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Nebuchodonosor [Nabopollassar] heard that the governor whom he had set
over Egypt, and the places about Coelesyria and Phoenicia, had revolted
from him, while he was not himself able any longer to undergo the
hardships [of war], he committed to his son Nebuchadnezzar, who was
still but a youth, some parts of his army, and sent them against him. So
when Nebuchadnezzar had given battle, and fought with the rebel, he beat
him, and reduced the country from under his subjection, and made it
a branch of his own kingdom; but about that time it happened that his
father Nebuchodonosor [Nabopollassar] fell ill, and ended his life in
the city Babylon, when he had reigned twenty-one years; [21] and when
he was made sensible, as he was in a little time, that his father
Nebuchodonosor [Nabopollassar] was dead, and having settled the affairs
of Egypt, and the other countries, as also those that concerned the
captive Jews, and Phoenicians, and Syrians, and those of the Egyptian
nations; and having committed the conveyance of them to Babylon to
certain of his friends, together with the gross of his army, and the
rest of their ammunition and provisions, he went himself hastily,
accompanied with a few others, over the desert, and came to Babylon. So
he took upon him the management of public affairs, and of the kingdom
which had been kept for him by one that was the principal of the
Chaldeans, and he received the entire dominions of his father, and
appointed, that when the captives came, they should be placed as
colonies, in the most proper places of Babylonia; but then he adorned
the temple of Belus, and the rest of the temples, in a magnificent
manner, with the spoils he had taken in the war. He also added another
city to that which was there of old, and rebuilt it, that such as would
besiege it hereafter might no more turn the course of the river, and
thereby attack the city itself. He therefore built three walls round
about the inner city, and three others about that which was the outer,
and this he did with burnt brick. And after he had, after a becoming
manner, walled the city, and adorned its gates gloriously, he built
another palace before his father's palace, but so that they joined to
it; to describe whose vast height and immense riches it would perhaps
be too much for me to attempt; yet as large and lofty as they were, they
were completed in fifteen days. [22] He also erected elevated places for
walking, of stone, and made it r