1

be safely received as genuine, and that it was imported from Asia by the first settlers of the country together with the established system of theology; a system, which in all substantial points is the very sanie as that of the old continent.

6. From the several traditions which have been exhibited, it seems to have been a very prevailing opinion, that the descent of the Godhead at Babel was attended by a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning and wind. The same belief appears to have been adopted by the Hebrews: at least the Jew Benjamin asserts, that fire from heaven fell upon the centre of the tower, and split it through down to the very foundation.'

2

A notion likewise has gained ground very widely, that Nimrod himself perished beneath the ruins of his pyramid. Such is the account given by Syncellus and Cedrenus: and to the same purpose speaks a legend of the Hindoos, which a great orientalist has, with some probability, conjectured to be a disguised history of the Babylonic tower.

The tyrant Hirinakassap established, after the deluge, an universal empire; boasted, that he was lord of all the visible world; and refused to acknowledge the superiority of the incarnate mediatorial god Vishnou. His more pious son argued against such daring arrogance, and maintained the boundless power and undoubted ubiquity of the godhead. Provoked at this opposition, Hirinakassap

1

2

Bochart. Phaleg. lib. i, c. 9.

Syncell. Chronog. p. 42. Cedren. Compend. p. 11.

contemptuously asked, whether Vishnou were in that pillar. He is, replied Pralhaud. Then let him come forth, said the king; as, rising from his seat, he struck the pillar with his foot. Immediately a tremendous roar was heard: the column, perhaps the pyramid under the name of a column, burst asunder and Vishnou, incarnate under the form of a man-lion, issued forth emitting vivid flashes of fire. Faithful to the instinct of the animal whose figure he had assumed, the god seized upon the blaspheming tyrant, and in an instant tore out his heart.'

7. Yet it may well be doubted, whether this tradition respecting the death of Nimrod at Babel rests upon any solid basis: and it may be more than doubted, whether the vast tower itself was overturned or destroyed; though the building might probably be assailed by a tremendous storm, indicative of the present Deity.

Nimrod, instead of perishing beneath the ruins of the subverted pyramid, evacuated the country which had witnessed his shame and discomfiture, retired into Assyria, and there became the founder of Nineveh for, that such is the real declaration of Moses, may be proved (I think) by incontrovertible arguments; and, that his language is fully capable of being thus understood, is confessed by our translators in their marginal version.' The

1 Asiat. Res. vol. ii. p. 132. Maurice's Hist. of Hind. vol. ii. p. 15.

2 Gen. x. 11. See my Orig. of Pagan Idol. book vi. c. 2. § 1.

arch apostate then himself escaped with his life: and his tower, though possibly damaged (a circumstance, which may have given rise to the exaggerated accounts of its entire destruction), still remained the unfinished monument of his folly and impiety, deserted and neglected for many ages, until Nebuchadnezzar made Babylon the seat of his empire, and repaired and completed the work which Nimrod had begun. Of an edifice so stupendous the materials could not be dissipated without a miracle, alike superfluous and unrecorded in Scripture; for the sacred volume merely tells us, that his followers left off to build the city: and the peculiar form of a pyramid, like that of a mountain which it professes to imitate, tends more than any other figure to ensure perpetuity. If then the materials of the tower were not dissipated by a wholly unrecorded miracle, the tower itself, though its external brickwork might have partially suffered, must have continued in existence until the time of Nebuchadnezzar; just as the Egyptian pyramids still remain, though ages have rolled over the heads of those deserted buildings. Such being the case, even independent of religious motives, the second founder of Babylon would find it a more easy task to repair and finish the tower of Nimrod, than either wholly to remove its materials or to work them up afresh in constructing a new pyramid.

Now, in the midst of that far famed city, as we learn from the Greek historians, there rose an enormous tower, dedicated to the god Belus, and

VOL. I.

L

bearing on its mountain-summit his temple or sacellum. As I have already observed, it was composed of eight successively diminishing towers or stories, piled one upon the other: and, by comparing together the two accounts of Herodotus and Strabo, we learn, that each side of its base equalled a stadium in length, that its entire height was likewise a stadium, and that it stood in the midst of a court or inclosure which was two stadia square.

Here then a question arises, whether a building of such vast bulk was the entire work of Nebuchadnezzar; who, previous to its construction, had painfully removed the prior work of Nimrod: or whether it was not, in reality, the original pyramid, repaired and finished and beautified.

With Prideaux and other sensible writers, I think there can be little doubt, how we ought to decide the point. A solid mass of sun-dried and kiln-burnt bricks; solid, with the exception of the central chamber mentioned by Herodotus and probably of some other comparatively insignificant cavities used by the officiating priests: such a mass

Herod. Hist. lib. i. c. 181. Strab. Geog. lib. xvi. p. 738. There is certainly an error in the strictly literal account of Herodotus, for he makes the lowest story alone to be a stadium in height. But such an admeasurement, both destroys the just proportion of the tower, by giving to its pediment story the awkward and improbable dimensions of a cubical stadium; assigns, by necessary implication, to the whole fabric a most incredible altitude; and contradicts the later and more rational assertion of Strabo, that the entire height of the pyramid was but a single stadium.

would not fall to decay, like a Grecian or Roman temple of regular masonry; nor would mere time render it incapable of being repaired, as I suppose Nebuchadnezzar to have repaired it. The edifice was, in fact, an artificial mountain: and the only damage, which it could well sustain, would be some injury to the breastwork of burnt brick, that would round off the sharp angles of the successive steps and thus give more of the appearance of a natural mountain to the whole gigantic structure. Such damage as this might, with comparative ease, be repaired by a powerful and superstitious monarch: and, when the building was restored to its pristine form, and when probably one or two new stories had been added to what was left unfinished by Nimrod; the temple of Belus was erected upon its summit, after the same manner and with the same mythologic reference to the ark on the Paradisiacal Ararat, that the temples of the gods were so frequently and so studiously built upon the summits of natural hills.'

This I take to be the real history of the Babylonic tower of Belus. It was an artificial mountain, framed after the fabulous model of the sacred mount Meru or Ararat, and destined to support the temple of that chief hero-god, who offered the first postdiluvian sacrifice on the top of the Armenian peak, and who was supposed both to have emanated from the Sun and to have been translated after death to the orb of that luminary. Of this transmigrating divinity, Nimrod himself, if I

See my Origin of Pagan Idol. book v. c. 7. § I. 1. II. 1, 5.