the stamp of truth.
He certainly mentions details which neither Nabonidus nor Cyrus would care to have appear in their royal records. His story is as follows:
Cyrus, with the first approach of the ensuing spring, marched forward against Babylon.
The Babylonians, encamped without their walls, awaited his coming.
A battle was fought at a short distance from the city, in which the Babylonians were defeated by the Persian King,
whereupon they withdrew within their defenses.
Here they shut themselves up and made light of his siege, having laid in a store of provision for many years in preparation against this attack;
for when they saw Cyrus conquering nation after nation, they were convinced that he would never stop, and their turn would come at last.
Cyrus was now reduced to great perplexity, as time went on and he made no progress against the place.
In this distress either someone made this suggestion to him, or he bethought himself of a plan which he proceeded to put in execution.
He placed a portion of his army at the point where the river enters the city, and another body at the back of the place where it issues forth,
with orders to march into the town by the bed of the stream, as soon as the water became shallow enough:
he then himself drew off with the unwarlike portion of his host, and made for the place where Nitocris dug the basin for the river,
where he did exactly what she had done formerly: he turned the Euphrates by a canal into the basin, which was then a marsh,
on which the river sank to such an extent that the natural bed of the stream became fordable.
Hereupon the Persians who had been left for the purpose at Babylon by the river side
entered the stream, which had now sunk so as to reach about midway up a man's thigh, and thus got into the town.
Had the Babylonians been apprised of what Cyrus was about, or had they noticed their danger, they would never have allowed the Persians to enter the city,
but would have destroyed them utterly; for they would have made fast all the street gates which gave upon the river,
and mounting upon the walls along both sides of the stream, would so have caught the enemy as it were in a trap.
But, as it was, the Persians came upon them by surprise and so took the city.
Owing to the vast size of the place, the inhabitants of the central parts (as the residents of Babylon declare),
long after the outer portions of the town were taken, knew nothing of what had chanced, but as they were engaged in a festival,
continued dancing and reveling until they learned the capture but too certainly.
Such, then, were the circumstances of the first taking of Babylon.
When Cyrus took Babylon, little or no force was employed.
Only the King's son, Belshazzar, was killed.
The city was spared; the great walls were left standing; the daily sacrifices were continued in the temples, and Cyrus made his home in the royal palace.
The people, enjoying the greater freedom which Cyrus permitted them, were contented, and life in Babylon went on about as before.
In 529 Cyrus died.
During the reigns of the two following Persian kings Babylon was slowly regaining its independence,
and in 521 Nebuchadnezzar III., a native Babylonian, was placed on the throne.
Then the Babylonians secretly plotted to throw off the Persian yoke.
That same year, when Darius Hystaspes came to the Persian throne, the Babylonians openly rebelled.
The following story from Herodotus tells the results:
At last when the time came for rebelling openly they did as follows:
having first set apart their mothers, each man chose besides out of his whole household one woman whomsoever he pleased;
these alone were allowed to live, while all the rest were brought to one place and strangled.
The women chosen were kept to make bread for the men; while the others were strangled that they might not consume the stores.
When tidings reached Darius of what had happened,
he drew together all his power and began the war by marching straight upon Babylon and laying siege to the place.
The Babylonians, however, cared not a whit for his siege.
Mounting upon the battlements that crowned their walls, they insulted and jeered at Darius and his mighty host.
One even shouted to them and said, "Why sit ye there, Persians? Why do ye not go back to your homes? Till mules foal ye will not take our city!"
This was said by a Babylonian who thought that a mule would never foal.
Now when a year and seven months had passed, Darius and his army were quite wearied out, finding that they could not anyhow take the city.
All stratagems and all arts had been used, and yet the King could not prevail
not even when he tried the means by which Cyrus had made himself master of the place.
The Babylonians were ever upon the watch, and he found no way of conquering them.
At last, in the twentieth month,
a marvelous thing happened to Zopyrus, son of the Megabyzus who was among the seven men that overthrew the Magus.
One of his sumpter-mules gave birth to a foal.
Zopyrus, when they told him, not thinking that it could be true, went and saw the colt with his own eyes;
after which he commanded his servants to tell no one what had come to pass, while he himself pondered the matter.
Calling to mind then the words of the Babylonian at the beginning of the siege:
Till mules foal ye shall not take our city, he thought, as he reflected on this speech, that Babylon might now be taken,
for it seemed to him that there was a divine providence in the man having used the phrase, and then his mule having foaled.
