Ruins of Sacred and Historic Lands. Babylon, Nineveh and C

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II. BABYLON. With these came they, who from the bordering flood Of old Euphrates, to the brook that parts Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names Of Baalim, and Ashtaroth; those male, These feminine. Meltox. We are left in no doubt, from the records of sacred history, as to who was the first founder of empires, or which was the earliest of the world's cities, reared by the subjects of the mighty hunter, Nimrod. The narrative is most concise and distinct. "Nimrod began to be a mighty one in the earth; and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel." This ancient city, Babel, or Babylon, occupies a most important place among the great capitals of the older Asiatic kingdoms. We learn of it in connexion with the Babylonian, the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Persian, the Hebrew, and the Macedonian Empires. It figures in the pages of sacred history, as a mighty city influencing the fate of other nations, and becoming the instrument for the accomplishment of God's primitive purposes on his chosen people, and when, at length, its own doom is pronounced, and it is hurled to destruction by the judgments of God, it becomes a monument of divine wrath, to which the closing revelations of the Apocalypse refer as the fittest emblem of the most dreadful manifestations of God's anger. It is a subject of the liveliest interest to inquire whether the celebrated Birs Nimroud be, indeed, the ancient Temple of Belus, and the still older Tower of Babel, the first great architectural structure of the human race. Mr. Rich, to whom we owe the first accurate and trustworthy account both of the Birs Nimroud and of the whole extensive group of surrounding ruins on the east bank of the Euphrates, thus describes his impressions on obtaining sight of the...