ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path which winds round all the towers. . . . On the topmost tower there is a spacious temple, and inside the temple stands a couch of unusual size, richly adorned, with a golden table by its side. Below, in the same precinct, there is a second temple, in which is a sitting figure of Jupiter, all of gold." Other historians make the circuit of the city from 45 to 48 miles, instead of 60; and it is hardly necessary to say that modern writers question both its extent and the height of its walls.
The god whom Herodotus calls Jupiter-Belus was Bel-Merodach. Babylon was called "the dwelling-place of Bel" and the "town of Marduk." The temple of Bel is represented by the ruin of Babil, a mound on the eastern side of the stream. Some writers believe this to be the site of the Tower of Babel. Others, including Sir Henry Rawlinson, have identified the Babel tower with the ruin of Birs Nimroud, the ancient Borsippa, on the western side of the river. Birs Nimroud is one of the most imposing ruins in the country, standing in the midst of a vast plain, with nothing to break the view. Sir H. Rawlinson excavated at the site, and discovered that the tower was built in seven stages, the material being brick-work on an earthen platform. The first stage was an exact square, 272 feet each way, and 26 feet high, the bricks blackened with bitumen. The higher stages were of course successively smaller, but they were not placed in the centre of those on which they rested, but considerably nearer to the south-western end which constituted the back of the building. The bricks of the lowest stage being blackened, those of the second stage were orange-coloured, of the third red, the fourth it is supposed were plated with gold. Seven colours were used, emblematic of the planets, and the building was called the Temple of the Seven Spheres. On the seventh stage there was probably placed the ark or
