See Genesis xi.

THERE has been much inquiry concerning the location of this remarkable tower. According to tradition its site was the same as that of the great Temple of Belus, near Babylon, which Nebuchadnezzar found in ruins and restored. The present ruins are called Birs Nimrod (citadel of Nimrod). They bear inscriptions in the cuneiform character, among which the name of Nebuchadnezzar frequently appears. Herodotus visited the spot about 450 B. C., and described the temple then existing as "a solid tower a stadium in depth and width, upon which another tower is raised, and another upon that, to the number of eight towers." Of the original structure upon this site we have no knowledge except that derived from the brief account in Genesis. No description of its form is given, and the spiral stairway presented in the engraving is simply a reproduction by the artist of the form given to it in older but purely fanciful pictures. We read as follows:

"And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass as they journeyed from the East, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. And they said one to another: Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said:-Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. .And the Lord said: Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence, upon the face of all the earth; and they left off to build theCity. Therefore is the name of it called Babel, because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth."