CHAPTER VIII.

BIBLE REVIEW CONTINUED..

THE TOWER OF BABEL: ITS ILLUSTRATION OF PRIMITIVE HEBREW HISTORY, RESIDENCES AND MIGRATIONS.— PRE-ABRAMIC LEGEND.

"WHOSO sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed for in the image of God made he man,” (v. 6, chap. ix.). The noble respect, nay, veneration for man, as the visible impersonation and "image" of God, which this passage shows, have never been surpassed. The taking, in penalty, of the life of the murderer, was evidently to be a solemn, public, judicial act, done as acting for, and under the eye of, God, whose image had been violated. Yet this principle of "life for life," the lex talionis, carried out to its legitimate consequences, has been the source. of all wars, the most horrible and desolating of all the scourges that have laid waste mankind.

The language attributed to the Deity must of course be regarded as put into His mouth by the Jahveistic author or compiler. We have another instance of the anthropomorphic sentiments and beliefs of the author, (derived from early myth,) being put into the mouth of the Deity, in v. 13, where the "rain-bow," the result, as we know, of optic law, is made the actual weapon of the Divinity, hung up by Him against the threatening cloud, as a token that His promise, to send no more floods upon earth, had not been forgotten! This naïve but very pretty early fancy is told with that exquisite simplicity of language, which, together with that sweet intimacy between man and his great Originator, depicted in it, has so en

deared the Bible to the hearts of many generations.' The legend of the sin of Ham, v. 22, is a much less pleasing story, and, apparently, little better than an invention, to give a sacred color to the holding in slavery of the Cushite Canaanites by the Semites, and by the Hellenes, chants and others, - (Japhethites, Javanites,)—who sojourned, for trade purposes, in Tyre, Jerusalem, etc. ; — "the tents of Shem."

- mer

Chapter x. is one of the most valuable in the record. The proper names given in it are not to be understood as those of individual men, but of tribes and nations. Read in this way, it is a complete picture of the knowledge of other nations and of geography, possessed by the Hebrews in the age of Solomon, and has been of great service to modern ethnologists."

In chap. xi., v. 2, the "journeying" of the Chaldæans and Aramæans, ("the whole earth" or all mankind,) "from the east," i.e. from India, to Chaldæa, is expressly mentioned. We now come to the Hebrew account of the Tower of Babel; -on which most interesting structure a few details will perhaps be acceptable to the reader.

This very ancient temple, the oldest existing, save some of the Egyptian ones, is, after Mount Ararat, the first reliable way-mark in Hebrew history. That the Hebrews were originally Aramæans, from Armenian Aram or upper Aramæa, the elevated region north of Euphrates

I I believe it is neither more nor less than the intense instinctive love, like that of a child for a parent, existing in every human nature, (though unconsciously felt in most cases,)- toward that higher Nature which emanated and includes it, and all, which makes pictures, and delights in pictures, of an intimate personal intercourse between men and that unspeakably lofty and lovely Nature. Even where such pictures are obviously impossible in their details and as particular interviews, how wonderfully touching and charming they are! The protecting kindness toward Noah is instinctively felt to be a reality, and an inheritance for all mankind.

--

2 The Joktanites, or children of "Joktan,” Indo-Aryan inhabitants of the land of Abhira or Ophir, which was well-known to the Hebrews in Solomon's time, are indicated, (v. 25,) as " brothers" of the sons of Eber," the Hebrews. This seems to imply a belief in an ancient connection between Aryans and Semites. The land of "Havilah" I place at the foot of the Solimaun, or of the Halah, the lower coastrange, on the sea; the coast-lands of Biluchistan.

and north-west from Chaldæa, which extends north-eastwardly as far as the base of Ararat, seems implied by their account of the descent of Noah. We next hear of them in "Ur of the Chaldees," indicating that they had descended from their highlands and probably fraternized with the Chaldæans, adding agriculture to their pastoral pursuits. It was in this stage of their tribe-life, that they added so many Chaldean forms to their language, and such a number of Chaldæan legends to their literature. Among these is their legend of the building of Babel and the confusion of tongues.

