s round the
whole of its circumference. From the silence of antiquity, some
writers have imagined that it did not exist in ancient times; but the
observations of scientific travellers are opposed to this theory. The
lake abounds with fish of several kinds, and the fishery attracts and
employs a considerable number of the natives who dwell near it.

[Illustration: PLATE VIII.]

Besides these lakes, there were contained within the limits of
the Empire a number of petty tarns, which do not merit particular
description. Such were the Bahr-el-Taka, and other small lakes on the
right bank of the middle Orontes, the Birket-el-Limum in the
Lebanon, and the Birket-er-Eam on the southern flank of Hermon. It is
unnecessary, however, to pursue this subject any further. But a few
words must be added on the chief cities of the Empire, before this
chapter is brought to a conclusion.

The cities of the Empire may be divided into those of the dominant
country and those of the provinces. Those of the dominant country
were, for the most part, identical with the towns already described
as belonging to the ancient Chaldaea, Besides Babylon itself, there
flourished in the Babylonian period the cities of Borsippa, Duraba,
Sippara or Sepharvaim, Opis, Psittace, Cutha, Orchoe or Erech, and
Diridotis or Teredon. The sites of most of those have been described in
the first volume; but it remains to state briefly the positions of some
few which were either new creations or comparatively undistinguished in
the earlier times.

Opis, a town of sufficient magnitude to attract the attention of
Herodotus, was situated on the left or east bank of the Tigris, near the
point where the Diyaleh or Gyndes joined the main river. Its position
was south of the Gyndes embouchure, and it might be reckoned as lying
upon either river. The true name of the place--that which it bears in
the cuneiform inscriptions--was Hupiya; and its site is probably marked
by the ruins at Khafaji, near Baghdad, which place is thought to retain,
in a corrupted form, the original appellation. Psittace or Sitace,
the town which gave name to the province of Sittacene, was in the near
neighborhood of Opis, lying on the same side of the Tigris, but lower
down, at least as low as the modern fort of the Zobeid chief. Its exact
site has not been as yet discovered. Teredon, or Diriaotis, appears to
have been first founded by Nebuchadnezzar. It lay on the coast of the
Persian Gulf, a little