Babel, tower of

The name given to the tower which the primitive fathers of our race built in the land of Shinar after the Deluge (Gen. 11:1-9). Their object in building this tower was probably that it might be seen as a rallying-point in the extensive plain of Shinar, to which they had emigrated from the uplands of Armenia, and so prevent their being scattered abroad. But God interposed and defeated their design by condounding their language, and hence the name Babel, meaning “confusion.” In the Babylonian tablets there is an account of this event, and also of the creation and the deluge. (See CHALDEA.) The Temple of Belus, which is supposed to occupy its site, is described by the Greek historian Herodotus as a temple of great extent and magnificence, erected by the Babylonians for their god Belus. The treasures Nebuchadnezzar brought from Jerusalem were laid up in this temple (2 Chr. 36:7). The Birs Nimrud, at ancient Borsippa, about 7 miles south-west of Hillah, the modern town which occupies a part of the site of ancient Babylon, and 6 miles from the Euphrates, is an immense mass of broken and fire-blasted fragments, of about 2,300 feet in circumference, rising suddenly to the height of 235 feet above the desert-plain, and is with probability regarded as the ruins of the tower of Babel. This is “one of the most imposing ruins in the country.” Others think it to be the ruins of the Temple of Belus.

BABEL, TOWER OF, named only once in the Bible, and then as incomplete. Gen 11:4, 1 Chr 6:5. It was built in the plain of Shinar, of burnt bricks, with "slime" (probably bitumen) for Birs Nimrfld Reconstructed. (After Layard.) mortar. Jewish traditions and early profane writers say that the tower was destroyed. The captive Jews at Babylon imagined they recognized it, however, in the famous temple of Belus, which some would identify with the temple of Nebo at Borsippa, the modern Birs Nimrud. Rawlinson thinks that Birs Nimrud cannot be identical with either the temple of Belus or the tower of Babel, but concedes that it may be used to show the probable form of the Babel tower. The Birs Nimrud is one of the most striking ruins on the plain, and is 6 miles southwest of Hillah, on the Euphrates. This immense mound is about 2300 feet in circumference and 235 to 250 feet high, and was built of burnt bricks, each brick being 12 inches square and 4 inches thick. Several of them bear an inscription of Nebuchadnezzar. The tower is represented as in the form of a pyramid, built in seven receding stories, each placed upon the south-western side of the one below, and each of the first three being 26 feet high, each of the last four being 15 feet high. On the seventh story was a temple or ark, perhaps with a statue of the god Belus. George Smith, the Assyriologist (and the Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. iii. p. 155, ninth edition, adopts Smith's view), says, "The Birs Nimrud is most probably the tower of Babel of the book of Genesis." Mr. Smith describes another ruin called Babil or Mujelliha as the one which in his view covers the site of the temple of Belus, and the great tower of Babylon (not Babel). Birs Nimrud seems to have been a temple dedicated to the heavenly bodies, and the inscriptions on cylinders found there record that Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt the edifice after it had been left unfinished by others. Further excavations may solve these unsettled questions. See Rawlinson's Herodotus, and George Smith's Assyrian Discoveries, 1875. BAB'YLON (Greek form of Babel), the noted capital of the Chaldaean and Plan of Babylon, showing the largest extent, as given by Herodotus, and the smaller, quoted by Ctesias, with the ruins according to Oppcrt. Babylonian empires, situated on both sides of the Euphrates river, about 200 miles above its junction with the Tigris,