110 Mr. Beke on the Former Extent of the Persian Gulf, and 



establishes the fact that " nowhere were new lands formed 

 more quickly or in greater quantities," but would also seem 

 to determine the actual rate at which the Persian Gulf had 

 been filled up during the 400 years immediately preceding his 

 time : — Alexandria (on the site of which Charax afterwards 

 stood,) having been built by Alexander the Great, at the di- 

 stance of ten stadia only from the sea; whilst in Juba's time 

 it was 50 thousand paces, or about 50 miles, and in Pliny's 

 own time as much as 120 thousand paces, or about 120 

 miles, from the sea*. 



But whatever may have been the actual rate of advance on 

 the Persian Gulf of the alluvial tract thus formed, I think 

 that — taking into consideration the present state of the coun- 

 try in the neighbourhood of Babylon, as described by Mr. 

 Rich, and keeping in mind the changes which, from the state- 

 ments of the historians above mentioned, must indubitably 

 have taken place in it, — the legitimate inference is, that in the 

 first ages after the Flood, the state of the country which sub- 

 sequently became the site of Babylon, was such as to have 

 rendered it totally inapplicable to the use of man ; so that 

 at the period of the building of the Tower of Babel and the 

 commencement of Nimrod s kingdom, there, under any cir- 

 cumstances, could not have been that plain in the land of 

 Shinar where " the whole earth" dwelt, and where they wished 

 to erect a city and a tower whose top might reach unto heaven. 

 Indeed, if the calculation of Nearchus and the statement of 

 Pliny are to be depended upon, we are justified in concluding 

 that, in the period immediately subsequent to the Flood, the 

 Persian Gulf extended so far to the northward as actually to 

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

 physically impossible for the Tower of Babel to have been 

 erected, at or near the spot where its remains have been ima- 

 gined to exist. 



Divesting our minds, indeed, of the authority of the tradi- 

 tion which connects Babylon with Babel, and considering the 

 degree of probability which may be attached to the idea that 

 the founders of the human race, when they had before them 

 the choice of all the world, would have pitched upon a low, 



rius profecere terrae fluminibus invectae. Magis id mhum est, sestu longe 

 ultra id accedente, non repercussas." — Hist. Nat. cura Harduin, lib. vi. 

 c. xxvii. 



* This distance of Charax from the sea is totally at variance with the 

 notions commonly entertained respecting its site; the map of the late 

 Major Rennell, and also that by Professor Long recently published by the 

 Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, placing it at a distance of 

 little more than fifty miles from the sea shore. 



