In distinction to this upper temple Herodotus calls Esagila lying before it to the south the κάτω νηός, the lower temple. In the upper temple, according to Herodotus, there was only a golden table and a κλίνη, and according to Ctesias three gold figures of Zeus, Hera, and Rhea. My opinion is that the designation of the zikurrat as bearing a temple is confirmed by this. The Babylonian term only expresses height, and nothing that can suggest stages. It is obvious that the roof of so lofty a temple would be welcomed by the Babylonian astronomers as a platform for their observations. It would be necessary for them to be raised above the thick atmosphere of the plain. Owing to excessive dryness, the air is almost opaque at a distance, and the horizon up to a height of 10 or 20 grades is a dusky circle of dust, through which the sun and moon often assume torn and distorted forms, if their setting can be seen at all. It is true that during the summer we have no clouds, with the exception of the _Bachura_, a type of weather that occurs at the beginning of August, but we have sandstorms, through which the sun appears like a blood-red disc. The greatly-renowned clearness of the Babylonian sky is largely a fiction of European travellers, who are rarely accustomed to observe the night sky of Europe without the intervention of city lights. The original complete height of the tower of Babylon we do not know. The east side of the peribolos, which is almost similar to the north side, measures 409 metres in round numbers. For the entire sacred enclosure Herodotus gives a measure of 2 square stadia, and 1 stadion as the side length of the area of the zikurrat; the ruins themselves show 90 metres. But what is all this written information in comparison with the clearness of the evidence we gain from the buildings themselves, ruined though they are. The colossal mass of the tower, which the Jews of the Old Testament regarded as the essence of human presumption, amidst the proud palaces of the priests, the spacious treasuries, the innumerable lodgings for strangers—white walls, bronze doors, mighty fortification walls set round with lofty portals and a forest of 1000 towers,—the whole must have conveyed an overwhelming sense of greatness, power, and wealth, such as could rarely have been found elsewhere in the great Babylonian kingdom. I once beheld the great silver standing statue of the Virgin, over life-size, laden with votive offerings, rings, precious stones, gold and silver, borne on a litter by forty men, appear in the portal of the dome of Syracuse, high above the heads of the assembled crowds, to be brought out in festival procession with inspiring music and among the fervent prayers of the people into the garden of the Latomia. After the same fashion I picture to myself a procession of the god Marduk as he issued forth from Esagila, perhaps through the peribolos, to proceed on his triumphant way through the Procession Street of Babylon.