which no longer even ape humanity. But after the manner of all phantoms it comes to life again beneath the enchantments of the moon.

For the men of its time whom did it represent? King Amenemhat? The Sun God? Who knows? Of all hieroglyphic images, it is the one least satisfactorily decyphered. The deep thinkers of Egypt symbolized everything for the benefit of the uninitiated under the awe-inspiring figures of the gods; perhaps, indeed, after having meditated so long in the shadow of the temples and searched so long for the fathomless wherefore of life and death, they simply wished to sum up in the smile of those closed lips the vanity of our most profound human speculations. It is said that the Sphinx was once of surpassing beauty, when harmonious contour and colouring animated the face and when it was enthroned at its full height on a kind of esplanade paved with long slabs of stone. But was it then more sovereign than it is to-night in its last decrepitude? Almost buried beneath the sands of the Libyan desert, beneath which its base is no longer visible, it rises at this hour like a phantom which nothing solid sustains in the air.

THE TOWER OF BABEL

SIR AUSTEN H. LAYARD

HE Birs Nimroud, the "palace of Nimrod," of the

THE

Arabs, and the "prison of Nebuchadnezzar of the Jews," by old travellers believed to be the very ruins of the Tower of Babel, by some, again, supposed to represent the Temple of Belus, the wonder of the ancient world, and, by others, to mark the site of Borsippa, a city celebrated as the high place of the Chaldæan worship, is a vast heap of bricks, slag and broken pottery. The dry nitrous earth of the parched plain, driven before the furious south wind, has thrown over the huge mass a thin covering of soil in which no herb or green thing can find nourishment or take root. Thus, unlike the grass-clothed mounds of the more fertile districts of Assyria, the Birs Nimroud is ever a bare and yellow heap. It rises to the height of 198 feet, and has on its summit a compact mass of brickwork thirtyseven feet high by twenty-eight broad, the whole being thus 235 in perpendicular height. Neither the original form nor object of the edifice, of which it is the ruin, have hitherto been determined. It is too solid for the walls of a building, and its shape is not that of the remains of a tower. It is pierced by square holes, apparently made to admit air through the compact structure. On one side of

it, beneath the crowning masonry, lie huge fragments torn from the pile itself. The calcined and vitreous surface of the bricks, fused into rock-like masses, show that their fall may have been caused by lightning; and, as the ruin is rent almost from top to bottom, early Christian travellers, as well as some of more recent date, have not hesitated to recognize in them proofs of that divine vengeance, which, according to tradition, arrested by fire from heaven the impious attempt of the first descendants of Noah.

Even the Jews, it would appear, at one time identified the Birs Nimroud with the Tower of Babel. Benjamin of Tudela gives the following curious account of the ruin : "The tower built by the dispersed generation is four miles from Hillah. It is constructed of bricks, called Al-ajur (the word still used by the Arabs for kiln-burnt bricks); the base measures two miles, the breadth two hundred and forty yards, and the height about one hundred canna. A spiral passage, built into the tower, leads up to the summit, from which there is a prospect of twenty miles, the country being one wide plain and quite level. The heavenly fire which struck the tower split it to its very foundation." No traces whatever now remain of the spiral passage spoken of by the Jewish traveller, and it was most probable that he was misled in describing it by the appearance of the ruins.

Whatever may have been the original edifice, of which the Birs Nimroud is the ruin, or whoever its founder, it is certain that as yet no remains have been discovered there more ancient than the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Every

inscribed brick taken from it—and there are thousands and tens of thousands-bear the name of this king. It must, however, be remembered that this fact is no proof that he actually founded the building. He may have merely added

to or rebuilt an earlier edifice. Thus, although it would appear by the inscriptions from Nimroud that the northwest palace was originally raised by a king who lived long before him whose name occurs on the walls of that monument, yet not one fragment has been found of the time of that earlier monarch. Such is the case in other Assyrian ruins. It is, therefore, not impossible that at some future time more ancient ruins may be discovered at the Birs.

I will now describe the ruins. It must first be observed that they are divided into two distinct parts, undoubtedly the remains of two different buildings. A rampart or wall, the remains of which are marked by mounds of earth, appears to have enclosed both of them. To the west of the high mound, topped by the tower-like pile of masonry, is a second, which is larger but lower, and in shape more like the ruins on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. It is traversed by ravines and water-courses, and strewed over it are the usual fragments of stone, brick and pottery. Upon its summit are two small Mohammedan chapels, one of which the Arabs declare is built over the spot where Nimroud cast the patriarch Abraham into the fiery furnace, according to the common Eastern tradition.

The brickwork still visible in the lower parts of the mound, as well as in the upper, shows the sides of several

distinct stages or terraces. I believe the isolated mass of masonry to be the remains of one of the highest terraces, if not the highest, and the whole edifice to have consisted, on the eastern or southeastern side, of a series of stages rising one above the other, and, on the western or northwestern, of one solid perpendicular wall. The back of the building may have been painted, as, according to Diodorus Siculus, were the palaces of Babylon, with hunting or sacred scenes, and may have been decorated with cornices or other architectural ornaments. There were no means of ascent to it. Nor was it accessible in any part unless narrow galleries were carried round it at different elevations.

It is probable that the ascents from terrace to terrace consisted of broad flights of steps, or of inclined ways, carried up the centre of each stage. Such we may judge, from the description of Diodorus, was the form of some of the great buildings at Babylon. The ascents to the different terraces of the Hanging Gardens, he says, were like the gradines of a theatre. There are certainly traces of them in the mounds in the Desert west of Mosul, if not in the Birs Nimroud. Herodotus states that the Temple of Belus at Babylon consisted of a series of towers. His description is not very clear, but it may be inferred that the various parts of the structure were nearly square. The base was undoubtedly so, and so also may have been the upper stories, although generally represented as round. There is nothing in the word used by Herodotus to show that they were circular; and that they were solid masses of masonry ap