The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1885-08-28
ANCIENT BABYLON.
The Garden Of the ancient world-A splen.
... did City,

4. ulu CITY.
In the current number of The Brit
ish and Foreign Evangelical ReUiew
there is a fine description of ancient
Babylon, translated from the German
of +. Delitzsch, the eminent Assyriolo-
gist, who invites his readers to accom-
pany him in a walk through that city
as it was b. &. 56S, or about eight
years before ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS death.
Before entering the city they view the
surrounding country: 1.-The Baby
lonia of the present day resembles a
desert, out of which arise mounds and
and ruins, solitary and grave nearly
all the canals are choked with sand;
the shepherds wandering alone, with
their fiocks nibbling the sparse grass,
are almost the only human jewellers
over the whole plateau. How differ
ent was it in olden times! Between
B. q. 1000 and 500 Babylonia was the
garden of the ancient world. The
land, surrounded like an island by two
of the finest streams in the world, the
Euphrates and Tigris-the rivers of
paradise-is truly the gift of both.
They flowed with swift current from
the Armenian highlands into the sea
now known rs the Persian gulf. In the
course of centuries large masses of
loan were rolled down and hcaped at
their original mouths, and this is what
is now called Babylonia. II was on
this soaked, fat, and fertile soil that
the Oldest civilization, not of Asia
merely, but of the world, developed
ITSELF" The melting of the Armenian
SHOWS caused foundations which had
to be checked by damming the rivers
with bikes and walls. Canals served
for navigation, and also led off the
supertluous waters to parts unaffected
by the overflow, and developed to such
a degree their fertility that wheat
and barley often gave the la.
borer two hundred or three
hundred fold. Near Bigdad the
two rivers are so near that only six
hours are required to pass from one to
the other. On this tongue of land,
which vas once a fourth narrower
Cfor the Euphrates has since removed
Its bed further westward), the great
canal system commenced; and by
means of still smaller arteries the life
giving waters were distributed to
nearly every tree. The district be-
tween Bagdad and Hilla Ca three days.
ride) was formerly strewed with heaps
of towns and villages. To its south,
in the very heart of the land, lay
Babylon, ''the gate of Cod. Its
commercial Importance is described,
its Notifications, the Euphrales (halt q
mile wide), swarming with ships of
every size; the largest Euphrates
bridge, built by Northumberland; the
different quarters and great buildings;
the royal bank, where important busl-
ness, public and private, was trans
acted. ''The conditions and bargains
are first, perhaps, put down on papy-
rus rolls, then carefully written out on
clay tablets in cuneifcrm writing, to
which each party affixes his seal, or in
default of this tingernail, whereupon
the tablet is baked" In running back
over the history, two or three import
ant periods are noticed; but the mis-
take is made of saying that it was only
eight years since Samassumukin's re-
bellinn against the Assyrian rule.
Eighty years must be meant. Many
may not know that forty-two years
before this, when Mcrodach baladan
had rebelled, Sennacherib, in $50 B..
c., marched against the city, gave it
up to the flames. left not one stone on
another, dug canals through its ruins
to bury it under water, s.and, as he
says in his annals, overthrow it even
more than was done by the deluge."
Delitzsch's reconstruction has been eff
fected by means of the three mighty
heaps OF ruins recently Investigated
by the eminent English archaologist
Hormuzd Rassam," with the aid of the
cuneiform literature and the accounts
of the Greek writer's.