BABYLONIA, or Chaldaea, a kingdom of Asia, and the most ancient in the world, being founded by Nimrod, the grandson of Ham, who also, according to the Bible, founded Nineveh, the capital of the kingdom of Assyria. The country was bounded on the north by the desert part of Mesopotamia, on the east by the Tigris, on the south by the Persian Gulf, and on the west by the Arabian desert. The confines of the kingdom, however, were at times much more extensive.

Passing over the early portion of Babylonian history, which is obscure and doubtful, we shall limit ourselves to a short account of the events which terminated in the subversion of the kingdom.

War had been begun between the Medes, Persians, and Babylonians, in the reign of Neriglissar, the father of Nabonadius, which had been carried on with very bad success on the side of the Babylonians. Cyrus, who commanded the Median and Persian army, having subdued the several nations inhabiting the great continent from the Aegean Sea to the Euphrates, bent his march towards Babylon. Nabonadius, hearing of his march, immediately advanced against him with an army. In the engagement which ensued, the Babylonians were defeated; and the king, retreating to his metropolis, was blocked up and closely besieged by Cyrus. The reduction of this city was no easy enterprise. The walls were of a prodigious height, the number of men employed to defend them was great, and the place was stored with all sorts of provisions for twenty years. Cyrus, despairing of being able to take such a city by storm, caused a line of circumvallation to be drawn quite round it, with a large and deep ditch; reckoning that if all communication with the country were cut off, the besieged would be obliged to surrender through famine. That his troops might not be too much fatigued, he divided his army into twelve bodies, appointing each body its month to guard the trenches; but the besieged, looking upon themselves as out of all danger by reason of their high walls and magazines, insulted him from the ramparts, and looked upon all the trouble he gave himself as so much unprofitable labour.

After Cyrus had spent two whole years before Babylon, without making any progress in the siege, he at last thought of the following stratagem, which put him in possession of it He was informed that a great annual solemnity was to be held at Babylon, and that the inhabitants on that occasion were accustomed to spend the whole night in drinking and debauchery. This he therefore thought a proper time for surprising them; and accordingly sent a strong detachment to the head of the canal leading to the great lake, with orders, at a certain time, to break down the great bank which was between the lake and the canal, and to turn the whole current into the lake. At the same time he stationed one body of troops at the place where the river entered the city, and another where it came out; ordering them to march in by the bed of the river as soon as they should find it fordable. Towards the evening he opened the head of the trenches on both sides of the river above the city, that the water might discharge itself into them; by which means, and the breaking down of the great dam, the river was soon drained. Then the two bodies of troops above-mentioned, according to their orders, entered the channel, the one commanded by Gobryas and the other by Ga-dates; and finding the gates all left open in consequence of the disorders of that riotous night, they penetrated into the very heart of the city without opposition, and meeting, according to agreement, at the palace, they surprised the guards and cut them in pieces. Those who were in the palace opening the gates to know the cause of this confusion, the Persians rushed in, took the palace, and killed the king, who came out to meet them sword in hand. Thus an end was put to the Babylonian empire; and Cyrus took possession of Babylon for one called in Scripture Darius the Mede, most probably Cyaxares II., uncle to Cyrus. From this time Babylonia never was erected into a distinct kingdom, but has always followed the fortune of those great conquerors who at different times have appeared in Asia. It is now subject to the Turks.

Of the manners, customs, and institutions of the Babylonians, and of the nature of their country, a very clear account has been given by Μ. Sabbathier.

“As all the nations under the dominion of Cyrus, beside the ordinary tributes, were obliged to maintain him and his army, the monarch and his troops were supported by all Asia. The country of Babylon alone was obliged to maintain him four months of the year; its fertility, therefore, yielded a third of the produce of Asia. The government of this country, which the Persians termed satrapy, was richer and more extensive than any of the rest. It maintained for the king, besides the war-horses, a stud of 800 stallions and 16,000 mares. So great a number of Indian dogs were likewise bred in this province for the king, that four of its cities kept those animals; and in return, they were exempted from all taxes and tributes.

“It rained very seldom in this country, according to Herodotus. The earth was watered by the river, which was here diffused by human industry, as the Nile is over Egypt by nature; for all the country of Babylon was divided by canals, the greatest of which was navigable, and flowed from south to north, from the Euphrates to the Tigris. In short, it was one of the finest countries for corn in the world; but for producing trees, the fig-tree, the vine, and the olive, it was not famous. It was so luxuriant in grain, that it commonly yielded a hundred times more than what was sown; and in good years it yielded three hundred times more than it received. The leaves of its wheat and barley were four inches broad. ‘ Though I know,’ says Herodotus, ‘ that the millet and the sesame of that country grow to the size of trees, I will not describe them particularly, lest those who have not been in Babylonia should think my account fabulous.

