BABEL. 717 
sense, in which it is often used by Moses and his countrymen, where 
they speak of cities walled up to heaven. 
Others imagine that the top of this tower was not to reach up to 
heaven, but to be consecrated to the heavens, i. e. to the worship of 
the sun, moon, and stars, of the fire, air, &c. and other natural pow- 
ers, as deities ; and therefore that the true Deity interposed, in order 
to prevent a total and irrecoverable defection. Certain it is, that the 
species of idolatry, which takes for the objects of its worship those 
natural agents, as it is the most ancient, so it is by far the most 
rational, and most difficult to be disproved. It is much more difficult, 
for instance, to prove that the sun, which by his enlivening beams 
gives vigour to the whole creation, is not a deity, than that a log of 
wood is not one ; and hence, if such a system of religion became uni- 
versally established among mankind, it would be almost impossible 
ever after to eradicate it. Indeed, that the scheme of Babel, w hatever 
it was, could have been put in execution by man, seems evident from 
the interposition of the Deity on the occasion *, for we cannot suppose 
that he would have wrought a miracle on purpose to defeat that which 
would have defeated itself, if it had let it alone. 
Agreeably to this hypothesis, Dr. Tennison supposes that the tower 
was of apyramidical form, in imitation of the spires of flame, and that 
it was erected in honour of the sun, as being the most probable cause 
of drying up the flood. The materials for building this tower, the 
Scripture informs us, were bricks and slime, or bitumen. According 
to an eastern tradition, three years were taken up in making the bricks, 
each of which was fifteen cubits long, ten broad, and five thick. 
Babel. 
This tow^r was, at its base, a square of a furlong on each side, or 
a mile and a half in compass, and consisted of what appeared to be 
eight towers, built one above the other, the height of each being 
seventy-five feet, and that of the whole six hundred. The ascent 
was by stairs On the outside, which formed a sloping line from the 
bottom to the top, winding eight times round it. As these compart- 
ments or stories had many rooms with arched roofs supported by 
pillars, they made parts of the temple, when the tower became conse- 
crated to idolatrous purposes. Over the whole of the top of the 
tower there was, it is said, an observatory, by the advantages of 
which, the Babylonians extended their skill in astronomy beyond 
other nations : for when Alexander took Babylon, Callisthenes the 
philosopher, who accompanied him thither, found they had astrono- 
mical observations for 1903 years prior to that time, which carried 
up the account as high as the fifteenth year after the flood, or within 
fifteen years after the tower of Babel was built, or to the year 2334 
before Christ. 
This tower or temple stood until the time of Xerxes, who, on his 
return from his Grecian expedition, about 422 years b. c. plundered 
it of all its wealth, and then demolished the whole, leaving scarcely 
any thing but a heap of ruins. 
During subsequent periods, these monuments of ancient ingenuity 
and grandeur have been visited by numerous travellers, all of whom 
