292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



struction, one of the inscribed cylinders discovered in recent 

 times, speaking of a tower which most of the leading archseolo- 

 gists identify with the Tower of Babel, reads as follows : 



" The building named the Stages of the Seven Spheres, which 

 was the Tower of Borsippa, had been built by a former king. He 

 had completed forty-two cubits, but he did not finish its head. 

 During the lapse of time, it had become ruined ; they had not 

 taken care of the exit of the waters, so that rain and wet had 

 penetrated into the brick-work ; the casing of burned brick had 

 swollen out, and the terraces of crude brick are scattered in heaps." 



We can well understand how easily " the gods, assisted by the 

 winds," as stated in the Chaldean legend, could overthrow a tower 

 thus built. 



It may be instructive to compare with the explanatory myth 

 developed first by the Chaldeans, and in a slightly different form 

 by the Hebrews, various other legends to explain the same diver- 

 sity of tongues. The Hindoo legend of the confusion of tongues 

 is as follows : 



"There grew in the center of the earth the wonderful ' world 

 tree ' or ' knowledge tree/ It was so tall that it reached almost 

 to heaven. It said in its heart : ' I shall hold my head in heaven 

 and spread my branches over all the earth, and gather all men 

 together under my shadow, and protect them, and prevent them 

 from separating. But Brahma, to punish the pride of the tree cut 

 off its branches and cast them down on the earth, when they sprang 

 up as wata trees, and made differences of belief and speech and 

 customs to prevail on the earth, to disperse men upon its surface." 



Still more striking is a Mexican legend : according to this, Xel- 

 hua, one of the seven giants rescued from the flood, built the 

 great Pyramid of Cholula, in order to reach heaven, until the 

 gods, angry at his audacity, threw fire upon the building and 

 broke it down, whereupon every separate family received a lan- 

 guage of its own. 



Such explanatory myths grew or spread widely over the earth. 

 A well-known form of the legend, more like that of the Chalde- 

 ans ihan the Hebrew later form, appeared among the Greeks. 

 According to this, the Aloidee piled Mount Ossa upon Olympus 

 and Pelion upon Ossa, in their efforts to reach heaven and de- 

 throne Jupiter. 



Still another form of it entered the thoughts of Plato. He held 

 that in the golden age men and beasts all spoke the same lan- 

 guage, but that Zeus confounded their speech because men were 

 proud and demanded eternal youth and immortality.* 



* For the identification of the Tower of Babel with the " Birs Nimrud " amid the ruins 

 of the city of Borsippa, see Sir Henry Rawlinson, and especially George Smith, Assyrian 



