Vol.I - The Coptic Orthodox Church

CH. iv.] The Roman Fortress. 1 75
passed it over with so vague, obscure, and scanty a
notice.
It was only since writing the foregoing that I had
the opportunity of referring to Pococke. There I
find that he holds the same opinion of the position
of the ancient Babylon, placing it on the island of
rock which he calls the Gebel Jehusi.
moreover, a plan of the Roman fortress
He gives,
l
, and of the
two round towers : and a sketch of the southern wall
with the gateway. No doubt in his time, c. 1735,
much of the fortress was standing that is now quite
gone ; and it is extremely disappointing that he
should not have taken more pains to be accurate.
He represents the walls as forming a neat right-
angled parallelogram about 1 600 ft. long and 300 ft.
broad. The wall-line cuts through the centre of the
towers instead of making a tangent : the towers are
1 80 instead of 60 ft. apart, and another pair of
towers is imagined with the same line for symmetry's
sake. I am quite sure from my own examination
that no second pair of towers can have existed.
He adds that one tower was then 40 ft. high, and
the other much higher, having a church above it :
so that the now ruined tower was in good preservation
when Pococke saw it. But he tells us
that even then the people were carrying away the
Roman stone for building. On the east side he
gives no less than twelve bastions, and carries the
wall 350 ft. even beyond the fragment of Roman
work marked in my plan as detached from the
fortress. It is possible, of course, that the fortress
was enlarged in later Roman times northwards, and
1
Description of the East, vol. i. p. 26. pi.
ix.