* The description of the fortifications of the city is furnished by Herodotus, who himself saw them still partially standing; the account of their construction has been given by Nebuchadrezzar himself, in the East India Company’s Inscription.

The space within the walls was by no means completely covered by houses, but contained gardens, farms, fields, and, here and there, the ruins of deserted buildings.  As in older Babylon, the city proper clustered round the temple of Merodach, with its narrow winding streets, its crowded bazaars, its noisy and dirty squares, its hostelries and warehouses of foreign merchandise.

[Illustration:  458.jpg FRAGMENT OF A BABYLONIAN BAS-RELIEF]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch in Layard.

The pyramid of Esarhad-don and Assur-bani-pal, too hastily built, had fallen into ruins:  Nebuchadrezzar reconstructed its seven stages, and erected on the topmost platform a shrine furnished with a table of massive gold, and a couch on which the priestess chosen to be the spouse of the god might sleep at night.  Other small temples were erected here and there on both banks of the river, and the royal palace, built in the marvellously short space of fifteen days, was celebrated for its hanging gardens, where the ladies of the harem might walk unveiled, secure from vulgar observation.  No trace of all these extensive works remains at the present day.

[Illustration:  459.jpg RUINS OF THE ZIGGURAT OF THE TEMPLE OF BEL]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch in Layard.

Some scattered fragments of crumbling walls alone betray the site of the great ziggurat, a few bas-reliefs are strewn over the surface of the ground, and a lion of timeworn stone, lying on its back in a depression of the soil, is perhaps the last survivor of those which kept watch, according to custom, at the gates of the palace.  But the whole of this vast work of reconstruction and ornamentation must not be attributed to Nebuchadrezzar alone.  The plans had been designed by Nabopolassar under the influence of one of his wives, who by a strange chance bears in classic tradition the very Egyptian name of Nitocris; but his work was insignificant compared with that accomplished by his son, and the name of Nebuchadrezzar was justly connected with the marvels of Babylon by all ancient writers.  But even his reign of fifty-five years did not suffice for the completion of all his undertakings, and many details still remained imperfect at his death in the beginning of 562 B.C.  Though of Kaldu origin, and consequently exposed to the suspicions and secret enmity of the native Babylonians, as all of his race, even Mero-dach-Baladan himself, had been before him, he had yet succeeded throughout the whole of his reign in making himself respected by the turbulent inhabitants of his capital, and in curbing the ambitious pretensions of the priests of Merodach.  As soon as his master-hand was withdrawn, the passions so long repressed broke forth, and proved utterly beyond the control of his less able or less fortunate successors.*