for the maintenance of the people in the event of a siege.  Babylon was less a city than a fortified camp.  The walls equipped with towers and pierced by a hundred gates of brass were so thick that a chariot might be driven on them.  All around the wall was a large, deep ditch full of water, with its sides lined with brick.  The houses of the city were constructed of three or four stories.  The streets intersected at right angles.  The bridge and docks of the Euphrates excited admiration; the fortified palace also, and the hanging gardens, one of the seven wonders of the world.  These gardens were terraces planted with trees, supported by pillars and rows of arches.

=Tower of Babylon.=—­Hard by the city Nebuchadnezzar had aimed to rebuild the town of Babel.  “For the admiration of men,” he says in an inscription:  “I rebuilt and renovated the wonder of Borsippa, the temple of the seven spheres of the world.  I laid the foundations and built it according to its ancient plan.”  This temple, in the form of a square, comprised seven square towers raised one above another, each tower being dedicated to one of the seven planets and painted with the color attributed by religion to this planet.  They were, beginning with the lowest:  Saturn (black), Venus (white), Jupiter (purple), Mercury (blue), Mars (vermilion), the moon (silver), the sun (gold).  The highest tower contained a chapel with a table of gold and magnificent couch whereon a priestess kept watch continually.

CUSTOMS AND RELIGION

=Customs.=—­We know almost nothing of these peoples apart from the testimony of their monuments, and nearly all of these refer to the achievements of their kings.  The Assyrians are always represented at war, hunting, or in the performance of ceremonies; their women never appear on the bas-reliefs; they were confined in a harem and never went into public life.  The Chaldeans on the contrary, were a race of laborers and merchants, but of their life we know nothing.  Herodotus relates that once a year in their towns they assembled all the girls to give them in marriage; they sold the prettiest, and the profits of the sale of these became a dower for the marriage of the plainest.  “According to my view,” he adds, “this is the wisest of all their laws.”

=Religion.=—­The religion of the Assyrians and Chaldeans was the same, for the former had adopted that of the latter.  It is very obscure to us, since it originated, like that of the Chaldean people, in a confusion of religions very differently mingled.  The Turanians, like the present yellow race of Siberia, imagined the world full of demons (plague, fever, phantoms, vampires), engaged in prowling around men to do them harm; sorcerers were invoked to banish these demons by magical formulas.  The Cushites adored a pair of gods, the male deity of force and the female of matter.  The Chaldean priests, united in a powerful guild, confused the two religions into a single one.