on the Gopher-wood and the Persian Gulf. 251 



settlements, as the cities of the plain, Egypt, and especially 

 Nineveh, — contemporaneous with Babel, in " the lowlands of 

 the Tigris," a valley 8 or 10 miles broad, and where the 

 floods were so great that " of old it was like a pool of water." 

 (Nahum ii. 8.). 



In my paper I referred to the productions of" the climate" 

 only where the ark was built, not to the particular country, — 

 to the vicinity of Babylon, — as Mr. Beke has taken it. But place 

 the abode of Noah in any of the spots that have been assigned 

 for the residence of the antediluvian race, in either Mesopo- 

 tamia or Palestine, we have still together pits of native bitu- 

 men and a country propitious to the cypress. Diod. Sicu. 

 (xix. 702.) states that Antigonus (about 313 B.C.) procured 

 supplies of cypress-trees from Lebanon, " Suvpa&v to ts xa- 

 \o$ km peyeQos". of surprising magnitude and beauty. Baro- 

 nius, Ann. Eccles. ad A. 714., mentions " the fleet of the Sa- 

 racens hastening from Alexandria to Phoenicia to cut cypress- 

 trees ;" in both instances for the purpose of ship-building : 

 and see Gen. xiv. 10. As to the country of Babylon, its dry 

 soil appears to have been most propitious to this tree, and to 

 none other fitted for that use. We learn from Diod. Sicu. 

 (lib. ii. c. 1.) that in the ancient bridge at Babylon, said to 

 have been built by Semiramis, cypress-wood was employed. 

 And Arrian # reports of Aristobulus, who accompanied Alex- 

 ander the Great : " He says that Alexander had another fleet, 

 built of the cypresses cut inBabylonia, for of these trees alone 

 there was an abundant supply, the country of Assyria being 

 poor in other timber fit for ship-building." The objection, 

 then, to the cypress being the gopher-wood of the ark, because 

 not yielded by the country where the ark was built, is not 

 very forcible. 



But even were it admitted to be true that the site of an- 

 cient Babylon and all the lands S.E. of it to the sea had been 

 formerly in the gulf, or had been otherwise covered with 

 water, it would not show that " the ark could not possibly 

 have been built anywhere in the neighbourhood" alluded to 

 by me, even taking it to be on that side of the Euphrates, for 

 my allusion was to the part where the bitumen is produced 

 from the earth. It is not ascertained that bitumen in any 

 quantity was ever found nearer to Babylon than Is or Heet. 

 Herodotus (Clio 179.) expressly states that it came thence for 



* Asyci on Kxt ctKKog uvru suotwrYiyeiro s-oXoc re/m/ouri rxg KWocgKraVg 

 ' rocg tv XYi BotGvKauisc tvtuv yet^ /xovai/ tuv \vfoqn £V7ro(>iocv etuxt su tyi yfii^ex, 

 rav Aocv^iav tuv h cOCKuu oaec sg uxvr^ytecu U7ro(>cog rfiuv tyjv yyu rctvrriv . 

 —Arrian, Exp, Alex., lib. vii. cap. 19. 



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