Then, in the distance, beyond the plain and beyond the rivers, the
great Rab-shakeh sees mountains, for a high mountain range, about
twenty-five miles from the city, bounds the eastern horizon. He has good
reason to love those high mountains, which rise many thousands of feet
above the plain, for even in the hottest weather, when the heat in
Shushan would otherwise be unbearable, he can always enjoy the cooling
breezes which come from the everlasting snow-fields on the top of that
mountain range, and which blow refreshingly over the sultry plain
beneath.

The City of Lilies is a very ancient place. It was probably built
long before the time of Abraham. We read in Gen. xiv. of a certain
Chedorlaomer, King of Elam, who gathered together a number of
neighbouring kings, and by means of their assistance invaded Palestine,
and took Lot prisoner. This Chedorlaomer probably lived by these very
rivers, the Choaspes and the Ulai, and Shushan was the capital city of
the old kingdom of Elam over which he ruled.

Later on the City of Lilies was taken by the Babylonians. They had their
own capital city, the mighty Babylon, on the Euphrates. But although it
was not the capital, still Shushan was a very important place in that
first great world-empire. We find Daniel, the prime minister, staying in
the palace of Shushan, to which he had been sent to transact business
for the King of Babylon, and it was during his visit to the City of
Lilies that God sent him one of his most famous visions. In his dream he
thought he was standing by the river Ulai, the very river he could see
from the palace window, and before that river stood the ram with the two
horns and the strong he-goat, by means of which God drew out before his
eyes a picture of the future history of the world.