The high gates of the temple of Belus, which were standing in the time of Herodotus, have been burnt with fire; the vitrified masses which fell when Bel bowed down, rest on the top of its stupendous ruins. The hand of the Lord has been stretched upon it; it has been rolled down from the rocks, and has been made a burnt mountain,—of which it was farther prophesied, They shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations, but thou shalt be desolate for ever, saith the Lord. The old wastes of Zion shall be built; its former desolations shall be raised up; and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem. But it shall not be with Bel as with Zion, nor with Babylon as with Jerusalem. For as the "heaps of rubbish, impregnated with nitre," which cover the site of Babylon," cannot be cultivated," so the vitrified masses on the summit of Birs Nimrood cannot be rebuilt. Though still they be of the hardest substance, and indestructible by the elements, and though once they formed the highest pinnacles of Belus, yet incapable of being hewn into any regular form, they neither are, nor can now be taken for a corner or for foundations. And the bricks on the solid fragments of wall, which rest on the summit, though neither scathed nor molten, are so firmly cemented, that, according to Mr. Rich, "it is nearly impossible to detach any of them whole," or, as Captain Mignan still more forcibly states, "they are so firmly cemented, that it is utterly impossible to detach any of them."P My most violent attempts," says Sir Robert Ker Porter, "could not separate them;" and Mr. Buckingham, in assigning reasons for lessening the wonder at the total dis n Rich's Memoir, p. 16. 66 o Ibid. p. 36. a Travels, vol. ii. p. 311. appearance of the walls at this distant period, and speaking of the Birs Nimrood generally, observes, that the burnt bricks (the only ones sought after) which are found in the Mujelibé, the Kasr, and the Birs Nimrood, the only three great monuments in which there are any traces of their having been used, are so difficult, in the two last indeed so impossible, to be extracted whole, from the tenacity of the cement in which they are laid, that they could never have been resorted to while any considerable portion of the walls existed to furnish an easier supply; even now, though some portion of the mounds on the eastern bank of the river" (the Birs is on the western side) casionally dug into for bricks, they are not extracted without a comparatively great expense, and very few of them whole, in proportion to the great number of fragments that come up with them." Around the tower there is not a single whole brick to be seen. 66 are oc These united testimonies, given without allusion to the prediction, afford a better than any conjectural commentary, such as previously was given without reference to these facts. While of Babylon, in general, it is said that it would be taken from thence; and while, in many places nothing is left, yet, of the burnt mountain, which forms an accumulation of ruins enough in magnitude to build a city, men do not take a stone for foundations nor a stone for a corner. Having undergone the action of the fiercest fire, and being completely molten, the masses on the summit of Bel, on which the hand of the Lord has been stretched, cannot be reduced into any other form or substance, nor be built up again by the hand of man. And the tower of Babel, afterwards the temple of Belus, which r Buckingham's Travels, vol. ii. p. 332. |