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authors, half a mile in circumference, and a furlong in height. It was originally built of a pyramidal form, of eight successive towers, each 75 feet high, rising above each other, and diminishing in size, to that which crowned the whole, formed the Sanctum Sanctorum of the god of fire. Its ascent was by an inclined plane, which passed eight times round the tower. It is now consolidated into one irregular hill, exhibiting a different aspect, and of different altitudes, from whichever side it is viewed. "The eastern face," says an intelligent traveller, "presents two stages of hill, the first showing an elevation of about 60 feet, cloven in the middle into a deep ravine, and intersected in all directions by furrows channelled there by the descending rains of succeeding ages. The summit of this first stage stretches in rather a flattened sweep to the base of the second ascent, which springs out of the first, in a steep and abrupt conical form, terminated on the top by a solitary standing fragment of brick-work, like the ruin of a tower. From the foundation of the whole pile, to the base of this piece of ruin, measures about 200 feet, and from the bottom of the ruin to its shattered top, are 35 feet. On the western side, the entire mass rises at once from the plain in one stupendous, though irregular, pyramidal hill, broken in the slopes of its sweeping acclivities, by the devastations of time, and rougher destruction. The southern and northern fronts are particularly abrupt."

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On the summit of the hill are immense fragments of brick work, of no determinate figures, tumbled together and converted into solid vitrified masses. Some of these huge fragments measured twelve feet in height, by twenty-four in circumference; and owing to the circumstance of the standing brick-work having remained in a perfect state, the change exhibited in these is only accountable from their having been exposed to the fiercest fire, or rather scathed by lightning. They are completely mol

Sir R. K. Porter's Travels, vol. ii. p. 310.

ten, and the ruined mass in parts resembles, what the Scriptures prophesied it would become,-" a burnt mountain.”—“Through the whole of these awful testimonies of the fire," says the writer already mentioned, “whatever fire it was which hurled them from their original elevation, the regular lines of the cement are visible, and so hardened, in common with the bricks, that, when the masses are struck, they ring like glass. On examining the base of the standing wall, contiguous to these huge transmuted substances, it is found tolerably free from any similar changes,—in short, quite in its original state; hence, I draw the conclusion, that the consuming power, acted from above, and that the scattered ruin fell from some higher point than the summit of the present standing fragment. The heat of the fire, which produced such amazing effects, must have burned with the force of the strongest furnace; and from the general appearance of the cleft in the wall, and these vitrified masses, I should be induced to attribute the catastrophe to lightning from heaven. Ruins, by the explosion of any combustible matter, would have exhibited very different appearances."

There is something exceedingly striking in this account. It seems as if this doomed building, which was founded in impious rebellion, and afforded in its earliest history a signal instance of Divine interference, should, after a long period, during which it was devoted to the service of idolatry, and perpetuated the rebellion it had commenced, be destined again to experience the vengeance of the insulted Deity, and to perish at last by fire from heaven, leaving to remote ages an indelible impression of the Omnipotent hand which struck it.

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This state of the ruins fulfils another remarkable prophecy concerning its fate. They shall not take of thee a stone for a corner, nor a stone for foundations, thou shalt be desolate for ever."+ The vitrified masses

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on the summit of Birs-Nimrood, as ancient Babel is now called, cannot be rebuilt. Though still they be of the hardest substance, and indestructible by the elements, yet, incapable of being hewn into any regular form, they neither are, nor can now be taken as materials for building. Even of the unscathed bricks, indeed, on the solid fragments of wall, travellers say, that they are so firmly united by cement, that "it is utterly impossible to detach any of them."

Dr Keith concludes his account of the fulfilment of the prophetic denunciations against this singular tower, in the following animated language. "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, or 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 witnessed the first dispersion of mankind, shall itself be witnessed by the latest generation, even as now it stands, 'desolate for ever,'- —an indestructible monument of human pride and folly, and of divine judgment and truth. The greatest of the ruins, as once of the edifices of Babylon, is rolled down, into a vast, indiscriminate, cloven, confounded, useless, and blasted mass.'

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* Keith on Fulfilled Prophecy, p. 313.

VOL. IV.

T

TENTH WEEK-THURSDAY.

ARCHITECTURE.-ITS ANCIENT HISTORY AND PRACTICE

CENTRAL ASIA-BABYLON.

Ar the present day, there are fewer vestiges of very ancient buildings left in Central Asia, than might have been expected, from the accounts which have been handed down to us, of the early civilization, and the magnificent and stupendous works, of this cradle of the world. This has been justly attributed to the devastating effects of conquest, and to the perishing nature of the materials of which their buildings were usually constructed. When we remember, that, from a deficiency of stone, they commonly made use of brick, and that these fertile but unfortunate regions have, since the dominion of the Assyrians, been successively over-run by the Medes, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Saracens, and the Turks, we will cease to wonder at the utter destruction which has so generally been effected.

Babylon and Nineveh appear both to have existed at the same time, and to have been nearly of the same magnitude, namely, from fifty to sixty miles in circumference. The accounts which ancient authors, apt to exaggerate, have given of the architectural wonders which these cities displayed, must perhaps be taken with some degree of distrust; but when we consider the facility which the state of society afforded, for the employment of vast masses of people in the construction of public works, we shall not find it necessary to make the abatements, which, judging from their want of mechanical power, we might otherwise think necessary. The taste of remote antiquity was remarkable every where for a love of cumbrous vastness. Magnitude was the sentiment which chiefly entered into their idea of architec

tural magnificence. Their rulers, whether civil, military, or ecclesiastical, were all imbued with the same propensity; and the public works which they produced partook of the same character. The monarchies of the East were little else than powerful bands of robbers, associated together, under a chief, for the purposes of conquest and plunder. They spoiled the surrounding countries of their wealth, and heaped it up in their own treasuries, or lavishly used it, in seasons of peace, for affording employment and subsistence to their myriads of myrmidons, in the erection of those structures, either for the purposes of security, or of luxury and pride, the extent of which fill us with astonishment.

Babylon was situated in the extensive plain of Shinar, at the top of the luxuriant Delta, formed by the Euphrates and the Tigris. It was probably founded by Nimrod, about the same time as the celebrated tower,that is, at an early period after the flood; but history informs us, that it was rebuilt by the celebrated Assyrian Queen Semiramis, twelve hundred years before the Christian era, and enlarged and perfected by Nebuchadnezzar about six centuries afterwards. It was severed by the Euphrates, which passed through it from north to south, the old city being on the east, and the new on the west side, and both together forming a square of fifteen miles on each side of the river. It was traversed by twenty-five streets, a hundred and fifty feet broad, running in each direction, and crossing each other at right angles; besides streets of two hundred feet in breadth, passing along the inside of the walls. The whole space was thus divided into six hundred and seventy-six squares, along which houses were built, at some distance from each other. The intermediate spaces were occupied by gardens and groves of trees. The walls which encompassed the city, are said by Herodotus, probably with great exaggeration, to have been three hundred and eighty feet high, and eighty-seven feet in thickness. They were built of brick, laid in mortar made of bitumen, and sur

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