of which bitumen bubbles up, and oil of naphtha on the other. Mr. Rich remarks, that bitumen was by no means so generally used in the structures of Babylon as is commonly supposed. This is demonstrated by the fact, that bitumen is only found in the ruins as a cement in a few situations, generally towards the basement, where its power of resisting wet rendered it valuable. Before it can be used as a cement, it must be boiled with a certain proportion of oil, and this troublesome and expensive process was not likely to be used exclusively in such a pile as the Tower of Babel, particularly when cements abound, all of which are more easily prepared, and one of which at least is much superior to bitumen. These consist of three kinds of calcareous earth found abundantly in the desert west of the Euphrates. The first, called noora, is, in present use, mixed with ashes, and employed as a coating for the lower parts of walls in baths and other places liable to damps. Another, called by the Turks karej, and by the Arabs jus,

is also found in powder mixed with indurated pieces of

the same substance and round pebbles. This forms even now the common cement of the country, and constitutes the mortar generally found in the burnt brick-work of the most ancient remains. When good, the bricks cemented by it cannot well be detached without being broken, whilst those laid in bitumen can easily be separated. The third sort, called borak, is a substance resembling gypsum, and is found in large lumps of an earthy appearance, which, when burned, form an excellent plaster or whitewash. Pure clay or mud is also used as a cement; but this is exclusively with the sun-dried bricks.

4. A tower, whose top may reach unto heaven.'-The latter clause of this phrase is literally and its top in the skies'-a metaphor common in all languages and nations, for a very elevated and conspicuous summit; and which exonerates the builders from the imputed stupidity of attempting to scale the heavens. Whether there was any or what bad intention in this erection, has afforded much matter of discussion, into which we cannot enter. It is probable enough that some design to frustrate the appointed dispersion of mankind was involved in the undertaking; and it does not appear that the confusion of tongues was so

much a punishment for this attempt, as a proper and obvious measure for giving effect to the intended dispersion and distribution of the human race.

It may be observed, that the idea of preventing dispersion by such means, is applicable in a most remarkable manner to the wide and level plains of Babylonia, where scarcely one object exists different from another to guide the stranger in his journeying, and which in those days, as at present, formed a sea of land, and the compass unknown. The effect of these high-places, characteristic almost everywhere of some Babylonian or Chaldæan site, remains to this day as striking as ever:

Chaldæan beacons, over the desert sand
Seen faintly from thick-towered Babylon,
Against the sunset,

or rising from the horizon's verge like giant pillars, deceiving the weary traveller in their distance, yet still faithfully guiding him to one point in his destination.

Leaving a matter, in which we have only conjectures and doubtful interpretations to guide us, let us inquire what became of this famous tower in after-times, and whether any traces now remain of its existence.

There is no statement that this great work sustained any damage at the Confusion: it is simply said, that the building of the city, and doubtless of the tower also, was discontinued. What were its precise dimensions it is impossible to determine, where different authorities make it range from one furlong to five thousand miles in height! It is generally admitted, and it is indeed in the highest degree probable, that the fabric was in a considerable state of forwardness at the Confusion; and that it could have sustained no considerable damage at the time when the building of Babylon was recommenced: and therefore, finding that this great city was in later periods famous for a stupendous tower, described as an object of wonder comparable to the Egyptian pyramids, it is not unsafe to infer that the original Tower of Babel formed at least the nucleus of that amazing structure which, in the time of the early authors of classical antiquity, stood in the midst of the temple which was built by Nebuchadnezzar, in honour of Belus. It seems that this splendid prince, whose

reign began about 605 years B. C., took the idea of rendering this old ruin the principal ornament of the city which it gave him so much pride to embellish. Whatever additions he made to it, there is no room to doubt that the original form was preserved; for not only would it have taken enormous labour and expense to alter it, but the form it afterwards bore is that which would hardly, in such comparatively late times, have been thought of, being in its simplicity and proportions characteristic not only of very ancient, but of the most ancient constructed masses which have been known to exist on the earth. Our earliest authentic information concerning this tower is from Herodotus, who however did not see it till thirty years after the Persian king Xerxes, in his indignation against the form of idolatry with which it had become associated, did as much damage to it as its solid mass enabled him, with any tolerable convenience, to effect. Herodotus describes the spot as a sacred enclosure dedicated to Jupiter Belus, consisting of a regular square of two stadia (1000 feet) on each side, and adorned with gates of brass. In the midst of this area rose a massive tower, whose length and breadth was one stadium (500 feet); upon this tower arose another and another, till the whole had numbered eight. He does not say how high it was; but Strabo, who concurs with him in the dimensions of the basement-flat, adds, that the whole was a stadium in height. Taking these proportions of 500 feet high, on a base of 500 feet on each side, we have a structure as high as the greatest of the Egyptian pyramids, but standing on a much narrower base; as the dimensions of the pyramid may (on an approximation from various statements) be reckoned at 480 feet in height, on a base of 750 feet each way. Herodotus goes on to say, that, on the outside steps were formed, winding up to each tower; and that in the middle of every flight a resting-place was provided, with seats. In the highest tower there was a magnificent chamber, expressly sacred to Belus, furnished with a splendid couch, near which was a table of gold. But there was no statue, the god being supposed to inhabit it at will. About 150 years after the devastations committed by Xerxes, it became one of the mighty projects of Alexander the Great, to restore

