THE LATEST STORY OF THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS. 73 
Nebuchadnezzar means, 'god Nebo, protect the landmark.' I 
would also point out that the Assyrian supports the reading of 
this king's name with an r, not an n, in the fourth syllable. 
/Sarru corresponds to the Hebrew sar, and is the usual word for 
king. Sar is in the construct state. 
Babilu= 'Babylon.' On the seven-lined tablet this is repre- 
sented by four characters. The first is the usual ideograph for 
1 gate ' = babu ; the second = ilu, 4 god ; ' the third = ra, the ending 
of the word in the Akkadian language ; the fourth is a determina- 
tive hi for ' town.' The name is to be read ka-dingir-ra ki. Ka 
is the equivalent in Akkadian to babu in Assyrian. The name 
Babilu is shown by these ideographs to denote 1 the gate of god.' 
The word Babel, its name in Hebrew, has nothing whatever to do 
with the root bbl, ' to confound.' The name of the town is also 
written syllabically Ba-bi-lu, &c. 
Zdnin, from the root zananu, 'to restore.' Kal participle = 
zaninu ; here in construct state before the succeeding words. 
Esagila and Ezida are the names of two temples. The former 
was the chief temple of the god Merodach. Its name is repre- 
sented on the tablet by three characters. The first is the usual 
ideograph for bitu 'house,' and is the Akkadian E. The 
second has the ideographic value kakkadu, ' head,' and syllabic 
value sag. The third has the syllabic value ila and the ideo- 
graphic value ' to lift up ; ' so that the name denotes, according to 
its ideographs, 'the house that lifts up its head;' i.e. ' hoch- 
ragendes halts' in German. This temple is spoken of as the 
"palace of heaven and earth, the dwelling of Bel and Merodach." 
It was in the form of a tower, and some have thought that this 
tower is that referred to in the story about the tower of Babel in 
Genesis xi. The Berlin Professor Ebrard Schrader, commenting 
on Genesis xi. 4, and on the words ' city and a tower,' in his work, 
Die Keilinscliriften und das alte Testament, remarks that there 
can be little doubt that these words refer to an actual building, and 
this can only have been, he says, one of the two sacred buildings, 
built in the form of a tower, whose ruins are yet to be seen on 
the site of ancient Babylon and on the town lying south of it, 
Borsippa. The tower-temple (which among the Babylonians was 
called a ziggurat) in Babylon is the one named Esagila in our text. 
The one in the town of Borsippa was called Ezida, and was dedi- 
cated to the god Nebo. It consisted of seven stages, each being 
