40 Mr. Beke on tJie former Extent of the Persian Ghilf, 



inference which is to be drawn from the circumstance that — 

 whilst Assyria (Asshur) is mentioned in the very earliest por- 

 tions of the particular history of the Israelites and their imme- 

 diate progenitors*, and is brought into direct connexion with 

 the history of the kingdom of Israel in or before the time 

 of Jeroboam II. f* vvhen Nineveh had "of old" been a 

 great and populous city, — Babylon itself, a city nearer to 

 Canaan than Nineveh, and indeed almost in the road between 

 them, is not even mentioned until some time afterwards, 

 although Shinar was known to the Israelites from the earliest 

 period J. And it is most worthy of remark that even when 

 Babylon is first referred to in the scriptural history, it is merely 

 as one of the places from which the king of Assyria brought 

 inhabitants to repeople the country of the captive Israelites §, 

 and as the city where the same monarch carried Manasseh 

 king of Judah into captivity ||. It is true that Babylon is men- 

 tioned a short time previously to the latter of these two events, 

 in the time of Manasseh's father % as having had its own ru- 

 ler; but the comparison of the whole scriptural history evinces 

 that the kings of Babylon were Assyrian viceroys, and not in- 

 dependent sovereigns : — that this was actually the case is ex- 

 pressly recorded by Alexander Polyhistor **. 



Upon the hypothesis of the distinction between Babel and 

 Babylon, and of the late foundation of the latter city, the 

 scriptural history, as connected therewith, becomes quite in- 

 telligible; which otherwise it certainly is not. We can also 

 fully understand how Herodotus, in mentioning the Assyrian 

 empire, should describe Babylon merely as one of its great 

 cities, which only " became the royal residence after the de- 

 struction of Nineveh ff ." In entire accordance with the same 

 hypothesis is that historian's statement that the Assyrian Se- 

 miramis (whom he makes to have preceded Nitocris only five 

 generations,) "raised certain mounds [at 'Q?ihy\ox\']... till when 

 the whole plain was subject to inundations from the river Xt '" 

 and yet more particularly so is that of Megasthenes, who tells 

 us that " from the beginning all thi?igs were water, called the 



* See Gen. xxv. 18. Numb. xxiv. 22. 



t Compare Jonah iii. 2. et seq., and 2 Kngs xiv. 25. 



X See Josh. vii. 21 : the expression, which in our authorized version is 

 rendered " a Babylonish garment," is in the original "laJJi^ ^T^. 1^ C''"^- 

 dereth Shinhdr), " a garment (mantle) of Shinar." 



(J See 2 Kings xvii. 24. || 2 Chr. xxxiii. 11. H Isa. xxxix. 1. 



•* Euscb. Arm. Chron. 42, in Cory's Jncicnl Fragments, 2nd Edit, 

 pp. 61, 62. 



tl Clio, 178. n Clio, 184. 



