seventeen years; and therefore he is the same King of Babylon with Nabonnedus or Labynitus; and this is more agreeable to sacred writ than to make Nabonnedus a stranger to the royal line:  for all nations were to serve Nebuchadnezzar_ and his posterity, till the very time of his land should come, and many nations should serve themselves of him_, Jer. xxvii. 7. Belshazzar was born and lived in honour before the fifth year of Jeconiah’s captivity, which was the eleventh year of Nebuchadnezzar’s Reign; and therefore he was above 34 years old at the death of Evilmerodach, and so could be no other King than Nabonnedus:  for Laboasserdach the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar was a child when he Reigned.

Herodotus [395] tells us, that there were two famous Queens of Babylon, Semiramis and Nitocris; and that the latter was more skilful:  she observing that the Kingdom of the Medes, having subdued many cities, and among others Nineveh, was become great and potent, intercepted and fortified the passages out of Media into Babylonia; and the river which before was straight, she made crooked with great windings, that it might be more sedate and less apt to overflow:  and on the side of the river above Babylon, in imitation of the Lake of Moeris in Egypt, she dug a Lake every way forty miles broad, to receive the water of the river, and keep it for watering the land.  She built also a bridge over the river in the middle of Babylon, turning the stream into the Lake ’till the bridge was built. Philostratus saith, [396] that she made a bridge under the river two fathoms broad, meaning an arched vault over which the river flowed, and under which they might walk cross the river:  he calls her [Greek:  Medeia], a Mede.

Berosus tells us, that Nebuchadnezzar built a pensile garden upon arches, because his wife was a Mede and delighted in mountainous prospects, such as abounded in Media, but were wanting in Babylonia:  she was Amyite the daughter of Astyages, and sister of Cyaxeres, Kings of the Medes. Nebuchadnezzar married her upon a league between the two families against the King of Assyria:  but Nitocris might be another woman who in the Reign of her son Labynitus, a voluptuous and vicious King, took care of his affairs, and for securing his Kingdom against the Medes, did the works above mentioned.  This is that Queen mentioned in Daniel, chap. v. ver. 10.