(M171) In 625 B.C. the old Chaldeans recovered their political importance, probably by an alliance with the Medes, and Nabopolassar obtained undisputed possession of Babylon, and founded a short but brilliant dynasty. He obtained a share of the captives of Nineveh, and increased the population of his capital. His son, Nebuchadnezzar, was sent as general against the Egyptians, and defeated their king, Neko, reconquered all the lands bordering on Egypt, and received the submission of Jehoiakim, of Jerusalem. The death of Nabopolassar recalled his son to Babylon, and his great reign began B.C. 604. (M172) It was he who enlarged the capital to so great an extent that he may almost be said to have built it. It was in the form of a square, on both banks of the Euphrates, forty-eight miles in circuit, according to Herodotus, with an area of two hundred square miles—large enough to support a considerable population by agriculture alone. The walls of this city, if we accept the testimony of Herodotus, were three hundred and fifty feet high, and eighty-seven feet thick, and were strengthened by two hundred and fifty towers, and pierced with one hundred gates of brass. The river was lined by quays, and the two parts of the city were united by a stone bridge, at each end of which was a fortified palace. The greatest work of the royal architect was the new palace, with the adjoining hanging garden—a series of terraces to resemble hills, to please his Median queen. This palace, with the garden, was eight miles in circumference, and splendidly decorated with statues of men and animals. Here the mighty monarch, after his great military expeditions, solaced himself, and dreamed of omnipotence, until a sudden stroke of madness—that form which causes a man to mistake himself for a brute animal—sent him from his luxurious halls into the gardens he had planted. His madness lasted seven years, and he died, after a reign of forty-three years, B.C. 561, and Evil-Merodach, his son, reigned in his stead. (M173) He was put to death two years after, for lawlessness and intemperance, and was succeeded by his brother-in-law and murderer, Neriglissar. So rapid was the decline of the monarchy, that after a few brief reigns Babylon was entered by the army of Cyrus, and the last king, Bil-shar-utzur, or Bilshassar, associated with his father Nabonadius, was slain, B.C. 538. Thus ended the Chaldean monarchy, seventeen hundred and ninety-six years after the building of Babel by Nimrod, according to the chronology it is most convenient to assume. CHAPTER IX. THE EMPIRE OF THE MEDES AND PERSIANS.