777 



BABYLON, HISTORY. 



BACHELOR. 



778 



Baal Peor (T1J?Q V3), Numbers xxv. 1 9, is the Priapus 

 worshipped by the Moabitea on Mount Peor, from "13?0> diatendit. 



To worship Baal signifies frequently, in the phraseology of the 

 Jewish writers of the middle ages, to practise the rites of the Chris- 

 tian religion. Rabbi Joseph Ben Josua Ben Meir tells us, in his 

 ' Chronicles,' that Clovis forsook his God and worshipped Baal, and 

 that a high place was built at Paris for Baal Dionysius, that is, the 

 Cathedral of St. Denis. Rabbi Joseph informs us also that the Friar 

 Vincent, of the sect of Baal Dominic, that is, the Dominican Friar, 

 was a Satan unto the Jews in Spain about A.D. 1430. 



(For further information on Baal we refer to the commentators on 

 Judges, Kings, Chronicles, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea; J. E. Eisner, 

 De Ritu Baalem exorandi, Ling. 1723 ; Fromman, De Ouitu Deorum ex 

 Onomothesia ittiietri, Altorf, 4to et seq. 1745; Miintur, Religion der 

 Cartkayer, Kopenhagen, 8vo, 1821 ; Serv. ad JEn. i. 729 ; Lingua 

 Punica Deus Bal dicitur, Isidor. Origin, viii. 11 ; Creutzer's Symbol! k, 

 ii. 266, &c. ; Eusebii Prceparatio evangelica, i. 10 ; Fragmenta Sancho- 

 niathon, ed. Orelli, p. 14; Gesenius in his dictionaries, and in the 

 Hallische Encyclopddie ; Winer's Siblisches Rial Worterbuch ; Classical 

 Journal, vii. p. 293 ; Jahn's Jewish Antiquities ; Layard, Botta, &c.) 



BA'BYLON, HISTORY. The Babylonians belonged to the Semitic 

 race of nations ; their language was an Aramaic dialect, and differed 

 little from the common Syriac. The existence of their city and empire 

 can be traced back to an epoch of the remotest antiquity. In the 

 tenth chapter of Genesis, Babel is mentioned as having formed part of 

 the dominions of Nimrod, and Josephus (' Ant. Jud.' i. 6) calls him the 

 founder of the town of Babylon. The building of the city and tower 

 of Babel, and the subsequent confusion of tongues (Genes, xi. 1 9) 

 are among the earliest facts in the history of mankind which we find 

 recorded in the Hebrew scriptures. We learn from Josephus, Eusebius, 

 and the Armenian chronicle of Moses of Chorene, that the Chakteaus 

 had a similar tradition to account for the origin of the different lan- 

 guages now spoken by men ; but it is difficult to determine whether 

 this tradition was independent of, or whether it was derived from, that 

 recorded in the book of Genesis. Diodorus (ii. c. 7), on the authority 

 of Ctesias, attributes the foundation of the city of Babylon to the 

 celebrated queen Semiramis, and when we read of immense numbers of 

 workmen (two hundred myriads) from all parts of her empire, whom 

 she employed in the execution of her design, we are almost involuntarily 

 reminded of that part of the Hebrew narrative, which describes " the 

 children of men " building the tower, until " the Lord scattered them 

 abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left off to 

 build the city." (' Genes.' xi. 8.) The epoch at which the city and 

 the tower were founded cannot be determined with precision ; according 

 to the calculation usually adopted, it happened about two hundred 

 years after the deluge. 



Jlerodotus (i. c. 184) says that the building of Babylon was the work 

 of several successive sovereigns ; but among them he distinguishes the 

 two queens, Semiramis and Nitocris, to whom the city was indebted 

 for extensive embankments along the Euphrates, and for many other 

 improvements. According to Diodorus (ii. 1, &c.), the Assyrian king 

 NimiB, assisted by an Arabian chief, Ariseus, conquered and killed the 

 then reigning king of Babylon, and made himself master of his 

 dominions ; the town of Babylon did not then exist, but there were 

 other flourishing towns in the country. His wife Semiramis, who 

 succeeded him, founded Babylon, and made it her residence, until 

 which time Nineveh had been the capital of the empire. [NINEVEH, in 

 GEOO. Div.] She enclosed it with brick walls of great height and 

 thickness, joined the two banks of the river by a bridge (besides a sub- 

 terraneous passage or tunnel), built a royal palace on each side, and 

 erected in the middle of the town a high temple in honour of the god 

 Belus. This is usually supposed to have happened about the year 2000 

 before our era. 



