232 REV. JOHX TUCK WELL, M.E.A.S., OX ARCHJIOLOGY AND 



climatic clianges appear to have taken place from time to 

 time, so that regions which had been plentifully supplied 

 with water became arid and barren and unable to sustain 

 their inhabitants. The geological formation known as the 

 " loess " is now no longer considered to be of ^lacial or 

 fluviatile origin, but to consist of fine dust blown up by high 

 winds and deposited against the sides of hills and mountains. 

 AVe must therefore cease to adduce it in evidence of the 

 Xoachian Delude. 



Thus also the building of the Tower of Babel has been 

 changed from a subject of ridicule into one of amazement. As 

 one after another the ruins of the cities of Babylonia have been 

 explored the remains of ziggurats have been revealed not less 

 astonishing than the solitary instance recorded in Scripture, 

 whose erection was associated with a degree of folly and sin 

 which excited the Divine displeasure and judgment. 



Even for the Confusion of Tongues evidence is not wholly 

 wanting. Here, in a little tract of country, not more than three 

 or four hundred miles long, inhabited by a people whose 

 language was originally one, that language, in some mysterious 

 way back in the earliest times of their settlement, became broken 

 into two dialects, the southern and the northern, with the city of 

 Babylon somewhere near the line of demarcation between them. 

 The Hebrew record uses two words, HCiT and uZ^'ni'^. " lip " 

 and " words," and tells us that it was the " lip " which was 

 confounded, by which we may no doubt understand the 

 pronunciation, and now, four thousand years afterwards, tablets 

 are found which had to be written in parallel columns giving 

 the equivalent words in the two dialects. 



On the other hand, in the vicinity of this people was another 

 race, the Semitic, whose language was spoken side by side with 

 the Sumerian, and yet retained its unity through so many ages 

 that an Assyriologist who can read a Semitic inscription of 

 Sargon of Akkad, written some 2700 years B.C. can, without 

 difficulty, read one of Xebuchadnezzar the Great, written more 

 than 2,000 years later. Xo doubt the word " Babel " is a Semitic 

 pun upon Bah-ilu, the translation of the Sumerian name of the 

 city Ka-dingirra, " The Gate of God." Possibly the jibe of the 

 Semites may indicate that they were not implicated in the 

 impious scheme. But in any case the suggestion thrown out by 

 Eev. C. J. Ball that the Semitic languages may have been 

 developed from the Sumerian is worth considering, whatever 

 may prove to be its ultimate value. The chief characteristic of 

 the latter is the monosyllabic and bi-consonantal form of its 



