It is supposed that the “Amraphel, king of Shinar,” who marched with Khudur-Lagamar as his ally, was no other than a king of Babylon, one of whose names has been read Amarpal, while “Ariokh of Ellassar” was an Elamite, Eriaku, brother or cousin of Khudur-Lagamar and king of Larsam. At Larsam the Elamite conquerors had established a powerful dynasty, closely allied by blood to the principal one, which had made the venerable Ur its headquarters. Babylon was a very ancient city of Babylonia, and is first mentioned in the inscriptions of Izdhubar,[53] a mythical hero, whose name is connected with the Chaldean story of the Flood. It remained for some centuries of secondary importance, but became at length the capital of the country. The native name, Bab-ilu, signifies the Gate-of-God, corresponding to Beth-el, the House of God, in the land of Palestine. According to Herodotus, the city stood in a broad plain, and was an exact square, measuring 15 miles each way. It was surrounded, he says, by a broad and deep moat, full of water, behind which rose a wall 50 royal cubits in breadth and 200 in height. In digging the moat the alluvial clay was at once made into bricks and baked in kilns; and with these the walls were built, the cement being hot bitumen. “On the top, along the edges of the wall, they constructed buildings of a single chamber, facing one another, leaving between them room for a four-horse chariot to turn. In the circuit of the wall are a hundred gates of brass, with brazen lintels and side-posts.” The broad stream of the Euphrates passed through the city, dividing it into two parts, and the centre of each division was occupied by a fortress. In the one stood the palace of the kings, surrounded by a wall of great strength and size; in the other was the sacred precinct of Jupiter Belus, a square enclosure, 2 furlongs each way, with gates of solid brass. “In the middle of the precinct,” says Herodotus, “there was a tower of solid masonry, a furlong in length and breadth, upon which was raised a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight. The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path which winds round all the towers.... On the topmost tower there is a spacious temple, and inside the temple stands a couch of unusual size, richly adorned, with a golden table by its side. Below, in the same precinct, there is a second temple, in which is a sitting figure of Jupiter, all of gold.” Other historians make the circuit of the city from 45 to 48 miles, instead of 60; and it is hardly necessary to say that modern writers question both its extent and the height of its walls.