[75] I will show, however, that it was much older.
[76] De Orig. et Progress. Idolat. ii. 61.
[77] Gen. xi. 4.
[78] Gen. vi. 5.
[79] On the top was an observatory, by the benefit of which it was that the Babylonians advanced their skill in astronomy so early; when Alexander took Babylon, Callisthenes the philosopher, who accompanied him there, found they had observations for 1903 years backward from that time, which carries up the account as high as the hundred and fifteenth year after the flood, i.e. within fifteen years after the tower of Babel was built.
[80] I stop not to inquire whether or not this may have been the same with that which stood in the midst of the temple of Belus, afterwards built around it by Nebuchadnezzar. The intent I conceive similar in all, whether the scriptural Tower, Birs Nimrod, or Mujellibah; and the rather, as Captain Mignan tells us of the last, that on its summit there are still considerable traces of erect building, and that at the western end is a circular mass of solid brick-work sloping towards the top, and rising from a confused heap of rubbish; while Niebuhr states that Birs Nimrod is also surmounted by a turret. My object is to show that the same emblematic design mingled in all those ancient edifices, though not identical in its details.
[81] Hos. ii. 16.
[82] St. Stephen, the first martyr who suffered death for Christ, said before the Jewish Sanhedrim, “God dwelleth not in temples made with hands” (Acts vii. 48).
[83] Asiatic Researches.
[84] It is most unaccountable how Hanway, after seeing this evidence of an actual fire-temple, should, notwithstanding, commit the egregious blunder of calling the Round Towers—which differed from it as much as a maypole does from a rabbit-hole—fire-temples also. Yet has he been most religiously followed by Vallancey, Beauford, Dalton, etc., who could not open their eyes to the mistake.