The remains of the Tower are generally believed to be the lofty mound, called by the Arabs Birs Nimroud, which still rises 154 feet above the plain "of Shinar," near the site of Babylon, and is crowned by a tower of brick, supposed to be a remnant of the culminating shrine. Even if Sir H. Rawlinson's surmise be correct that the true remains are at Amrân, within the circuit of the walls of Babylon, the "Tower of Babel" must have been a similar structure, and appropriated to similar purposes, to that of Birs Nimroud. Sir Henry's excavations at Birs Nimroud developed that it was a temple-observatory, devoted to the worship, and observation of the heavenly motions, of the "seven planets," "wandering-stars" or "Disposers," connected with gods, Samas the sun, Sin or Uru the moon, Hea, or "Nin," Saturn, Bel-Merodach, = Jupiter, Nergal or Mars, Ishtar or Venus, and Nebo or Mercury. These were called the "Seven Lights." Nebuchadnezzar has left a detailed account of his restoration of this templeobservatory, built by a much earlier monarch, and which, he says, had fallen into decay through neglect of the conduits which carried off the water. It was, as Sir H. Rawlinson thinks, in seven stories, one devoted to each planet, in bricks of different colors for each story,that devoted to the sun being covered with golden plates. Sir Henry made out very distinctly the four lower stories, of which the first, devoted to Hea, Chaos and Saturn,

was 72 feet square, of black glazed or bitumenized bricks. Each successive story was 42 feet smaller than the one below it, thus leaving a wide terrace around each story. The upper stories, of fine light-colored bricks, were set symmetrically in the middle, looking from the front, so that each side terrace was 21 feet wide, but unsymmetrically on the side view, so as to make the front terraces each 30 feet wide, while the back terraces were only 12 feet wide each. These terraces served for open-air stellar observation at night, and for processional marches and sacrifices in the day-time. A finely executed Assyrian bas-relief in the British Museum represents a similar tower, and I incline to think, notwithstanding its having only five stories, that it may be the Tower of Babel itself.

This bas-relief displays at the bottom, where the title of a work of art is usually placed, and as if to indicate the astronomical purpose of the building, an instrument like a quadrant for taking altitudes, etc., composed of a semicircle with a fixed diameter-piece and a travelling index. The proportions of the stories, terraces, etc., are nearly as indicated by Sir H. Rawlinson. The building is represented standing in a grove of palm-trees, nearly surrounded by the river. Each story has an imposing entrance-door in a battlemented curtain-wall between two battlemented towers, very like the Egyptian pylons. The walls are perpendicular except in the first story, which has a rounded slope, up which two winding roads lead from the two outer corners of that story to two separate temple-doors in the second story. The other stories, (including the first,) have but one central door each, but the uppermost story was of double height. These circumstances, the two doors in second story, which seem to indicate two temples therein, and the double height of fifth story, in which therefore there may really have been two stories, make it not impossible that seven temples may have existed in the structure represented in the basrelief, and which, therefore, may have been the "Temple

of the Seven Lights." The shrine at the top appears to have had an imposing cornice of colossal bulls' heads.

The Chaldæan legend preserved in Sayce's Smith's "Chaldæan Genesis," is of common origin with the Hebrew. It begins with the anger of Anu against the builders:

3.

4.

5.

He, the father of all the gods, had repudiated; – (the thought of his heart was evil;) —

. . Of Babylon he hastens to the submission,

6. Small and great he confounded on the mound.

7. . . Of Babylon he hastens to the submission,

8. Small and great he confounded on the mound.
Their walls all the day he founded; -

9.

10.

II.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

For their destruction, in the night,

. . . he did not leave a remainder.

In his anger also his secret counsel he pours out:
To confound their speeches he set his face.

He gave the command, he made strange their counsel.

.. going, he inspected it,

He selected a shrine; (or, took a shrine).

COLUMN 2.

V. 1. Sar-tuli-elli, (the "king of the illustrious mound," i.e.

I,

3. To Bel-esir his father ..

(Here the inscription is broken off.)

From the connection, ― referring to last line of column

it would seem that what Anu "lifted up" to Bel-esir his father, must have been "a shrine." Filling up the

Both seem to have originated, partly from the accident of a lightning-stroke upon the building, and partly in the misunderstanding by the popular story-tellers of the name given to the temple by its builders, Bab-Il, "the gate or house of God," that is, the temple of the monotheistic Divine Idea, El or Il. As I passed out of popular recollection, this name was understood as the common word babel, babble or confused speech. Al, Alu, Elu, repeated in invocation, became Al-alu, Hall-elu, hallel, praise, etc.