322 
TOWER OF BABEL 
the accumulated ruins precipitated by the destructive orders of 
Xerxes nearly 200 years before, may well account for some 
dilapidation on the sides of the original foundation, (as it was 
beheld by Herodotus,) which might easily reduce it to the 
present circumscribed dimensions. And this argument receives 
no inconsiderable degree of support, from the traces of a gently 
inclined plane of unburnt bricks all round the foot of the tower, 
and which extends several feet beyond its present measured base. 
With regard to its elevation ; when comparing the present 
remains with the original height, specified by Strabo as disposed 
through the regular gradation of eight towers rising in successive 
stages to a pyramidal form, we find that hardly half its former 
altitude is now before us ; three stages only, of those eight 
towers remaining ; and a remnant of the fourth, in the piece of 
brick wall that now surmounts the pile. According to the 
appearance of that ruin, and of the vitrified masses around it, I 
have already remarked that I conceive the erections of Semira- 
mis and Nebuchadnezzar to have begun from that stage of the 
ancient overthrow; and to the powerful means of the latter 
monarch, I would attribute the addition of the eastern projec¬ 
tion, as an adequate elevated court of approach to the grand pas¬ 
sage of ascent to the prime sanctuary of the god, and, most pro¬ 
bably, the still higher chamber of astronomical observations. The 
surmounting tower of the whole, though the smallest, would be 
of sufficient extent to contain several apartments. And, that one 
of the purposes of the eastern platform was that of an approach, 
appears the more evident, from the circumstance of the wide 
chasm which divides its face, gradually conducting us, even 
now, up to its broken and extensive summit; and thence may 
be traced the regular and winding path, which (according to 
