where Strabo and Diodorus place the gardens, it abuts upon
a long low valley into which the Euphrates water seems formerly to have
been introduced, and which may therefore have been given the name of
the river. This identification is, however, it must be allowed, very
doubtful.

The two lines of mounds which enclose the long low valley above
mentioned are probably the remains of an embankment which here confined
the waters of a great reservoir. Nebuchadnezzar relates that he
constructed a large reservoir, which he calls the Yapur-Shapu, in
Babylon, and led water into it by means of an "eastern canal"--the
Shebil. The Shebil canal, it is probable, left the Euphrates at some
point between Babil and the Kasr, and ran across with a course nearly
from west to east to the top of the Yapur-Shapu. This reservoir seems to
have been a long and somewhat narrow parallelogram, running nearly from
north to south, which shut in the great palace on the east and protected
it like a huge moat. Most likely it communicated with the Euphrates
towards the south by a second canal, the exact line of which cannot be
determined. Thus the palatial residence of the Babylonian kings looked
in both directions upon broad sheets of water, an agreeable prospect in
so hot a climate; while, at the same time, by the assignment of a double
channel to the Euphrates, its floods were the more readily controlled,
and the city was preserved from those terrible inundations which in
modern times have often threatened the existence of Baghdad.

The other lines of mound upon the east side of the river may either be
Parthian works, or (possibly) they may be the remains of some of those
lofty walls whereby, according to Diodorus, the greater palace was
surrounded and defended. The fragments of them which remain are so
placed that if the lines were produced they would include all the
principal ruins on the left bank except the Babil tower. They may
therefore be the old defences of the Eastern palace; though, if so,
it is strange that they run in lines which are neither straight nor
parallel to those of the buildings enclosed by them. The irregularity
of these ramparts is certainly a very strong argument in favor of
their having been the work of a people considerably more barbarous and
ignorant than the Babylonians. [PLATE XIV.]

[Illustration: PLATE XIV.]

CHAPTER V. ARTS AND SCIENCES.

That the Babylonians were among the most ingenious of all the natio