Berosus told us above that Nebuchadnezzar surrounded the old city as well as the new, the inner city as well as the outer, with a triple wall. By the outer city we must understand the new city, which, according to Berosus, Nebuchadnezzar built. The old city lay, like the old citadel (I. 298), on the west bank of the Euphrates. Of this old citadel the remains of a square keep on the river, now called Abu Ghozeilat, are still in existence. Herodotus, and the Greek authorities after him, know nothing of an old and a new city, they only knew a city divided into two parts by the Euphrates. Herodotus does not speak of three walls but only of two, an outer and an inner wall, "hardly inferior in strength to the other, but of less extent," (p. 369). If to these two walls of Herodotus we reckon the walls which enclosed the fortresses on each side of the Euphrates, Herodotus would be in agreement with Berosus. But Ctesias and the companions of Alexander know of one wall only, enclosing Babylon. It would be very remarkable that within half a century or even a century after the time of Herodotus, no trace was left of the two inner walls mentioned by him. Herodotus allows for the outer wall a height of 200 cubits, _i.e._ of 300 feet, and a breadth of 75 feet: Ctesias mentions the same height, (50 fathoms). Moreover, Ctesias allows a similar height for the second wall of the old citadel, and a height of 70 fathoms for the towers; the third wall was higher still (I. 298). The companions of Alexander allow a height of only 50 cubits for the walls of Babylon. The walls of the island city of Tyre, on the side turned towards the mainland, were 150 feet in height. Xenophon saw strips of wall 150 feet in height still standing on the site of ancient Nineveh. We saw above that the Median wall of Nebuchadnezzar, the first line of defence for the land, was 100 feet in height, and 20 feet in breadth; hence we may conclude that the walls of Babylon must certainly have been stronger and higher. A Hebrew contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar speaks emphatically of the "broad walls," "the lofty gates" of Babylon; he tells us that "Babylon reached to the heavens, and the height of the fortress none could climb."[704] As neither Cyrus nor Darius with all their siege material could make any impression on the walls of Babylon; as Nebuchadnezzar would certainly make the walls of Babylon stronger than the walls of Chalah and Nineveh, so that neither battering-rams nor besieging-towers could injure them, neither arrows nor scaling-ladders could over-top them, we have good ground for assuming that Nebuchadnezzar strengthened the wall already in existence, and raised it to a height of 200 feet, (Pliny gives it a height of more than 200 feet);[705] that the towers rose to 300 feet. It was the standing walls of towers of this height which caused Herodotus and Ctesias to believe that the wall was once of the same height throughout. A height of 200 feet presupposes a corresponding breadth of