"سرد لرحلة إلى موقع مدينة بابل في ١٨١١، طُبعت الآن لأول مرة: مذكرات على الأطلال؛ مع نقوش من الخرائط المدبئية للمؤلف: ملاحظات على طبوغرافية بابل القديمة،بقلم الرائد رينيل؛ في إشارة إلى المذكرات: مذكرات ثانية على الأطلال؛ في إشارة إلى ملاحظات الرائد رينيل: مع سرد لرحلة إلى برسبوليس: طُبعت الآن لأول مرة، مع كتابات مسمارية نسخت في برسبوليس ولم تُنشر من قبل: كتبها الراحل كلوديوس جيمس ريتش، المحترم، المقيم البريطاني السابق لشركة الهند الشرقية في بغداد. حررته أرملته." [‎٨‎٢] (٤٧٤/١٦٦)

82
MEMOIR ON THE RUINS
Pliny, in particular, has done nothing more than
copy Herodotus. Strabo's general accuracy and
personal experience indeed, render his description
of great interest, as far as it goes; but he could
only have seen Babylon at a period, when its public
buildings had already become heaps of rubbish, and
consequently must have depended upon more ancient
authorities for particular accounts of most of them.*
The greatest circumference the ancients have
ascribed to the city walls, is four hundred and eight
stadia; the most moderate, three hundred and sixty.
Strabo, who is excellent authority in this particular,
as he must have seen the walls in a sufficiently per
fect state to form his judgment, allows three hun
dred and eighty-five; but the smallest computation
supposes an area for the city, of which we can now
scarcely form an idea. Whatever may have been
the size of Babylon, I imagine that its population
bore no proportion to it; and that it would convey
to a modern the idea of an enclosed district, rather
than that of a regular city; the streets, which are
said to have led from gate to gate across the area,
being no more than roads through cultivated land,
over which buildings were distributed in groups or
patches. Quintus Curtius says positively that there
was pasture and arable land in the enclosure, suffi
cient to support the whole of the population during
a long siege; and Xenophon reports, that when Cyrus
took Babylon (which event happened at night), the
* See Appendix, No. 11.