on the Gopher-wood and the Persian Gulf. 247 



and which must have been provided for the tower-builders, 

 without compelling us to infer that the earth's then scanty 

 inhabitants had given a name to two different places, after- 

 wards, moreover, extended to a third, and all in the same land, 

 signifying " confusion," especially assigned because at one of 

 them " the Lord did confound the language of all the earth." 

 It is for this multiplication that " the warrant" seems re- 

 quired. 



Mr. Beke, however, in his paper on the former extension 

 of the Persian Gulf (to which he refers for a further answer to 

 mine), observes, " that if the calculation of Nearchus and the 

 statement of Pliny are to be depended on, the gulf actually 

 occupied the present supposed site of Babylon ; so that it was 

 physically impossible for the tower of Babel to be erected 

 at or near" that spot, or of course for Noah to have resided 

 there. The calculation of Nearchus is, that from the gulf to 

 Babylon was 3300 stadia, and the statement of Pliny, that 

 Alexandria, when built by Alexander, on the site of" Charax, 

 was but ten stadia from the sea, while Juba in his time gave it 

 as about 50 miles, and the Arab embassadors and the Roman 

 merchants said it was then about 120." (lib. vi. cap. 27.) This, 

 Mr. Beke considers, seems to give us " the actual rate" of 

 encroachment of the Delta on the gulf during 400 years. But 

 we may go much further, and ascertain, with precision amply 

 sufficient for the present question, the state of circumstances 

 at more than half way, according to common chronology, be- 

 tween our own time and the Deluge. Nearchus, we know, con- 

 ducted Alexander's fleet up the gulf to the Delta in 325 B.C. 

 Following the course of Nearchus, as given in his own clear 

 account of the voyage preserved by Arrian, from his arrival 

 at the Arosis, the river at the N.E. next before coming to the 

 streams of the Delta, in his progress to Kataderbis and the 

 island of Margastana, in his passage through the channel over 

 the shoals to his arrival at Diridotis (by the Khore Abdallah), 



at the dispersion, and the Assyrian of later days " set up the towers and 

 raised up the palaces thereof." To support the present reading, Gen. 

 x.* 11., which makes Asshur a man, rather than, as in the margin Targums 

 Onkelos and Babylon, the land Asshur or Assyria, we are to suppose the 

 author of Genesis in relating a pedigree mentioned among the descendants 

 of Ham, one of the descendants of Shem, whose birth he had not yet even 

 noticed, but proceeds afterwards to relate in its proper place and order. 

 And then why was Babel only " the beginning of his kingdom," if we are 

 not to understand that it was Nimrod who also * builded Nineveh," &c. ? 

 As to the omission of the preposition ■ to*, " to Assyria," it occurs in the 

 Hebrew text so often as to be of little moment either way. See Gen. 

 xxxv. 1. 3. and xlvi. 3.; 1 Sam. x. 8. and xxiii. 4. ; 2 Sam. vi. 10. 12. and 

 x. 2. &c. 