this famous tower to its former condition; and, as a preparatory step, he employed 10,000 men, for two months, in removing the rubbish which had fallen from the superstructure in consequence of the Persian king's dilapidations. This circumstance alone would induce us, at this distant time, in looking for the remains of this earliest great work of man, to be content with very faint traces of what we may suppose the original structure to have been. The distinction of being a remnant of the Tower of Babel, has been claimed for three different masses; namely, for Nimrod's Tower at Akkerkúf; for the Mujelibe, about 950 yards east of the Euphrates, and five miles above the modern town of Hillah; and for the Birs Nimrúd, to the west of that river, and about six miles to the south-west of Hillah. The Tel Nimrúd at Akkerkúf has already been mentioned as denoting the site of Accad. Many travellers have believed it to be the Tower of Babel, having perhaps their imaginations excited by the name of Nimrod attached to it: but the people of the country certainly do not believe it to be the Tower of Babel, the site of which they always indicate by a reference to Hillah, on the Euphrates.

The Mujelibe was first described, in the conviction of its being the Tower of Babel, by Della Valle, who examined the ruins in 1616, and characterizes this mass as a mountain of ruins,' and again, as 'a huge mountain.' The name means overturned;' and as either this or the Birs Nimrúd must present the remains of the famous tower, if such still exist, we shall give a short description of both from Rich's Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon, compared with the accounts furnished by Ker Porter, Macdonald Kinneir, Fraser, Ainsworth, and others. Kinneir concurs with Della Valle, D'Anville, Rennell, and other high names, in considering it the Tower of Babel; but it is to be borne in mind, that none of them except Kinneir, had any distinct information concerning the Birs Nimrúd.

The Mujelibe is second only to the last-named pile, in being one of the most enormous masses of brick-formed earth raised by the labour of man. Its shape is oblong, and its height, as well as the measurement of its sides, very irregular. Its sides face the four cardinal points; the mea

37

surement of that on the north being 200 yards in length, the southern 219, the eastern 182, and the western 136; while the elevation of the highest or south-east angle is 141 feet. The summit is a broad, uneven flat. It ascends towards the south-eastern point, and forms an angular kind of peak, sloping gradually down in an opposite direction upon the bosom of the mound to a depth of about 100 feet. The mass of the structure, as in that at Akkerkúf and the other Babylonish remains, is composed of bricks dried in the sun, and mixed with broken straw or reed in the preparation, cemented in some places with bitumen with regular layers of reeds, and in others with slime and reeds. In most Babylonish structures, several courses of brick intervene between the layers of reeds; but in this the reeds are interposed between every single course of bricks. The outer edges of the bricks having mouldered away, it is only on minute inspection that the nature of its materials can be ascertained. When viewed from a distance, the ruin has more the appearance of a small hill than of a building; and the ascent is in most places so gentle, that a person may ride all over it. The bricks are larger and much inferior to most others; nor indeed do any of those in the ruins near the Euphrates equal those in the ruins at Akkerkúf. Deep ravines have been sunk by the periodical rains in this stupendous mass, and there are numerous long narrow cavities, or passages, which are now the unmolested retreats of hyænas, jackals, and other noxious animals. Quantities of kiln-burnt bricks are scattered about at the base of the fabric; and it is probable that this, as well as the other recesses which only now exhibit the inferior material, were originally cased with the burnt bricks, but which, in the course of ages, have been taken away for the purposes of building; a practice which is known to have been in operation for more than 2000 years.

