THE HUMAN SPECIES. 379 



They were, moreover, advanced in civilization, had solar and 

 astronomical religions, with legends of Fish-men Legislators, 

 whose persons and doctrines revealed a diluvian reminiscence, 

 distorted into Indian forms. In their record, the first disper- 

 sion of mankind was transposed from the high tahle land of Asia 

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

 Shinar maybe 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 Belns, still visible among the 

 ruins of historical Babylon, has more than one counterpart in 

 Persia, little inferior in magnitude : that particularly of Bara- 

 dan, situated on the mountain-chain, near the upper Diala, 

 almost south of Lake Van, is remarkable. The remains are 

 of disintegrated brick; and the summit 170 feet high, or only 

 28 feet less ; but it is GOO feet in base, or 100 more than Birs 

 Nimrood.t near the Euphrates. The Babylonian unquestiona- 

 bly had four towers at the angles of the summit, and a broad 

 terrace on one of its faces, with probably a central space 

 between the towers for fire worship. It had walled enclos- 

 ures, perhaps colossal lions, at the entrances ; all which seem 

 to have been common with other structures of the same kind, 

 and notably in the Budh temples of Suka in Java, where every 

 one of the foregoing particularities exists. 



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

 Typhon, Taifune. It might tie conjectured that the pass, or, at least, one 

 of the principal gorges for descending 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 Ori- 

 ental legend a city of paradise, seated in a verdant region, on the Chi- 

 nese side of the summit. 



t Birs Nimrood, the temple of Belus, and the temple of Nebuchadnez- 

 zar, are the same ruins. The name of "Tower of Babel " is originally 

 a rabbinical inference. There are many other applications of scriptural 

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

 Arabs, who, like most other Semitic nations, having lost their own tradi- 



