Note 566 — Chapter XIX · ASSYRIANS. — BABYLON.

There is a valuable examination of the lower course of the Euphrates, with the changes which it has undergone, in Ritter, West-Asien, b. iii. Abtheil. iii, Abschnitt i, sect. 29, pp. 45-49, and the passage from Abydenus in the latter page.

For the distance between Terêdon or Diridôtis, at the mouth of the Euphrates (which remained separate from that of the Tigris until the first century of the Christian era), to Babylon, see Strabo, ii, p. 80; xvi, p. 739.

It is important to keep in mind the warning given by Ritter, that none of the maps of the course of the river Euphrates, prepared previously to the publication of Colonel Chesney’s expedition in 1836, are to be trusted. That expedition gave the first complete and accurate survey of the course of the river, and led to the detection of many mistakes previously committed by Mannert, Reichard, and other able geographers and chartographers. To the immense mass of information contained in Ritter’s comprehensive and laborious work, is to be added the farther merit, that he is always careful in pointing out where the geographical data are insufficient and fall short of certainty. See West-Asien, B. iii, Abtheilung iii, Abschnitt i, sect. 41, p 959.