dwarfed by twentieth century cities but big when you are in it;
growing stench as the city is approached;
continual vibrating clamor of wheels, feet, hooves and voices;
mud-brick buildings decaying and rebuilt over centuries;
city wall rising like a mountain, stretching beyond sight;
baked-brick ramparts sixty feet high, thirty feet thick;
a tower every hundred yards;
a thirty foot gap between two walls filled with rubble and paved with a broad road;
a moat by the walls a hundred feet across and twenty deep;
embankment road flanked by crenellated fortress walls decorated with giant painted statues of man-headed bulls;
road crossing the moat on piers, then through a gate with four hundred-foot towers;
gate doors made of tall, thick cedar trunks sheathed in carved bronze;
perpetual preparedness to pour boiling water and oil and hot sand on anyone besieging the city.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember how the Nantucketers, even those old enough to remember the far larger cities of the 20th century AD, were impressed by how LARGE Babylon was. Compared to Babylon the small towns and settlements of Nantucket looked very small!
Sean
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