extreme dimensions; here town-walls and palaces of Babylonian kings
and temples of Babylonian gods and streets and dwelling-houses of
ordinary men have been detected and in part uncovered. Other signs of
inhabitation can be traced elsewhere in this district, as yet
unexplored.

Not unnaturally, some scholars have thought that this whole region
represents the ancient Babylon and that the vast walls of Herodotus
enclosed it all.[12] This view, however, cannot be accepted. Quite
apart from the considerations urged above, the region in question is
not square but rather triangular, and traces of wall and ditch
surrounding it are altogether wanting, though city-walls have survived
elsewhere in this neighbourhood and though nothing can wholly delete
an ancient ditch. We have, in short, no good reason to believe that
Babylon, in any form or sense whatever, covered at any time this large
area.

[12] So Baumstark, art. Babylon in Pauly-Wissowa, ii. 2696.

On the other hand, the special ruins of Babil and Kasr and adjacent
mounds seem to preserve both the name and the actual remains of
Babylon (fig. 1). Here, on the left bank of the Euphrates, are vast
city-walls, once five or six miles long.[13] They may be described
roughly as enclosing half of a square bisected diagonally by the
river, much as Herodotus writes; there is good reason to think that
they had some smaller counterpart on the right bank, as yet scantily
explored. Within these walls were the palaces of the Babylonian kings,
Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar (625-561 B.C.), the temples of the
national god Marduk or Merodach and other Babylonian deities, a broad
straight road, Aiburschabu, running north and south from palaces to