r-horse chariot. In the circuit of the wall
there are set a hundred gates made of bronze throughout, and the
gate-posts and lintels likewise. Now there is another city distant from
Babylon a space of eight days' journey, of which the name is Is; and
there is a river there of no great size, and the name of the river is
also Is, and it sends its stream into the river Euphrates. This river Is
throws up together with its water lumps of asphalt in great abundance,
and thence was brought the asphalt for the wall of Babylon.

180. Babylon then was walled in this manner; and there are two divisions
of the city; for a river whose name is Euphrates parts it in the middle.
This flows from the land of the Armenians and is large and deep and
swift, and it flows out into the Erythraian sea. The wall then on each
side has its bends 179 carried down to the river, and from this point
the walls stretch along each bank of the stream in the form of a rampart
of baked bricks: and the city itself is full of houses of three and
four stories, and the roads by which it is cut up run in straight lines,
including the cross roads which lead to the river; and opposite to each
road there were set gates in the rampart which ran along the river, in
many in number as the ways, 180 and these also were of bronze and led
like the ways 181 to the river itself.

181. This wall then which I have mentioned is as it were a cuirass 182
for the town, and another wall runs round within it, not much weaker for
defence than the first but enclosing a smaller space. 183 And in each
division of the city was a building in the midst, in the one the king's
palace of great extent and strongly fortified round, and in the other
the temple of Zeus Belos with bronze gates, and this exists still up to
my time and measures two furlongs each way, 184 being of a square shape:
and in the midst of the temple 185 is built a solid tower measuring a
furlong both in length and in breadth, and on this tower another tower
has been erected, and another again upon this, and so on up to the
number of eight towers. An ascent to these has been built running
outside round about all the towers; and when one reaches about the
middle of the ascent one finds a stopping-place and seats to rest upon,
on which those who ascend sit down and rest: and on the top of the last
tower there is a large cell, 186 and in the cell a large couch is laid,
well covered, and by it is placed a golden table: and ther