2. From the recently discovered Assyrian history, recorded upon the tablets now in the British Museum, it appears that the Babylonians of the earliestages had a tradition of this tower and of the sudden confusion of tongues. The event seems to indicate that the determination of the early descendants of Noah, probably under Nimrod or his immediate successors, was to settle on the plains and build a vast metropolis and a tower, whose height should serve the double purpose of a means of direction or as a guide to the city, and also of an advertisement of their immense wealth and enterprise amid the surrounding tribes.
3. The divine intention was, however, that the command given to Noah and his descendants, that they should replenish the earth, should be literally executed, and it was the divine intervention which prevented all the people from remaining in that land.
As we have said, the word Babel in the Greek form is Babylon; but the word which originally meant “confusion” in the Hebrew seems to have been changed from that form originally given it into Bab, or “gate,” el, of “God,” for the actual original Hebrew word for “confusion,” as Buxtorf shows from the Rabbinical word for “confusion,” is Bilbal, or Bilbul.Oppert[40] has shown that the word is distinctly of Assyrian derivation, from Balal, to “confound.” Similar changes from original forms have frequently occurred. Thus Beth-lehem is now Beit-lahm the former meaning “house of bread,” and thelatter “house of meat.” Borsippa, the name of the ruined tower near Babylon, supposed to be the Tower of Babel, is now called Bar-Sab, the former (Borsippa) meaning the “tower of languages,” the latter (Bar Sab) meaning the “shattered altar,” as Geikie has mentioned.
4. In studying the early parts of Biblical history the student should be mindful that history and traditions as recorded by the Assyrians were borrowed, or, more truly speaking, derived, from the early records of the Babylonian and Chaldæan nations, as in some cases is stated upon Assyrian tablets. This fact we have illustrated, page 26. The original records were kept at the old Chaldæan city of Erech, 90 miles southeast of Babylon, at the present ruins of Warka. Assur-bani-pal, the Assyrian king, beside being a great warrior, was also one who encouraged literature and had an immense library, for those days, 10,000 tablets from which were removed to the British Museum. In his time, 668–647 B. C., the ancient Chaldæan tongue was translated into Assyrian,and in this library at Nineveh was a lexicon of the Chaldæo-Turanian language with the meaning of the words put in Assyrian cuneiform.[41] This showed that so many years had passed that the ancient Chaldæan language was, at that time, nearly lost.
5. Those records, both of the Chaldæan and of the later Assyrian ages, have not only been of great service to the student of ancient history, but theyhave added much to the explanation and corroboration of Biblical history, as we shall hereafter have occasion to show.
6. The ruins of both Nineveh and Babylon bear some names which are reminiscences of Nimrod, but these seem to have been applied at some comparatively recent date. The chief structure bearing the name of Nimrod is the Birs Nimrud, or Tower of Nimrod, ten miles southwest of the modern town of Hillah, which is near the ruins of Babylon. The large mass of burned brick at this place seems to have been originally erected in the form of a steep pyramid some six hundred feet in height and of the same length at its base. It is extremely ancient, as its Assyrian name proves, which name, Saggatu, “the high temple,” is an old Accadian word.
7. Nebuchadnezzar, B. C. 604–562, one of the greatest builders among the Babylonian kings, says of himself that he builded additions to it, although Tiglath-pileser repaired it one hundred years before. It is now a bare hill of yellow sand and bricks a few miles west of the banks of the Euphrates, reaching a height of about 200 feet, a vast mass of brick-work jutting from the mound to a further height of 37 feet. It is very probable that these are the most ancient remains to be found in Babylonia,and in its form seems to have furnished a universal model for all succeeding temples and towers in that region.[42]
CHAPTER V.
THE HISTORY OF ABRAM AND HIS TIMES.
1. The promise that in his seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed renders the history of Abram one of great interest, especially as recent discoveries of the monuments and literature of ancient Chaldæa have given us more correct knowledge of those early ages than had been acquired for more than 3,000 years. In the eleventh chapter of Genesis, beginning at the tenth verse, is given the ancestry of Abraham, the father of the Hebrews. Abram, afterward called Abraham, for reasons stated in chapter 17:5, was the ninth from Shem. Until the birth of Abram his ancestors appear to have lived in the region known as Chaldæa. Abram’s birthplace was Ur, 150 miles southeast of Babylon and a few miles west of the Euphrates. The ruins of Ur include, at the present day, a part of an ancient temple dedicated to the moon. This temple seems to have been erected many years before the days of Abram. A vast number of tombs surround it and the city, in the times of Abram, must have been a place for burial and considered sacred.Eupolemus, a Greek writer who is quoted by Eusebius, speaks of it in his time, about 446 B. C., as “the place of the Chaldees.”[43] Itsruins on a vast mound are so largely cemented with bitumen that this fact has given rise to its present name, Mugheir, which means “bitumen.” The tablets and bricks bear the ancient name of Ur as well as the names of its earliest kings and the builder of its temples.