134

[Book 1.

The Babyltmian Engine.

come down to our times; descriptions of them by ancient authors, wouldhave been deemed extravagant or fabulous, and their dimensions reduc.edto assimilate them with the works of modern times: so strongly arewe inclined to depreciate the labors of the ancients, whenever they jgreatly excel our own. According to Berosus , who is quoted by Jose-phus, Antiq. x, 11, it was Nebuchadnezzar who constructed these gardens, >so that the propket Daniel must have witnessed their erection, and alsothat of the hydraulic engine ; for he was a young man when taken a cap- jtive to Babylon in the beginning of Nebuchadnezzar ’s reign, and he con-tinued there tili the death of that monareh and of his successor. Amytis,the wife of Nebuehadnezzar, was a Mede, and as Babylon was situatedon an extensive plain, she very sensibly feit the loss of the hills and 1

woods of her native land. To supply this loss in some degree, these fa-mous gardens, in which large forest trees were cultivated, were con-structed. They extended in terraces formed one above another to thetop of the city walls, and to supply them with the necessary moisture,the engine in question was erected. 3

As no account of the nature of this machine has been preserved, weare left to conjecture the principle upon which it was constructed, fromthe only datum afforded, viz : the height to which it raised the water.

We can easily conceive how water could have been supplied to the upper-most of these gardens by a serics of machines, as now practised in the eastto carry water over the highest elevations—but this is always mentionedas a single engine, not a series of them. Had its location been determin-ed, that circumstance alone, would have aided materially in the investi-gation ; but we do not certainly know whether it was placed on the highestterrace—on alevel with the Euphrates —or at some intermediate elevation,

The authors of the Universal History remark, “ upon the uppermost of theseterraces was a reservoir, supplied by a certain engine, from whence thegardens onthe other terraces were supplied.” They do not say where theengine itself was located. Rollin places it on the highest part of the gar-dens : “ In the upper terrace there was an engine or kind of pump bywhich the water was drawn up.”

The Statement of an engine having been erected at the top is probablycorrect, for we are not aware that the ancients at that period possessedany machine which, like the forcing pump, projected water above itself,Ancient machines, (and every one which we have yet examined, is an ex-ample,) did not raise water higher than their own level. But if suckingand forcing pumps were then known and used in Babylon, a period howev-er, anterior to that of their alleged invention, of at least 500 years, still ifthis engine was placed on the uppermost terrace, both would have beenwholly inapplicable. If therefore we incline to the opinion that this en-gine was a modification of one of those ancient machines, which we havealready examined ; we are not led to this conclusion by supposing thestate of the arts in Babylon at the period of its construction, to havebeen too crude and imperfect to admit of more complex or philosophicat ,

a Paintings found in Pompeii , represent Villas of tvvo stories having trees planted ontheir roofs. These kind of gardens were probably not very nncoimmm in ancienttimes in the east. though none perhaps ever equaled those of Babylon. They havebeen continued to modern times in Asia . Tavernier, when in Bagimgar (the modernHyderabad ) the Capital of Golconda, found the roofs of the large courts of the palaceterraced and contuining gardens, in which were trees of stich immense size “ that it isa thing of great wonder how- those arches should bear so vast a bürden.” The originof these and of the city wassimilar to that of the Babylonian gardens. The King atthe importunity of Nagar, one of his wives, founded the city and named it after her *

Bagnagar —i. e, “ the gardens of Nagar.”