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Dissertation upon the Antiquities of Persepolis." Seve ral cuneiform inscriptions are interpreted in it; and one of the engravings represents a scroll found in the case of an Egyptian mummy, on which both a hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscription occurs. But still more interesting examples of this nature have been noted on two Egyptian vases. The name of the king inscribed on one is found to be that of Artaxerxes; and the undoubted accuracy of this interpretation is proved by the same name having been independently read both by Major Rawlinson and Sir Gardner Wilkinson; the former arriving at it by means of the cuneiform inscription, and the latter by the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Such evidence leaves no room to doubt that the key to the interpretation of the ancient Assyrian characters has been discovered, though much remains to be done by the students both of cuneiform and hieroglyphical records, before it can be assumed that an entire mastery has been gained over these long dumb and forgotten annals of the elder world.

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.

MILTON.

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 remarkable ruin, under an exceedingly advantageous aspect for appreciating its imposing mass, and its interesting associations: "I visited the Birs under circumstances peculiarly favourable to the grandeur of its effect. The morning was at first stormy, and threatened a severe fall of rain; but as we approached the object of our journey, the heavy clouds separating discovered the Birs frowning over the plain, and presenting the appearance of a circular hill crowned by a tower with a high ridge extending along the foot of it. Its being entirely concealed from our view during the first part of our ride prevented our acquiring the gradual idea, in general so prejudicial to effect, and so particularly lamented by those who visit the Pyramids. Just as we were within the proper distance, it burst at once upon our sight in the midst of rolling masses of thick black clouds, partially obscured by that kind of haze whose indistinctness is one great cause of sublimity, whilst a few strong catches of stormy light, thrown upon the desert in the back ground, served to give some idea of the immense extent, and dreary solitude, of the wastes in which this venerable ruin stands.

"The Birs Nimroud is a mound of an oblong figure, the total circumference of which is seven hundred and sixty-two yards. At the eastern side it is cloven by a deep furrow, and is not more than fifty or sixty feet high; but at the western it rises in a conical figure to the ele

vation of one hundred and ninety-eight feet, and on its summit is a solid pile of brick thirty-seven feet high by twenty-eight in breadth, diminishing in thickness to the top, which is broken and irregular, and rent by a large fissure extending through a third of its height. It is perforated by small square holes disposed in rhomboids. The fine burnt bricks of which it is built have inscriptions on them; and so admirable is the cement, which appears to be lime-mortar, that, though the layers are so close together that it is difficult to discern what sub stance is between them, it is nearly impossible to extract one of the bricks whole. The other parts of the summit of this hill are occupied by immense fragments of brickwork of no determinate figure, tumbled together and converted into solid vitrified masses, as if they had undergone the action of the fiercest fire or been blown up with gunpowder, the layers of the bricks being perfectly discernible,—a curious fact, and one for which I am utterly incapable of accounting. These, incredible as it may seem, are actually the ruins spoken of by Père Emanuel, who takes no sort of notice of the prodigious mound on which they are elevated.

"It is almost needless to observe that the whole of this mound is itself a ruin, channelled by the weather and strewed with the usual fragments, and with pieces of black stone, sand-stone, and marble. In the eastern part layers of unburnt brick are plainly to be seen, but no reeds were discernible in any part: possibly the absence of them here, when they are so generally seen under similar circumstances, may be an argument of the superior antiquity of the ruin. In the north side may be seen traces of building exactly similar to the brick-pile. At the foot of the mound a step may be traced, scarcely elevated above the plain, exceeding in extent by several feet each way the true or measured base; and there is a quadrangular inclosure round the whole, as at the Mujelibè,

but much more perfect and of greater dimensions. At a trifling distance from the Birs, and parallel with its eastern face, is a mound not inferior to that of the Kasr in elevation, but much longer than it is broad. On the top of it are two Koubbès or oratories, one called Makam Ibrahim Khalil, and said to be the place where Ibrahim was thrown into the fire by order of Nimroud, who surveyed the scene from the Birs; the other, which is in ruins, Makam Saheb Zeman; but to what part of Mehdy's life it relates I am ignorant. In the oratories I searched in vain for the inscriptions mentioned by Niebuhr; near that of Ibrahim Khalil is a small excavation into the mound, which merits no attention; but the mound itself is curious from its position, and correspondence with others."

Mr. Rich subsequently made the ruins of ancient Babylon the objects of a most careful and minute investigation and to his descriptions we owe the most full and trustworthy accounts which we possess of the ruined capital of Nimrod's Empire. He conceives the mound still remaining on the eastern side of the Birs Nimroud to have been a building of great dimensions, and most probably a temple attached to the tower of Belus. The same form of mound has been observed, similarly situated, attached to other ruins which bear a considerable resemblance to the pyramidal tower of Birs, so that it seems reasonable to conclude that these are the relics of the vast temples once devoted to the rites of that long extinct and forgotten faith. From the general appearance of the ruin, Mr. Rich infers that it was a pyramidal erection, built in several stages gradually diminishing to the summit, and corresponding to the great pyramids of Mexico, which some ingenious theorists have conceived to furnish evidence of the early correspondence of the two races. Such speculations, however, are extremely fallacious, similarity of climate and materials will produce a corres

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