there." This is what Mr. Layard, the English archeologist, found on his
visit in 1845:

"Shapeless heaps of rubbish cover for many an acre the face of
the land.... On all sides, fragments of glass, marble, pottery,
and inscribed brick are mingled with that peculiar nitrous and
blanched soil, which, bred from the remains of ancient
habitations, checks or destroys vegetation, and renders the
site of Babylon a naked and a hideous waste. Owls [which are of
a large gray kind, and often found in flocks of nearly a
hundred] start from the scanty thickets, and the foul jackal
skulks through the furrows."--_"Discoveries Among the Ruins of
Nineveh and Babylon," chap. 21, p. 413._

The prophecy said, "Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there." The
words might be construed to mean that the famous site would never become
the place of a Bedouin village. But it is literally true, say travelers,
that the Arabs avoid the place even for the temporary pitching of their
tents. They consider the spot under a curse. They call the ruins
_Mudjelibe_, "the Overturned." (See "Encyclopedia of Islam," art.
"Babil.")

As late as 1913, Missionary W.C. Ising visited the site where Professor
Koldeway was excavating the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's palace. He wrote:

"Involuntarily one is reminded of the prophecy in the
thirteenth of Isaiah and many other places, which, in course of
time, have been fulfilled to the letter. No one is living on
the site of ancient Babylon, and whatever Arabs are employed by
the excavators have built their mud huts in the bed of the