on the JEra of the Union of the Tigris and Euphrates. 1 1 1 



swampy and unhealthy country, subject to periodical inunda- 

 tions, we shall speedily find that it is not merely improbable, 

 but morally impossible, that they should have done so. Even 

 at the distance of 2500 years from the present time, at which 

 period we know the city of Babylon to have been in existence, 

 the country in its natural state was as totally inapplicable 

 to the use of mankind as it was 2000 or 2500 years pre- 

 viously. But the state of society at the later period was 

 widely different from that of the first ages of the world : and, 

 as we have instances in ancient Egypt, and also in modern 

 Holland and Venice, how spots, in themselves perfectly unin- 

 habitable, have, from the necessities of mankind, or from their 

 peculiar local advantages as places of commerce or of defence, 

 been selected, and by artificial means made habitable, and 

 rendered the seats of mighty cities; so may we understand 

 how, in the time of Nebuchadnezzar, and even earlier, Baby- 

 lon should have been reclaimed, as it were, from the waste in 

 which it was situate, and made the seat of empire and " the 

 Glory of Kingdoms." It would, however, in the time of Nim- 

 rod, have been perfectly unnecessary, if even, indeed, from 

 the paucity of inhabitants, it had not at that early period been 

 actually impossible, (supposing the physical state of the coun- 

 try to have allowed it,) to raise those mighty embankments 

 and walls which were the only safeguard and protection of 

 Babylon from the floods of the Euphrates, and by the de- 

 struction of which that mighty city has again become " a 

 desolation among the nations." 



It is thus evinced that Babylon could not have occupied 

 the site either of the Tower of Babel or of the Babel of Nim- 

 rod ; but nothing has as yet been advanced to prove that the 

 two latter places were not identical. The tradition on this 

 subject is that the Tower of Babel, whether built by the whole 

 of mankind or by Nimrod's family alone, was commenced at 

 the instance and under the direction of that " mighty hunter 

 before the Lord"; and that at the time of the Dispersion, 

 Nimrod with his family remained on the spot, and became the 

 founder of the Babylonian or Chaldean Dynasty. For this 

 tradition, the only support appears to be that text which has 

 so often been the subject of discussion : " And the beginniii"- 

 of his (Nimrod's) kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, 

 and Calneh, in the land of Shinar*." But this authority 

 only proves that Nimrod (or not improbably his descendants, 

 since it .seems almost too much to imagine that in those early 

 times one man should have built four cities,) founded a city, 



* Gen. x. 10. 



