Their horses are
swifter than leopards. Their horsemen spread themselves; (their
horsemen) shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat." They were a
people of knights, martial and victorious, like the Assyrians. They
subjected Susiana, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Jordan. But their regime
was short: founded in 625, the Babylonian Empire was overthrown by the
Persians in 538 B.C.
=Babylon.=--The mightiest of its kings, Nebuchadrezzar (or
Nebuchadnezzar), 604-561, who destroyed Jerusalem and carried the Jews
into captivity, built many temples and places in Babylon, his capital.
These monuments were in crude brick as the plain of the Euphrates has
no supply of stone; in the process of decay they have left only
enormous masses of earth and debris. And yet it has been possible on
the site of Babylon to recover some inscriptions and to restore the
plan of the city. The Greek Herodotus who had visited Babylon in the
fifth century B.C., describes it in detail. The city was surrounded by
a square wall cut by the Euphrates; it covered about 185 square miles,
or seven times the extent of Paris. This immense space was not filled
with houses; much of it was occupied with fields to be cultivated for
the maintenance of the people in the event of a siege.
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