As soon therefore as he felt within himself that Babylon was fated to be taken, he went to Darius and asked him if he set a very high value on its conquest.
When he found that Darius did indeed value it highly, he considered further with himself how he might make the deed his own, and be the man to take Babylon.
Noble exploits in Persia are ever highly honored and bring their authors to greatness.
He therefore reviewed all ways of bringing the city under,
but found none by which he could hope to prevail, unless he maimed himself and then went over to the enemy.
To do this seeming to him a light matter, he mutilated himself in a way that was utterly without remedy.
For he cut off his own nose and ears, and then, clipping his hair close and flogging himself with a scourge,
he came in this plight before Darius.
Wrath stirred within the King at the sight of a man of his lofty rank in such a condition;
leaping down from his throne he exclaimed aloud and asked Zopyrus who it was that had disfigured him, and what he had done to be so treated.
Zopyrus answered, "There is not a man in the world, but thou, O King, that could reduce me to such a plight
no stranger's hands have wrought this work on me, but my own only.
I maimed myself because I could not endure that the Assyrians should laugh at the Persians. "Wretched man," said Darius,
thou coverest the foulest deeds with the fairest possible name, when thou sayest thy maiming is to help our siege forward.
How will thy disfigurement, thou simpleton, induce the enemy to yield one day sooner?
Surely thou hadst gone out of thy mind when thou didst so misuse thyself.
"Had I told thee," rejoined the other, "what I was bent on doing, thou wouldst not have suffered it;
as it is, I kept my own counsel, and so accomplished my plans.
Now, therefore, if there be no failure on thy part, we shall take Babylon.
I will desert to the enemy as I am, and when I get into their city I will tell them that it is by thee that I have been thus treated.
I think they will believe my words and entrust me with a command of troops. Thou, on thy part, must wait
till the tenth day after I am entered within the town, and then place near to the gates of Semiramis a detachment of thy army,
troops for whose loss thou wilt care little, a thousand men.
Wait, after that, seven days, and post me another detachment, two thousand strong, at the Nineveh gates;
then let twenty days pass, and at the end of that time station near the Chaldasan gates a body of four thousand.
Let neither these nor the former troops be armed with any weapons but their swords those thou mayest leave them.
After the twenty days are over, bid thy whole army attack the city on every side, and put me two bodies of Persians,
one at the Belian, the other at the Cissian gates; for I expect that, on account of my successes,
the Babylonians will entrust everything, even the keys of their gates, to me. Then it will be for me and my Persians to do the rest.
Having left these instructions, Zopyrus fled towards the gates of the town, often looking back, to give himself the air of a deserter.
The men upon the towers, whose business it was to keep a lookout,
observing him, hastened down, and setting one of the gates slightly ajar, questioned him who he was, and on what errand he had come.
He replied that he was Zopyrus, and deserted to them from the Persians.
Then the doorkeepers, when they heard this, carried him at once before the Magistrates.
Introduced into their assembly, he began to bewail his misfortunes, telling them that
Darius had maltreated him in the way they could see, only because he had given advice that the siege should be raised, since there seemed no hope of taking the city.
"And now," he went on to say, "my coming to you, Babylonians,
will prove the greatest gain that you could possibly receive, while to Darius and the Persians it will be the severest loss.
Verily he by whom I have been so mutilated shall not escape unpunished. And truly all the paths of his counsels are known to me.
Thus did Zopyrus speak.
The Babylonians, seeing a Persian of such exalted rank in so grievous a plight, his nose and ears cut off,
his body red with marks of scourging and with blood, had no suspicion but that he spoke the truth, and was really come to be their friend and helper.
They were ready, therefore, to grant him anything he asked;
and on his suing for a command, they entrusted to him a body of troops with the help of which he proceeded to do as he had arranged with Darius.
On the tenth day after his flight he led out his detachment, and surrounding the thousand men,
whom Darius according to agreement had sent first, he fell upon them and slew them all.
Then the Babylonians, seeing that his deeds were as brave as his words, were beyond measure pleased, and set no bounds to their trust.
and when the next period agreed on had elapsed, again with a band of picked men he sallied forth, and slaughtered the two thousand.
After this second exploit, his praise was in all mouths.
Once more, however, he waited till the interval appointed had gone by, and then leading the troops to the place where the four thousand were,
he put them also to the sword.