Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/305

Rh mind an indisputable proof that the tower was connected with the sudden confusion of tongues; and this became part of our theological heritage.

In our sacred books the account runs 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 the city.

"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." (Genesis, xi, 1-9.)

Thus far the legend had been but slightly changed from the earlier Chaldean form in which it has since been found in the Assyrian inscriptions. Its character is very simple; to use the words of the most eminent English-speaking authority, Prof. Sayce, of Oxford, a clergyman of the Church of England, "It takes us back to the age when the gods were believed to dwell in the visible sky, and when man, therefore, did his best to rear his altars as near them as possible." And the eminent professor might have added that it takes us back also to a time when it was thought that Jehovah, in order to see the tower fully, was obliged to come down from his seat above the firmament. In its earlier Chaldean form the legend runs, that the gods, assisted by the winds, overthrew the work of the contrivers and introduced a diversity of tongues.

As to the real cause of the building of the tower there seems a substantial agreement among leading scholars that it was erected primarily as part of a temple, but largely for the purpose of astronomical observations, to which the Chaldeans were so devoted, and to which their country, with its level surface and clear atmosphere, was so well adapted. As to the real cause of its