Every one who sees the Birs Nimrúd feels at once that, of all the masses of ruin found in this region, there is not one which so nearly corresponds with his previous notions of the Tower of Babel; and he will decide that it could be no other, if he is not discouraged by the apparent difficulty of reconciling the statements of the ancient writers concerning the Temple of Belus, with the situation of this ruin on the western bank, and its distance from the river and the other ruins. That this difficulty is not insuperable, has been shown by the writer of the article BABYLON, in the Penny Cyclopædia; and without giving any decided opinion, we cannot but subscribe to the view that the Birs Nimrúd must probably be identified with the tower in question, if the latter is to be identified at all.

We give Mr. Rich's description, referring to Sir R. K. Porter for a more detailed account. The Birs Nimrúd is a mound of an oblong form, the total circumference of which is 762 yards. At the eastern side it is cloven by a deep furrow, and is not more than 50 or 60 feet high; but on the western side it rises in a conical figure to the elevation of 198 feet; and on its summit is a solid pile of brick, 37 feet high by 28 in breadth, diminishing in thickness to the top, which is broken and irregular, and rent by a large fissure extending through a third of its height. It is perforated by small square holes, disposed in rhomboids. The fire-burnt bricks of which it is built have inscriptions on them; and so excellent is the cement, which appears to be lime-mortar, that it is nearly impossible to extract one whole. The other parts of the summit of this hill are occupied by immense fragments of brick-work, of no determinate figure, tumbled together, and converted into solid vitrified masses, as if they had undergone the action of the fiercest fire, or had been blown up with gunpowder, the layers of brick being perfectly discernible.' 'These ruins,' continues Mr. Rich, stand on a prodigious mound, the whole of which is itself in ruins, channelled by the weather and strewed with fragments of black stone, sandstone, and marble. In the eastern part, layers of unburnt brick, but no reeds, were discernible in any part: possibly the absence of them here, when they are so generally seen under similar circumstances, may be an argument of the inferior antiquity of the building. In the north side may be seen traces of building exactly similar to the brick pile.

At the foot of the mound a step may be traced scarcely elevated above the plain, exceeding in extent by several feet each way the true or measured base; and there is a quadrangular enclosure around the whole, as at the Mujelibe, but much more distinct, and of greater dimensions."

It may be observed that the grand dimensions of both the Birs and the Mujelibe correspond very well with that of the Tower of Belus, the circumference of which, if we take the stadium at 500 feet, was 2000 feet; that of the Birs is 2286, and that of the Mujelibe 2111, which in both instances is a remarkable approximation, affording no greater difference than is easily accounted for by our ignorance of the exact proportion of the stadium, and by the enlargement which the base must have undergone by the crumbling of the materials. Sir R. K. Porter seems to show that three, and part of the fourth, of the original eight stages of the tower may be traced in the existing ruin of Birs Nimrúd; and, with regard to the intense vitrifying heat to which the summit has most evidently been subjected, he has no doubt that the fire acted from above, and was probably lightning. The circumstance is certainly remarkable in connection with the tradition that the original Tower of Babel was rent and overthrown by fire from heaven. Porter thinks that the works of the Babylonish kings concealed for a while the marks of the original devastation; and that now the destructions of time and of man have reduced it to nearly the same condition in which it appeared after the Confusion. At any rate, it cannot now be seen without recollecting the emphatic prophecy of Jeremiah (li. 25): 'I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain.'

9. The Lord did there confound the language of all the earth.'-We have no distinct information as to the extent in which this remarkable event operated on the languages of men; and accordingly this verse has occasioned much discussion. It is certainly not necessary to suppose that the confusion of languages was then so great as at present. Some learned men, who consider that the present diversity of languages is not greater than would naturally arise in the lapse of a long time, and in changes of climate and country by migrations, think that the Confusion operated very slightly at first, consisting merely in the introduction of various inflections and some new words, which sufficed to make the people misunderstand one another. This is the opinion of those who think that all existing languages are derived from one parent stock. But others, who believe that the existing diversity is too great to allow the doctrine of their being all derived from one common source, think that new languages were formed at the Confusion, to each of which it is possible to trace the various derivative languages which have been formed out of it in the lapse of time, by removals, intermixtures, and refinements. It is allowed, however, that the formation of two new languages, or strongly marked dialects, for two of the families of Noah, while the other retained the primitive tongue unaltered, would be alone sufficient to account for all existing differences. What these original tongues or dialects were, is another point which has excited large debate. Sir William Jones being a very good authority in this matter we may give his opinion, as collected by Dr. Hales from different volumes of the Asiatic Researches. He discovers traces of three primæval languages, corresponding to the three grand aboriginal races, which he calls the Arabic, the Sanscrit, and the Sclavonic.

