temples, a stately portal spanning this road at the Istar Gate, many
private houses in the Merkes quarter, and an inner town-wall perhaps
of earlier date. Street and gate were built or rebuilt by
Nebuchadnezzar. He, as he declares in various inscriptions, 'paved the
causeway with limestone flags for the procession of the Great Lord
Marduk.' He made the Istar Gate 'with glazed brick and placed on its
threshold colossal bronze bulls and ferocious serpent dragons'. Along
the street thus built the statue of Marduk was borne in solemn march
on the Babylonian New Year's Day, when the king paid yearly worship to
the god of his country.[14]

[13] F.H. Weissbach, _Stadtbild von Babylon_ (_Der alte Orient_,
fasc. 5); R. Koldewey, _Tempel von Babylon und Borsippa_, plates
i, ii; S. Langdon, _Expositor_, 1909, pp. 82, 142; Hommel,
_Geogr. des alten Orients_, pp. 290, 331; E. Meyer, _Sitzungsber.
preuss. Akad_. 1912, p. 1102. I am indebted to Dr. Langdon for
references to some of the treatises cited here and below. I
cannot share the unfavourable view which is taken by Messrs. How
and Wells, the latest good editors of Herodotus, of the views of
these writers.

[14] Koldewey, _Pflastersteine von Aiburschabu_ (Leipzig, 1901).
Some of the streets of Babylon are much older than 600 B.C., but
this point needs to be worked out further.

[Illustration: FIG I. BABYLON]

Such are the remains of the city of Babylon, so far as they are known
at present. They do not fit ill with the words of Herodotus. We can
detect in them the semblance not indeed of one square but of two