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ἔλυτρον. The ‘reservoir’ (cf. iv. 173. 1) at Sippara, also the work of Nebuchadnezzar, is meant; it lay ‘along, a little distance from the river’. But really it was not ‘far above’ Babylon; H. is either making a mistake, or he is calculating by the time spent on his journey down stream; he writes as if his boat had made the circuit of the reservoir (περίοδος, § 6), which can hardly have been the fact. Abydenus (fr. 9, F. H. G. iv. 283) makes it 40 parasangs, i.e. 1,200 stades, in circumference and 20 fathoms deep. There is no trace of this reservoir now, but an inscription of Hammurabi says, ‘I set a marsh around and dug a canal and made a protecting quay’ (at Sippara).’ This work was renewed by the father of Nebuchadnezzar (V. Scheil, Sippara, 1902, pp. 23, 65). It was intended for irrigation (cf. the reservoir at Assuan), but no doubt could also be used to flood the country against an invader. This must be the meaning of ὄρυγμα πᾶν ἕλος (§ 6), but H. has quite failed to understand his informant, and so his own account is most obscure. He seems to confuse the canals, along which his boat may well have travelled, with the great ‘basin’ which he only saw, and the uses of which were described to him. ἐς τὸ ὕδωρ, ‘to the water level’; the phrase is Chaldaean (E. I. H. vii. 60).
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