That such works did once exist we are told by the Greek historians. Herodotus, after having described the temple of Bel and the sanctuary on its summit in which no image of the deity was set up, goes on, “In this temple at Babylon there is another sanctuary lower down, _where a great seated statue of Zeus may be seen_.[231] Near this statue there is a large table of gold, the throne and its steps are of the same material. The whole, according to the Chaldæans, is worth eight hundred talents of gold ... at one time the sacred inclosure also contained a statue of massive gold twelve cubits high. I did not see it. I content myself with repeating what the Chaldæans told me about it. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, formed a project to carry it off, but he did not dare to execute it. Xerxes, the son of Darius, caused the priest to be put to death by whom the enterprise was opposed, and took possession of the statue.” We here have the evidence of an eye-witness. The seated statue of Bel, without being of the colossal size ascribed by the Chaldæans to the image destroyed by Darius, must yet, if we may judge from the expression of Herodotus, have been larger than nature. We may gather some notion as to its pose and general appearance from certain figures carved upon the cylinders (Fig. 40), just as, in Greece, the more famous and venerable of her religious statues were reproduced upon coins and gems. As to this Babylonian statue, the one doubt we have relates to the value put upon it by the Chaldæans. Had the statue and its surroundings really been of massive gold, would the Persians have spared it when the other was overthrown and broken up? It is possible that in spite of the historian’s assertion the work he describes was only gilded bronze.