Respecting the history of Babylon under the successors of Semiramis 

 we are left in almost entire ignorance. From one of the inscriptions 

 found at Nineveh (many of which are now in the British Museum), 

 Sir W. Rawlinson has deciphered much of the history of Sardanapalus 

 (which he writes As-sar-adun-pul) ; but it only contains an account of 

 his military expeditions up to the thirty-first year of his reign, against 

 peoples and countries many of which it is not easy to identify. After 

 tin; overthrow of the Assyrian monarchy and the death of Sardanapalus 

 (888 B.C.), Belysis, a skilful priest and astrologer, assumed the govern- 

 ment of the Babylonian state. (Diodor. ii. c. 24, &c.) He was succeeded 

 on the throne by his son Nabonassar, and the regal dignity became 

 hereditary in his family. The era of Nabonassar, beginning the 26th 

 of February, 747 B.C., is supposed to have been so called, because the 

 Chaldjcans, during the reign of this king, might have begun to avai! 

 themselves in their astronomical observations of a moveable solar year, 

 which they might either have invented themselves, or received from 

 tb,e ./Egyptians. This era was, however, never used in common life 

 and for all ordinary practical purposes the Chaldscans counted by lunar 

 years. (See Ideler, ' Lehrbuch der Chronologic/ p. 89.) 



We know very little of the immediate successors of Nabonassar 

 Sharpe and Oppert give lists of kings to the taking of Babylon, but 

 tin' lists do not agree either in the number or the names. Merodach 

 Baladan, or Berodach-Baladan, the son of Baladan, is mentioned in th( 

 Old Testament (2 Kings, xx. 12, 13 ; Isaiah, xxxix. 1) as being on 



iriendly terms with Hezekiah, the king of Judah, at a time when both 

 Ireaded the ascendancy of Sennacherib, the king of Assyria. Soon 

 afterwards the Assyrian monarch, Esarhaddon, incorporated Babylon 

 into his empire. But towards the latter part of the 7th century before 

 mr era, we again find Babylon under Nabopolassar, the Ahasuerus of 

 Pobit (627 604 B.C.), an independent and powerful state, and as such 

 t continued till the period of its destruction by Cyrus. In the battle 

 sf Circesium (604) the independence of the Babylonian state was vin- 

 dicated against the ambitious designs of Nekos, king of Egypt, who 

 lad sent an army to conquer it. Babylon had its bright epoch in the 

 reign of Nebuchadnezzar, or Nabuchodonosor (604 561 B.C.), who 

 ncreased his dominions by the conquest of Palestine, Tyrus, and 

 Terusalem (2 Kings xxv. 1 ; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 17), and added to the 

 'ortifications as well as to the ornaments of the city of Babylon. He 

 subdued the Idumaeans (the Edomites) and the Ammonites, and his 

 empire extended from the Caucasian mountains to the African desert. 

 [t is surprising that the name of Nebuchadnezzar is apparently un- 

 snown to Herodotus, especially as we are told by Josephus, that it 

 was familiar to Megasthenes and other Greek historians. The queen 

 Nitocris, mentioned by Herodotus (i. 183), who contributed much to 

 ;he improvement of the town of Babylon, is supposed to have been 

 ;he wife of Nebuchadnezzar. After the death of Nebuchadnezzar, 

 ;he empire began rapidly to fall into decay. His son Evilmerodach 

 561 559) permitted king Joacim, of Juda, to return home out of his 

 captivity at Babylon, whither Nebuchadnezzar had brought him. 

