But when from the outward show we descend to the inner life of the place, Babylon may well inThe society. deed to the secluded Israelite have seemed to be that of which to all subsequent ages it has been taken as the type-"the World " itself. No doubt there was in Jerusalem and Samaria, especially since the days of Solomon, a little hierarchy and aristocracy and court, with its factions, feasts, and fashions. But nowhere else in Asia, hardly even in Egypt, could have been seen the magnificent cavalry careering through the streets, the chariots and four, "chariots like whirl"winds," "horses swifter than eagles," -"horses, and chariots, and horsemen, and companies," with " spears and "burnished helmets."1 Nowhere else could have been imagined the long muster-roll, as of a peerage that passes in long procession before the eye of the Israelite captive -"the satraps, captains, pachas, the "chief judges, treasurers, judges, counsellors, and all "the rulers of the provinces." Their splendid costumes of scarlet their variegated sashes-"all of them "princes to look to;" their elaborate armor - "buck"ler, and shield, and helmet" their breastplates,* their bows and quivers, and battle-axes, marked out to every eye the power and grandeur of the army. No 3 "5 where was science or art so visibly exalted, as Its science. in the magicians, and the astrologers, and "the sorcerers, and the wise Chaldæans," 5 who were expected to unravel all the secrets of nature, and who in point of fact from those wide level plains, "where the "entire celestial hemisphere is continually visible to "every eye, and where the clear transparent atmos 1 Ezek. xxvi. 7; Jer. iv. 13, 29; vi. 23; xlvi. 4; 1. 37. (Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, iii. 439.) 2 Dan. iii. 2, 3, 27 (Heb.). 8 Ezek. xxiii. 14, 15; ib. 24. 4 Jer. li. 3; Ezek. xxvi. 9. phere shows night after night the heavens gemmed "with countless stars of undimmed brilliancy,"1 had laid the first foundations of astronomy, mingled as it was with the speculations, then deemed as of yet deeper significance, of astrology. Far in advance of the philosophy, as yet unborn, of Greece, in advance even of the ancient philosophy of Egypt,2 the Chaldæans long represented to both those nations the highest flights of human intellect even as the majestic temples, which served to them at once as college and observatory, towered above the buildings of the then known world. Twice over in the Biblical history once on the heights of Zophim, once beside the cradle of Bethlehem do the star-gazers of Chaldæa lay claim to be at once the precursors of Divine Revelation, and the representatives of superhuman science. 3 Returning to the ordinary life of the place, its gay scenes of luxury and pomp were stamped on Its music. the memory of the Israelites by the constant. clash and concert, again and again resounding, of the musical instruments in which the Babylonians delighted, and of which the mingled Greek and Asiatic names are faintly indicated by the English catalogue of "cornet, 66 flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music." Nor could they forget how, like the Athenian exiles in later days at Syracuse, their artistical masters besought them to take their own harps and sing one of the songs of their distant mountain city;" though, unlike those prisoners, who gladly recited to 1 Rawlinson, iii. 415. 2 Grote's Hist. of Greece, iii. 392. 8 Num. xxii. 1; xxiv. 17; Matt. ii. 1. See an ingenious though fanciful book by Dr. Francis Upham, Who were the Wise Men? For the Babylonian love of music, see Rawlinson, iii. 451. 5 Dan. iii. 5, 7, 15. 6 Psalm cxxxvi. 1, 2. their kindred enemies the tragedies of their own Euripides, they could not bring themselves to waste on that foreign land the melody which belonged only to their Divine Master. Yet one more feature peculiar to Chaldæa, both natural and social, is recalled by the scene of that touching dialogue between the captors and the captives. The trees on which their harps were hung were unlike any that they knew in their own country. They called them by the name which seemed nearest to the willows of their own water-courses. But they were in fact the branching poplars1 mingled with the tamarisks, which still cluster beside the streams of Mesopotamia, and of which one solitary and venerable specimen long survived on the ruins of Babylon, and in the gentle waving of its green boughs sent forth a melancholy rustling sound, such as in after times chimed in with the universal desolation of the spot, such as in the ears