Layard, _Nineveh and Babylon_ (1853); C. P. Tiele,
_De Hoofdtempel van Babel_ (1886); A. H. Sayce, _Religion of the Ancient
Babylonians_, App. ii. (1887); C. J. Ball in _Records of the Past_ (new
ser. iii. 1890); _Mittheilungen der deutschen Orientgesellschaft_
(1899-1906); F. Delitzsch, _Im Lande des einstigen Paradieses_ (1903);
F. H. Weissbach, _Das Stadtbild von Babylon_ (1904); F. Hommel, _Grundriss
der Geographie und Geschichte des alten Orients_ (1904).

(A. H. S.)

BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. I. _Geography._--Geographically as well as
ethnologically and historically, the whole district enclosed between the
two great rivers of western Asia, the Tigris and Euphrates, forms but one
country. The writers of antiquity clearly recognized this fact, speaking of
the whole under the general name of Assyria, though Babylonia, as will be
seen, would have been a more accurate designation. It naturally falls into
two divisions, the northern being more or less mountainous, while the
southern is flat and marshy; the near approach of the two rivers to one
another, at a spot where the undulating plateau of the north sinks suddenly
into the Babylonian alluvium, tends to separate them still more completely.
In the earliest times of which we have any record, the northern portion was
included in Mesopotamia; it was definitely marked off as Assyria only after
the rise of the Assyrian monarchy. With the exception of Assur, the
original capital, the chief cities of the country, Nineveh, Calah and
Arbela, were all on the left bank of the Tigris. The reason of this
preference for the eastern bank of the Tigris was due to its abundant
supply of water, whereas the great Mesopotamian plain on the western side
had to depend upon the streams which flowed into the Euphrates. This vast
flat, the modern El-Jezireh, is about 250 miles in length, interrupted only
by a single limestone range, rising abruptly out of the plain, and
branching off from the Zagros mountains under the names of _Saraz[=u]r_,
_Hamrin_ and _Sinjar_. The numerous remains of old habitations show how
thickly this level tract must once have been peopled, though now for the
most part a wilderness. North of the plateau rises a well-watered and
undulating belt of country, into which run low ranges of limestone hills,
sometimes arid, sometimes covered with dwarf-oak, and often shutting in,
between their northern and north-eastern flank and the main mountain-line
from which they detach t