NATURAL HISTORY OF 



centre of their own locality, in the plains of Shinar. 

 Shinar may be a repetition of the name of Djeen; and 

 the Bab, that is, Ghaut, Gate, or Pass, was perhaps 

 transferred to the collateral signification of a tower.* 



For the pyramidal temple of Belus, still visible 

 among the ruins of historical Babylon, has more than 

 one counterpart in Persia, little inferior in magni- 

 tude: that particularly of Baradan, situated on the 

 mountain-chain, near the upper Diala, almost south of 

 Lake Van, is remarkable. The remains are of disin- 

 tegrated brick ; and the summit 170 feet high, or only 

 28 feet less ; but it is 600 feet in base, or 100 more 

 than Birs Nimrood,t near the Euphrates. The Baby- 

 lonian unquestionably had four towers at the angles of 

 the summit, and a broad terrace on one of its faces, 



* Bab, Baby, in the most ancient sense, a giant. Baby in 

 Egyptian, Typhon, Taifune. It might be conjectured that 

 the pass, or at least one of the principal gorges for descend- 

 ing from the plateau of Thibet, across the Bolor range, 

 upon the sources of the Oxus, was originally meant ; for at 

 the foot of this commence the glens which lead to Bamian 

 and to Balkh ; and the summit is close to Kashgar, near 

 Behesh-Kend ; in Oriental legend a city of paradise, seated 

 in a verdant region, on the Chinese side of the summit. 



f Birs Nimrood, the temple of Belus, and the temple of 

 Nebuchadnezzar, are the same ruins. The name of 

 " Tower of Babel" is originally a rabbinical inference. 

 There are many other applications of Scriptural localities 

 and names in the south-west of Asia, made at random by 

 the Arabs, who, like most other Semitic nations, having 

 lost their own traditions and history, frame new legends 

 out of the Scriptures; and what the Rabbins only mis- 

 placed, they distorted to suit tbeir particular national 

 vanities. 



