The last column shows that the winds finally destroyed the impious work of the Babylonians. This fully accords with the legend reported by Alexander Polyhistor. For a time Babylon was given over to the god of lawlessness; but at last the gods repented of the evil they had done, and order was once more restored. The shrine mentioned in the sixteenth line of the first column may receive some light from the fact that the Accadian name of Nisan or March was “the month of the upright altar,” or “of the altar of Bel,” and that Nisan corresponded with the vernal equinox just as Tisri did with the autumnal equinox.
[Illustration: VIEW OF THE BABIL MOUND AT BABYLON, THE SITE OF THE TEMPLE OF BEL.]
The etymology of the name of Babel from _balbel_, “to confound,” suggested in Genesis is one of those “popular etymologies” or plays on words of which the Old Testament writers are so fond. Thus, for instance, the name of Joseph is connected first with _’âsaph_ “to take away,” and then with _yâsaph_ “to add” (Gen. xxx. 23, 24.), and the name of the Moabite city Dibon is changed into Dimon by Isaiah (xv. 9) to indicate that its “waters shall be full of blood,” Hebrew _dâm_. Babel is the Assyrian _Bab-ili_ “the gate of God” (or, as it is occasionally written in the plural, _Bab-ili_ “Gate of the gods”), which was the Semitic translation of the old Accadian name of the town Ca-dimirra with the same meaning. This is not the only instance in which the original Accadian names of Babylonian cities were literally translated into Semitic Babylonian after the Semitic conquest of the country. It is possible that the name had some reference to the building of the Tower. Babylon was first made a capital by Khammuragas, the leader of the Cossæan dynasty, a position which it never afterwards lost; but the first antediluvian king of Chaldea, Alorus, according to Barosus, was a native of the place.
[Illustration: TOWER IN STAGES, FROM AN ASSYRIAN BAS-RELIEF.]
The actual site of the Tower of Babel, beyond the mere fact that it was somewhere in Babylon, has not yet been settled. It is generally considered to be represented by the great pile of Birs Nimrud, which stood in Borsippa, the suburb of Babylon, and was dedicated to Nebo and called “the Temple of the Seven Lights” or planets. This ruin has been examined by Sir Henry Rawlinson; details of his operations here are given in the “Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,” vol. xviii., and Rawlinson’s “Ancient Monarchies,” p. 544. Sir Henry discovered by excavation that the tower consisted of seven stages of brickwork on an earthen platform, each stage being of a different colour. This is explained by the fact that it was devoted to the seven planets. The height of the earthen platform was not ascertained, but the first stage, which was an exact square, was 272 feet each way, and 26 feet high, the bricks being blackened with bitumen; this stage is supposed to have been dedicated to the planet Saturn. The second stage was a square of 230 feet, 26 feet high, faced with orange-coloured bricks; supposed to have been dedicated to Jupiter. The third stage, 188 feet square, and 26 feet high, faced with red bricks, was probably dedicated to Mars. The fourth stage, 146 feet square, and 15 feet high, was probably dedicated to the Sun, and is thought by Sir H. Rawlinson to have been originally plated with gold. The fifth stage is supposed to have been 104, the sixth 62, and the seventh 20 feet square, but the top was too ruinous to decide these measurements. These stages were probably dedicated to Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. Each stage of the building was not set in the centre of the stage on which it rested, but was placed 30 feet from the front, and 12 feet from the back. The ruin at present rises 154 feet above the level of the plain, and is the most imposing pile in the whole country. According to Nebuchadnezzar it had been built to the height of 42 cubits by “a former king,” who however had not completed its summit, and it had long been in a ruinous condition when Nebuchadnezzar undertook to restore and finish it. Prof. Schrader imagines that the long period during which it had remained an unfinished ruin caused the growth of the legend which saw in it a monument of the overthrow of human presumption, the diversity of languages in Babylonia being sufficient to account for the localization of the confusion of tongues in the country.