1. From the Arabic or Chaldee spring the dialects used by the Assyrians, Arabs, and Jews.

2. From the Sanscrit, which is radically different from the Arabic, spring the Greek, Latin, and Celtic dialects, though blended with another idiom, the Persian, the Armenian, and the old Egyptian, or Ethiopic.

3. From the Sclavonic or Tartarian, which is again radically different both from the Arabic and Sanscrit, spring (so far as Sir William could venture to pronounce upon so difficult a point) the various dialects of northern Asia and north-eastern Europe.'

Some other writers require a greater number of mothertongues; while others are content, as we have seen, with that ancient Hebrew language into which the later Hebrew, the Chaldee, and the Syriac may be resolved.

12. Arphaxad.... Salah.'-It is upon the generations specified in this chapter that chronological computations for the period from the Deluge to the birth of Abraham are founded. The diversity between the existing Hebrew text and the Septuagint continues to be very great, and has been brought about partly by the same process that has been described in the note to ch. v. 1, and partly by the exist ence of a whole generation in the Septuagint and the New Testament (Luke iii. 36) which does not appear in the Hebrew. The tendency of the latter is still to shorten the times; and this is done to such purpose as to render the period from the Deluge to the birth of Abraham ridiculously inadequate for the purposes of history. The intrinsic fitness of the larger account is so manifest here, and the violation of historical probability by the shorter account is so outrageous, that the Samaritan Pentateuch, which coincided with the Hebrew for the more ancient period, does not bring down the process below the Deluge, but for the remainder coincides very nearly with the Septuagint. What value, therefore, the corroborating testimony of the Samaritan may have added to the Hebrew account in the first instance, is completely neutralized by its concurrence with the Septuagint account in the second. From the Deluge to the birth of Abraham the number of years, according to the

Hebrew text, is .

Samaritan Pentateuch

Septuagint

Josephus

culties which it creates. They are such, that the computation is now every where rejected by sensible chronologers. 'The more I have considered the matter,' says the Rev. G. S. Faber, the more I am convinced that the Oriental Christians did well in rejecting it as palpably absurd and erroneous.' The sum of the difference, before the Deluge, is 606 years; after the Deluge, 788 years; together, 1394 years, which seems too much good time to be lost from the history of the world. If we add this sum to the 4004 years which the shorter chronology allows for the interval from the Creation to the birth of Christ, we extend that period to 5398 years, and add nearly fourteen centuries to the age of the human race.

The differences thus indicated are all that are important; for the computations of the chronologers who follow the Hebrew, and of those who follow the Septuagint, seldom differ but by a few years from each other; and arise chiefly from different computations of the interval from the Exode to the foundation of Solomon's temple. The following table involves the points on which all these differences rest:

292 942 1072

The abrupt and violent reduction of the age of paternity, in the Hebrew account, to little above its present standard, while the total of age still remains very high, is a most suspicious and unnatural circumstance, and contrasts disadvantageously with the sober and consistent statement in the Septuagint. It suggests the idea that, having so much reduced the generations before the Deluge, the operators to whose agency the corruption of the genealogy must be ascribed, found that they had no room for further reduction after the Deluge, but by outraging consistency and probability in the way this table exhibits. Besides, there is this self-convicting circumstance, that the shortening process is abandoned so soon as the history itself begins to supply materials for contradiction. And is it at all credible that Arphaxad and his five immediate descendants should have children at the age of 30, when the others who succeeded them, and whose lives were not half so long, did not become parents till they were more than double their age; Nahor at 79, Terah at 70, Abraham at 87; and still further down, Isaac at 60, and Jacob at 84? It is impossible in this place to indicate even a tithe of the absurdities which the shorter postdiluvian chronology involves, or the historical diffi

