7. Description if " Birs Nimrud" its supposed mod- ern Belie. — The appearance of this massive ruin is deeply impressive, rising suddenly as it does out of a wide desert plain, with its rent, fragmentary, and fire- blasted pile, masses of vitrified matter lying around, and the whole hill itself on which it stands caked and hardened out of the materials with which the temple had been built. Its dreary aspect seems to justify the name which the remnant of the captivity, still abiding among the waters of Babylon, give to the place, namely, " Nebuchadnezzar's Prison ;" an ap- pellation which may have been assigned from the cir- cumstance of that monarch's being confined there, un- der the care of the priesthood, during the period of his madness, or from the King of Israel's having been incarcerated within its precincts by Nebuchadnezzar after his last conquest of Jerusalem (2 Kings xxv). A very considerable space round the tower, forming a vast
BABEL
592
BABEL
i, is covered with ruins, affording abun- 5 of former buildings, exhibiting uneven
court or area dant vestiges
heaps of various sizes, covered with masses of broken brick, tiles, and vitrified fragments— all bespeaking some signal overthrow in former days. The tower- like ruin on the summit is a solid mass 28 feet broad, constructed of the most beautiful brick masonry. It is rent from the top nearly half way to the bottom. It is perforated in ranges of square openings. At its base lie several immense unshapen masses of fine brick- work, some changed to a state of the hardest vitrifica- tion, affording evidence of the action of fire which seems to have been the lightning of heaven. The base of the tower at present measures 2082 feet in circum- ference. Hardly half of its former altitude remains. Of the original pyramidal form, the erections of Se- miramis and Nebuchadnezzar appear to have begun at the stage of the former overthrow. From its summit, the view in the distance presents to the south an arid desert plain; to the west the same trackless waste; toward the north-east marks of buried ruins are visi- ble to a vast distance. The bricks which compose the tower are mostly stamped with several lines of in- scription, in the cuneiform or Babylonian character. Some extend to four, or even seven lines, but the di- mensions of all are the same. The bricks of Babylon are of two kinds, sun-dried and fire-burnt. The for- mer are larger and of a coarser make than the latter. Their solidity is equal to that of many kinds of stone. They are composed of clay mixed with chopped straw or broken reeds, in order to increase their compact- ness. This is the sort of brick which the children of Israel made while in Egyptian bondage. The un- burnt bricks commonly form the interior or mass of a building. This is the case with the great tower, while it was faced with the more beautiful fabric made in the furnace or kiln. See full particulars in Rich's Memoir of Babylon and Persepolis; Kcr Porter's Trav- ! els in Persii ; comp. Bitter, Erik, xi, 870 sq. — Kitto. | 8. Type and Character of the Building. — It must be j allowed that the Birs Nimrud, though it may not be the Tower of Babel itself, which was at Babylon (Gen. xi, 9), yet, as the most perfect representative of an an- cient Babylonian temple-tower, may well be taken to show, better than any other ruin, the probable shape and style of the edifice. This building appears, by the careful examinations recently made of it, to have been a kind of retreating pyramid built in seven receding
stages. " Upon a platform of crude brick, raised a few feet above the level of the alluvial plain, was built of burnt brick the first or basement stage — an exact square, 272 feet each way, and 26 feet in perpendicu- lar height. Upon this stage was erected a second, 230 feet each way, and likewise 26 feet high; which, however, was not placed exactly in the middle of the first, but considerably nearer to the south-western end, which constituted the back of the building. The other stages were arranged similarly, the third being 188 feet, and again 26 feet high ; the fourth 146 feet square, and 15 feet high; the fifth 104 feet square, and the same height as the fourth ; the sixth 62 feet square, and again the same height ; and the seventh 20 feet square, and ence more the same height. On the seventh stage there was probably placed the ark, or tabernacle, which seems to have been again 15 feet high, and must have nearly, if not entirely, covered the top of the seventh story. The entire original height, allowing three feet for the platform, would thus have been 156 feet, or, without the platform, 153 feet. The whole formed a sort of oblique pyramid, the gentler slope facing the N.E., and the steeper in- clining to the S.W. On the N.E. side was the grand entrance, and here stood the vestibule, a separate building, the debris from which, having joined those from the temple itself, fill up the intermediate space, and very remarkably prolong the mound in this direc- tion" (Kawlinson's Herodotus, ii, 480-3). The Birs temple, if the same called the "Temple of the Seven Spheres," was ornamented with the planetary colors (see the plan), but this was most likely a peculiarity. The other chief features of it seem to have been com- mon to most, if not all of the Babylonian temple-tow- ers. The feature of stages is found in the temples at Warka and Mugheir (Loftus's Chaldaa, p. 129 and 168), which belong to very primitive times (B.C. 22;JO) ; that of the emplacement, so that the four an-] gles face the four cardinal points, is likewise common to those ancient structures ; while the square form is universal. On the other hand, it may be doubted whether so large a number of stages was common. The Mugheir and Warka temples have no more than two, and probably never had more than three, or at most four stages. The great temple of Belus at Bab- ylon (if Babil) shows only one stage ; though, accord- ing to the best authorities, it too was a sort of pyramid (Herod., Strab.). The height of the Birs is 153} feet,