of the Israelites might have seemed to echo their own mournful thoughts. The "waters by which they wept were "the rivers of Babylon." "The river' that word was of unknown or almost unknown sound to those who had seen only the scanty torrent beds of Judæa, or the nar Its rivers. preserved from the destruction of Babylon, in order, in long subsequent ages, to offer to Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law, a place to tie up his horse after the Battle of Hillah (Rich, 67; Layard, 507). What tree on earth has a more poetic story than this? I grieve to see since writing this that in these latest days the depredations of travellers and pilgrims have reduced this venerable relic to a mere trunk (Assyrian Discoveries, by Mr. George Smith, p 2 It is by tradition the single tree 56). row rapids of the Jordan. The "river" in the mouth of an Israelite meant almost always the gigantic Euphrates" the fourth river" of the primeval garden of the earth the boundary of waters,2 from beyond which their forefathers had come. And now, after parting from it for many centuries, they once more found themselves on its banks-not one river only, but literally, as the Psalmist calls it, "rivers;" for by the wonderful system of irrigation which was the life of the whole region it was diverted into separate canals, each of which was itself "a river," the source and support of the gardens and palaces which clustered along the water's edge. The country far and near was intersected with these branches of the mighty stream. One of them was so vast as to bear then the name, which it bears even to this day, of the Egyptian Nile.3 On the banks of the main channel of the "river all the streets abutted, all the gates opened; and immediately on leaving the city it opened into that vast lake or estuary which made the surrounding tract itself "the desert of the sea 5 6 the great sea, tossed by the four winds of heaven, and teeming with the monster shapes of earth- the sea on which floated innumerable ships or boats, as the junks at Pekin, or the gondolas at Venice, or even as the vast shipping at our own renowned seaports. "Of the great waters," such is the monumental inscription of Nebuchadnezzar — 1 Sinai and Palestine, Appendix, is a retention of local color in the § 34. Book of Daniel which has escaped even the vigilant research of Dr. Pusey. 2 See Lecture I. p. 10. The word Ior, in Dan. xii. 5, is elsewhere only used for the Nile. Sinai and Palestine, Appendix, § 35. There is a canal to this day called "the Nile " (Bahr-el-Nil) between the Euphrates and the Tigris. This 4 Rawlinson, iii. 342. 5 Isa. xxi. 1. 6 Dan. vii. 2, 3. 7 Rawlinson's Herod., vol. iii. p. 586. 3 "like the waters of the ocean, I made use abundantly. "Their depths were like the depths of the vast ocean." The inland city was thus converted into a "city of "merchants"- the magnificent empire into a "land of "traffic." "The cry," the stir, the gayety of the Chaldæans was not in the streets or gardens of Babylon, but "in their ships."1 Down the Euphrates came floating from the bitumen pits of Hit the cement with which its foundations were covered,2 and from Kurdistan and Armenia huge blocks of basalt, from Phoenicia gems. and wine, perhaps its tin from Cornwall; up its course came from Arabia and from India the dogs for their sports, the costly wood for their stately walking-staves, the frankincense for their worship. When in far later days the name of Babylon was transferred to the West to indicate the Imperial city which had taken its place in the eyes of the Jewish exiles of that time, the recollection of the traffic of the Euphrates had lived on with so fresh a memory that this characteristic feature of the Mesopotamian city was transplanted to its Italian substitute, Rome. Nothing could be less applicable to the inland capital on the banks of the narrow Tiber; but so deeply had this imagery of the ancient Babylon become a part of the idea of secular grandeur that it was transferred to that new representative of the world without a shock. "The merchandise of gold, and silver, "and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all wood of incense, "and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manner of "vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and of 66 iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odors, and oint"ments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine 8 Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, i. 66 1 Isa. xliii. 14 (Heb.). 2 Rawlinson, Monarchies, iii. 441. 526. |