“They had no oil but what they made from Indian corn. The country abounded with palm-trees, which grew spontaneously; and most of them bore fruit, of which the inhabitants made bread, wine, and honey. They cultivated these trees and their fig-trees in the same manner. Some of them, as of other trees, the Greeks called wio⅛ ones. They tied the fruit of the male to the trees which bore dates; that the musquitto, leaving the male, might cause the date to ripen, by penetrating it; for without that assistance it did not come to maturity. Mus-quittoes bred in the male palms as in the wild fig-trees.
[7:4:271]

"But we must not here omit to give an account of the peculiar and surprising construction of their boats of skins, in which they sailed along the river to Babylon. These boats were invented by the Armenians, whose country lay north from Babylonia. They made them with poles of willow, which they bent, and covered with skins; the bare side of the skins they put outwards; and they made them so tight that they resembled boards. The boats had neither prow nor stern, but were of a round form like a buckler. They put straw on the bottom. Two men, each with an oar, rowed them down the river, laden with different wares, but chiefly with palm wine. Of these boats some were very large and some very small: the largest carried the weight of 500 talents. There was room for an ass in one of their small boats; they put many into a large one. When they had unloaded, after their arrival at Babylon, they sold the poles of their boats and the straw, and loading their asses with the skins, returned to Armenia; for they could not sail up the river, its current was so rapid. For this reason they made their boats of skins instead of wood; and on their return to Armenia with their asses, they applied the skins to their former use.

“As to their dress, they wore a linen shirt, which came down to their feet. Over it they wore a woollen robe; their outer garment was a white vest. Their shoes resembled those of the Thebans. They let their hair grow. On their heads they wore a turban. They rubbed their bodies all over with fragrant liquors. Each man had a ring on his finger, and an elegant cane in his hand, with an apple at the top, or a rose, a lily, or an eagle, or some other figure; for they were not suffered to use canes without devices.

“With regard to their policy, Herodotus thinks that their best law was one which the Heneti, an Illyrian people, likewise observed in every town and village. When the girls were marriageable, they were ordered to meet in a certain place, where the young men likewise assembled. They were then sold by the public crier: but he first sold the most beautiful one. When he had sold her at an immense price, he put up others to sale, according to their degrees of beauty. The rich Babylonians were emulous to carry off the finest women, who were sold to die highest bidders. But as the young men who were poor could not aspire to have fine women, they were content to take the ugliest with the money which was given them; for when the crier had sold the handsomest, he ordered the ugliest of all the women to be brought, and asked if any one was willing to take her with a small sum of money. Thus she became the wife of him who was most easily satisfied; and thus the finest women were sold, and from the money which they brought, small fortunes were given to the ugliest, and to those who had any bodily infirmity. A father could not marry his daughter as he pleased; nor was he who brought her allowed i take her home, without giving security that he would marry her. But, after the sale, if the parties were not agreeable to each other, the law enjoined that the purchase-money should be restored. The inhabitants of any of their towns were permitted to marry wives at these aucuns. Such were the early customs of the Babylonians.

“But they afterwards made a law, which prohibited ne inhabitants of different towns from intermarrying, and y which husbands were punished for treating their wives 1 ∙ When they had become poor by the ruin of their metropolis, fathers used to prostitute their daughters for aι i 1 ∙ There was a sensible custom among the Babylonians, worthy to be related. They brought their sick ln 0 t " e horum, to consult those who passed on their diseases; for they had no physicians. They asked those w mo approached the sick, if they had ever had the same distemper; if they knew any one who had had it; and how he was cured. Hence, in this country, every one who saw a sick person was obliged to go to him and inquire into his distemper.

“They embalmed their dead with honey, and their mourning was like that of the Egyptians.

“There were three Babylonian tribes who lived only upon fish, and who prepared them in the following manner: they dried them in the sun, and then beat them in a mortar to a kind of flour, which, after they had sifted through linen, they baked into rolls.

“The Babylonians at first worshipped only the sun and the moon; but they soon multiplied their divinities. They deified Baal, Bel, or Belus, one of their kings, and Merodach-Baladan. They also worshipped Venus under the name of Mylitta. She and Belus were the principal deities of the Babylonians. They counted their day from sunrise to sunrise. They solemnized five days of the year with great magnificence, and almost the same ceremonies with which the Romans celebrated their Saturnalia.

“The Babylonians were very much addicted to judicial astrology. Their priests, who openly professed that art, were obliged to commit to writing all the events of the lives of their illustrious men; and on a fancied connection between those events and the motions of the heavenly bodies the principles of their art were founded. They pretended that some of their books, in which their historical transactions and revolutions were accurately compared with the courses of the stars, were thousands of years old. This assertion of their judicial astrologers we may reasonably dispute; but that their astronomers had made a long series of observations, is incontestably true. It is certain that some of these were extant in the days of Aristotle, and that they were older than the empire of the Babylonians.” (See History of Astronomy.)