s 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 side posts."[264] These were the
gates referred to by Isaiah when God called Cyrus:

I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two
leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut: I will go before
thee, and make the crooked places straight; I will break in pieces
the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron.[265]

The outer wall was the main defence of the city, but there was also an
inner wall less thick but not much inferior in strength. In addition,
a fortress stood in each division of the city. The king's palace and
the temple of Bel Merodach were surrounded by walls.

All the main streets were perfectly straight, and each crossed the
city from gate to gate, a distance of fifteen miles, half of them
being interrupted by the river, which had to be ferried. As there were
twenty-five gates on each side of the outer wall, the great
thoroughfares numbered fifty in all, and there were six hundred and
seventy-six squares, each over two miles in circumference. From
Herodotus we gather that the houses were three or four stories high,
suggesting that the tenement system was not unknown, and according to
Q. Curtius, nearly half of the area occupied by the city was taken up
by gardens within the squares.

In Greek times Babylon was famous for the hanging or terraced gardens
of the "new palace", which had been erected by Nebuchadnezzar II.
These occupied a square which was more than a quarter of a mile in
circumference. Great stone terraces, resting on arches, rose up like a
giant stairway to a height of about three hundred and fifty feet, and
the whole structure was strengthened by a surrounding wall over twenty
feet in thickness. So deep were the layers of mould on each terrace
that fruit trees were grown amidst the plants of luxuriant foliage and
the brilliant Asian flowers. Water for irrigating the gardens was
raised from the river by a mechanical contrivance to a great cistern
situated on the highest terrace, and it was prevented from leaking out
of the soil by layers of reeds and bitumen and sheets of lead.
Spacious apartments, luxuriously furnished and decorated, were
constructed in the sp