 Evilmerodach was killed in the second year of his reign by his brother- 

 n-law Neriglissar, who occupied the throne during the four succeeding 

 years (559 555). He was followed by his youthful son Laboroso- 

 irchod, or Labassoarascus, who had been only nine months on the 

 ;hrone when a conspiracy broke out in which he was dethroned and 

 ailed. Nabonnedus (the Labynetus of Herodotus, i. 74 77, and the 

 Belshazzar, or Balthasar, of the Old Testament) followed him, and 

 reigned seventeen years (555 538 B.C.), at the end of which he was 

 attacked and defeated by Cyrus (' Dan.' v. 30, 31), and Babylon became 

 subject to the Persian empire. 



Cyrus did no injury to the town of Babylon : on the contrary, he 

 made it his winter-residence, and the third capital town of his kingdom, 

 after Susa and Ecbatana. But in consequence of a revolt under 

 Darius I., the walls and gateways of the town were broken down, and 

 the population soon decreased in such a degree that a supply of women 

 Erom the surrounding country became requisite. (Herod, iii. 159.) 

 Xerxes carried away the golden statue of Belus (Zeus, Herod, i. 183), 

 and Alexander the Great found the temple of that deity in ruins. 

 (Arrian. 'Exp. Alex.' vii. 17.) Soon afterwards Seleucus founded the 

 town of Seleucia in the neighbourhood of Babylon, which further con- 

 tributed to the decrease of the latter. At the time of Diodorus and 

 Strabo, the greater part of Babylon lay in ruins, and there were corn- 

 fields within its ancient precincts. Curtius says, that at his time only 

 one-fourth of the town was inhabited : Philo and Josephus observe, 

 that a considerable proportion of the inhabitants were Jews. [NINEVEH, 

 in GEOG. Drv.] 



(Rich, Babylon and Persepolit ; Rawlinson, Journal of Asiatic Soc.; 

 Layard.) 



BABYLONIAN ARCHITECTURE. [NINEVEH, ABCHITECTURE OP.] 



BACCHANALIA. [DIONYSIA.] 



BACHELOR, an unmarried man ; a word, as Johnson says with 

 truth, of uncertain etymology, for which many fanciful and absurd 

 derivations have been given, the most absurd being those from f)<iicri\os 

 foolish ; bacillus, a little stick ; and bacca lauri, the berry of the laurel. 

 Ducange has collected various meanings of the word, of which the 

 following deserve mention : 



1st. The term baccalarii was applied to those who held, possessed, 

 and cultivated certain lands called bacealaria (which Ducange supposes 

 to be a corruption of vasseleria, the fee belonging to an inferior 

 vassallus) ; frequent mention of these tenants and their lands is made in 

 old charters. 



2nd. By the expression baccalarii are described ecclesiastics of a 

 lower dignity and grade than the other members of a monastery ; the 

 term frequently occurs in this sense in monastic writings and records ; 

 thus, for example, in one old abbatial history we read, " Finita Missa, in 

 exitu ecclesia) incipitur Antiphona Martini ; sequitur Litania et debet 

 dici a duobus baccalariis ; " and in an old charter of amortization, in 1408, 

 occurs the following : " Les chappelains et les bacheliers de I'eglise 

 collegia! de Nostre Dame de Mirebeau." 



3rd. The word was used by later writers to distinguish those who, 

 being members of the military order, were inferior to bannerets, not 

 having .is yet, leve 1 banniere, either from want of age or from poverty. 

 The word in this sense is often referred to in the poems of the 

 Troubadours. 



4th. Any young unmarried person, whether male or female, was 

 called bachelier and bachelette. From ancient documents cited by 

 Ducange, it would appear that it was not unusual to impose a tax upon 

 unmarried men. One in 1223 runs "Homo qui est bachalarius, quam- 

 diu in illo statu erit et hospitium tenebit, reddit annuatim quinque 

 solidos de censa." 



6th. The term was, in analogy to the above, appropriated by learned 

 bodies, such as universities and academies, to designate those who, like 

 the military baccalarii, were aiming at the higher grades of their 



