eet of solid masonry, and must have required
three or four times that number of bricks. He constructed a new and
magnificent palace in the neighborhood of the ancient residence of the
kings. He made the celebrated "Hanging Garden" for the gratification of
his wife, Amyitis. He repaired and beautified the great temple of Belus
at Babylon. He dug the huge reservoir near Sippara, said to have been
140 miles in circumference, and 180 feet deep, furnishing it with
flood-gates, through which its water could be drawn off for purposes
of irrigation. He constructed a number of canals, among them the Nahr
Malcha or "Royal River," a broad and deep channel which connected the
Euphrates with the Tigris. He built quays and breakwaters along the
shores of the Persian Gulf, and he at the same time founded the city of
Diridotis or Teredon in the vicinity of that sea.

To these constructions may be added, on the authority either of
Nebuchadnezzar's own inscriptions or of the existing remains, the
Birs-i-Nimrud, or great temple of Nebo at Bor-sippa; a vast reservoir
in Babylon itself, called the Yapur-Shapu; an extensive embankment along
the course of the Tigris, near Baghdad; and almost innumerable temples,
walls, and other public buildings at Cutha, Sippara, Borsippa, Babylon,
Chilmad, Bit-Digla, etc. The indefatigable monarch seems to have either
rebuilt, or at least repaired, almost every city and temple throughout
the entire country. There are said to be at least a hundred sites in
the tract immediately about Babylon, which give evidence, by inscribed
bricks bearing his legend, of the marvellous activity and energy of this
king.

We may suspect that among the constructions of Nebuchadnezzar was
another great work, a work second in utility to none of those above
mentioned, and requiring for its completion an enormous amount of labor.
This is the canal called by the Arabs the _Kerek Saideh_, or canal of
Saideh, which they ascribe to a wife of Nebuchadnezzar, a cutting
400 miles in length, which commenced at Hit on the Euphrates, and was
carried along the extreme western edge of the alluvium close to the
Arabian frontier, finally falling into the sea at the head of the Bubian
creek, about twenty miles to the west of the Shat el-Arab. The traces
of this canal which still remain indicate a work of such magnitude
and difficulty that we can scarcely ascribe it with probability to any
monarch who has held the country since Nebuchadnezzar.