With respect to the generation of Cainan, which in the Septuagint we find interposed between those of Arphaxad and Salah, and which alone adds 130 years to the account, much has been written and argued, which we cannot here even recapitulate. Many persons will think it quite suffi cient that it is used by St. Luke in his genealogy of Christ. This shews that it was in the Septuagint when the Evangelist wrote; and it is hard to say how it could have got into the Septuagint, if it had not been then found in the original Hebrew. The object of such an interpolation is as inconceivable, as the means by which it could be produced; whereas its having been dropped out of the Hebrew text can be easily accounted for. The silence of Josephus used to be urged against the claims of this generation; but it has been shown that Josephus receives into his account the years belonging to this generation, though he does not name the person. An earlier writer, Demetrius, who composed a history of the Jewish kings about 220 years before Christ-only 66 years after the Septuagint translation was made, and when it doubtless agreed with the Hebrew textuses the chronology of the Seventy, and includes the generation of the second Cainan. A similar history, composed about fifty years later by Eupolemus, exhibits the same characteristics. For a knowledge of the former work we are indebted to the quotations of Alexander Polyhistor and of Eusebius; and of the latter to those of Clement of Alexandria. Let it also be remarked that in these and other histories, counted ancient in the times of Josephus, Eusebius, and Origen, Abraham is described as the tenth from Noah, whereas, if the generation of Cainan had no existence, he would be only the ninth. On these and other grounds, we have no hesitation in believing that the generation existed from the first in the Septuagint, and in the ancient Hebrew copies from which that version was made. On the topics indicated in this note the reader may consult Usher, Chronologia Sacra; Jackson, Chronological Antiquities; Hayes, Dissert. on Chronology of Septuagint ; Hales, New Analysis of Chronology; Russell, Connect. of Sacred and Profane History, Prelim. Dissert. 1827; Clayton, Chronoloy. of the Heb. Bible Defended; Vossius, De Vera Atate Mundi, and De Sept. Inter. eorumque trans.

et Chronologia; Scaliger, De Emendatione Temporum, and Thesaurus Temporum; Perron, L'Antiquité des Juifs établie, and Défense de l'Antiquité des Juifs; Petavius, De Doctrina Temporum.

28. Ur of the Chaldees.'-This seems to have been rather a district than a town, and it probably coincided with or was contained in the modern pashalic of Urfah; the chief town of which, of the same name, is indeed locally regarded as the Ur of Abraham. This town, denominated by the Syrians Urhoi, by the Arabs corrupted into Urfah or Orfah, is situated in Upper Mesopotamia, at the foot of the mountains of Osrhoene, in 38° 51' E. long. and 37° 9' N. lat. Local tradition ascribes the foundation of the town to Nimrod; and the Arabs, according to their usual custom, consider as his palace some remarkable ruins, with subterraneous apartments, apparently of great antiquity. The Jews still call the place by the name in the text, Ur Kasdim, or Ur of the Chaldees;' and it is a place of pilgrimage as the birth-place of Abraham, in whose honour the Moslems have a fine mosque, in the court of which is a lake teeming with fish, preserved there in honour of the patriarch. The town was called Edessa by the successors of Alexander, from a city of the same name in Macedonia, and under that name was the capital of a territory called Osrhoene, occupying the northern and most fruitful part of Mesopotamia, and which, for about eight centuries before Christ, formed an independent kingdom. Its last king was Abgarus, of whom there is a well-known tradition, that he wrote a letter to Christ, and received an answer, printed translations of which are common in many parts of England, and have a superstitious value attached to them, being considered to bless the house in which they are contained. The kingdom of Abgarus was appropriated by the Romans, and the king himself sent in chains to Rome. The place afterwards passed through the hands of the Saracens, the

Crusaders, the Tartars, and was ultimately conquered by the Turks. It is now the seat of a pashalic, and is a large and tolerably well built town, containing a population which Buckingham states at 50,000; an estimate which we have reason to believe much too large. It is a place of considerable trade, enjoying the advantage of being one of the principal stations on the great caravan route between Aleppo and Bagdad.

31. Haran.'-This name affords one instance of the confusion which has arisen in the proper names of our translation, from its having been chosen to give the letter

ch, a power equivalent to h. It ought to be Charan, and it is so given in Acts vii. 2, where the Greek text, after the Septuagint in this place, properly represents the Hebrew by Xappáv. It is proper to observe that the translators have generally taken this course with the П, as the practice sometimes makes such an alteration that it is difficult to recognise the names. The place in question is supposed to have derived its name from Haran (Charan), the father of Lot, and brother of Abraham. It was called Charræ by the Romans. Its situation is fixed by Rennell in 39° 2' 45" E. long., and 36° 40 N. lat., being 29 geographical miles S.S.E. from Urfah. It is situated in a sandy and flat plain. It is now a poor place, in the occupation of a few families of Bedouin Arabs, who have been drawn thither by the good supply of water from several small streams. Their presence renders a visit so unpleasant an undertaking, that no travellers have recently been there. The ruins of an old town and castle are still to be seen. The city must have fallen to ruin at an early period, for it seems to have been quite desolate when the Jew, Benjamin of Tudela, travelled through Mesopotamia in the twelfth century. See Buckingham's Travels in Mesopotamia; Kinneir's Geographical Memoir of the Persian Empire; and Ainsworth's Researches in Assyria.