a cage of every unclean and hateful bird....

For her sins have reached unto heaven
And God hath remembered her iniquities....
The merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her,
For no man buyeth their merchandise any more.

"At the noise of the taking of Babylon", cried Jeremiah, referring to
the original Babylon, "the earth is moved, and the cry is heard among
the nations.... It shall be no more inhabited forever; neither shall
it be dwelt in from generation to generation." The Christian Saint
rendered more profound the brooding silence of the desolated city of
his vision by voicing memories of its beauty and gaiety and bustling
trade:

The voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers and trumpeters
shall be heard no more at all in thee;
And no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any
more in thee;
And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee;
And the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no
more at all in thee:
For thy merchants were the great men of the earth;
For by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.
_And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints,
And of all that were slain upon the earth_.[3]

So for nearly two thousand years has the haunting memory of the
once-powerful city pervaded Christian literature, while its broken
walls and ruined temples and palaces lay buried deep in desert sand.
The history of the ancient land of which it was the capital survived
in but meagre and fragmentary form, mingled with accumulated myths and
legends. A slim volume contained all that could be derived from
references in the Old Testament and the compilations of classical
writers.

It is only within the past half-century that the wonderful story of
early Eastern civilization has been gradually pieced together by
excavators and linguists, who have thrust open the door of the past
and probed the hidden secrets of long ages. We now know more about
"the land of Babel" than did not only the Greeks and Romans, but even
the Hebrew writers who foretold its destruction. Glimpses are being
afforded us of its life and manners and customs for some thirty
centuries before the captives of Judah uttered lamentations on the
banks of its reedy canals. The sites of some of the ancient cities of
Babylonia and Assyria were identified by European officials and
travellers in the East early in the n