and with them every feeling of shame." Herodotus mentions one of their customs which he justly reprobates as in the "highest degree abominable." It is questioned by some, and by Voltaire in particular, but it is mentioned by Jeremiah, who lived almost two hundred years before Herodotus, and it is confirmed by Strabo, who lived long after him. "Every woman who is a native of the country," says Herodotus, "is obliged once in her life to attend at the Temple of Venus, and to prostitute herself to a stranger. Such women as are of superior rank do not omit even this opportunity of separating themselves from their inferiors; they go to the temple in splendid chariots, accompanied by a numerous train of domestics, and place themselves near the entrance. This is the practice with many, whilst the greater part, crowned with garlands, seat themselves in the vestibule; and there are always numbers coming and going. The money given is applied to their sacred purposes, and is not to be refused, however small. The woman afterwards makes some conciliatory oblation to the goddess, and returns to her home, never afterwards to be obtained on similar or on any terms." In the apocryphal Book of Baruch, which some writers assert was written by Jeremiah, and others by Baruch, his intimate disciple, the Babylonians are reproached for this disgusting custom. "The women also with cords about them (Herodotus says, that they all sit with a rope or string annexed to them, to enable a stranger to determine his choice), sitting in the ways, burn bran for perfume; but if any of them, drawn by some one that passeth by, lie with him, she reproacheth her fellow that she was not thought as worthy as herself, and her cord broken," Baruch vi. 43. Bryant remarks that this custom was universally practised wherever the Persian religion prevailed. It is certain that it was not only practised at Babylon, but at Heliopolis, at Aphace between Heliopolis and Byblus, at Sicca Veneria in Africa, and also in the Isle of Cyprus.

Like the Assyrians, the Babylonians

sold the marriageable women by auction, which Herodotus says the Hemeti, an Illyrian people, also did, and the wisdom of which he admires. He thus relates their mode of procedure :-" When the girls were marriageable, they were ordered to meet at an appointed time and place, where the unmarried men also assembled. The public crier sold the young women one by one, beginning with the most beautiful. When he had sold her at an immense price, he put up others to sale, according to their degrees of beauty. The rich Babylonians were emulous to obtain the most beautiful of the young women, but as the young men who were poor could not aspire so high, they were content to take the more homely-looking with the money which was given them; for the crier, when he sold the fairest, selected also one ugly or deformed, who was sold to whoever would take her with a small sum of money. Thus she became the wife of him who was the most easily satisfied; and thus the finest women were sold; and from the money which they brought, small fortunes were given to the homely-looking and the deformed. A father was not permitted to marry his daughter as he pleased, nor was he who bought her allowed to take her home until he gave security that he would marry her; but, after the sale, if the parties were not agreeable to each other, the law enjoined that the purchase-money should be restored. There were no restrictions with respect to residence; those of another town were permitted to marry wives at these auctions. They afterwards made a law, prohibiting the inhabitants of different towns from intermarrying, and punishing husbands who treated their wives ill." To this narrative it may be added, that if the custom of disposing of young women to the highest bidder was peculiar to the Babylonians and Assyrians, that of purchasing the person intended for a wife, and of giving her father a sum of money to obtain her, was much more general, it being practised amongst the Greeks, the Trojans, and their allies, and even amongst the mythological deities.

Herodotus, however, omits one very important circumstance, to prove that this ceremony was conducted with decency. "It passed," says Larcher, "under the inspection of the magistrates; and the tribunal, whose office it was to take cognizance of the crime of adultery, superintended the marriage of the young women. Three men, respectable for their virtues, who were at the head of the several tribes, conducted the young women that were marriageable to the place of assembly, and there sold them by the voice of the public crier."

"They have also another custom," continues Herodotus, "the good tendency of which claims our applause. Such as are diseased among them they carry into some public square; they have no professors of medicine, but the passengers in general interrogate the sick person concerning his malady, that if any person has been either afflicted with a similar disease himself, or seen its operation on another, he may communicate the process by which his own recovery was effected, or by which in any other instance he knew the disease to be removed. No one could pass the afflicted person in silence, or without inquiring into the nature of his complaint. Previous to interment their dead are anointed with honey, and, like the Egyptians, the Babylonians are fond of funeral lamentations."

The government of Babylon, like that of Assyria and the other Eastern empires, was hereditary and despotic; their kings assumed divine titles, and received divine honours. Some particulars have been preserved chiefly by the Prophet Daniel. In the court the eunuchs held the highest offices, the empire was divided into satrapies, governed by rulers, among whom was a regular gradation of rank and title, under whom there were collectors of tribute, and higher and inferior judges. There was also a priesthood, comprised under the name of Magians or Chaldeans, the chief of whom was styled the Master of the Magicians, whose office it was to satisfy the king on subjects connected with futurity. As might have been expected,

such men, whose pretensions were chiefly based on astrology and soothsaying, would exercise a considerable influence upon the government. Daniel was invested with this office by Nebuchadnezzar, but it appears to have become vacant at the close of every reign, for the Prophet certainly did not hold it during the reign of Belshazzar, to whom he appears to have been little if at all known previous to the memorable feast. The punishments were arbitrary, and depended greatly on the capricious will of the reigning sovereign, who seems to have also pronounced the sentence on offending parties. Beheading, cutting to pieces, and turning the house of the criminal into a dunghill, were penalties executed by order of the Babylonian kings. Burning offenders in a fiery furnace alive was another punishment used among the Babylonians, and perhaps among other Eastern nations. It was inflicted on Jews and Christians for capital crimes, or for what were held to be capital crimes, at Algiers, previous to the subjugation of that stronghold of piracy. As the Babylonians originated all the idolatries and superstitions of the surrounding nations, they are charged with having introduced, or at least having practised, the custom of sacrificing human victims to conciliate their deities.

Such was Babylonia, once one of the most fruitful countries in the world, and from its situation the greatest mart of Western Asia-such the ancient inhabitants, and such their customs, according to the scanty notices which have been preserved. This is the region, with its far-famed city, whose doom, so completely verified, was thus announced two centuries before its capture by Cyrus: "It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation, neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their fold there; but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and

dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and shall not be prolonged." Her cities are "desolations," where "no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass thereby."-"I will punish," declares the Most High, "the Land of the Chaldeans, and will make it a perpetual desolation. I will cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of harvest. I will send unto Babylon fanners that shall fan her, and empty her land. The land shall tremble and sorrow, for every purpose of the Lord shall be performed against Babylon, to make the land of Babylon a desolation, without an inhabitant." To conclude, in the comprehensive language of Dr Keith, "Where labourers, shaded by palm-trees a hundred feet high, irrigated the fields till all was plentifully watered from numerous canals, the wanderer, without an object on which to fix his eye but stinted and short-lived shrubs, can scarcely set his foot without pain, after the noon-day heat, on the arid and parched ground, in plodding his weary way through a desert, a dry land, and a wilderness. Where there were crowded thoroughfares from city to city there are now silence and solitude, for the ancient cities of Chaldea are desolations." See CHALDEA and EUPHRATES.

BACA, mulberry trees, the name of a valley mentioned only in the 84th Psalm: "Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools. They go from strength to strength (or from company to company); every one of them in Zion appeareth before God." "After many uncertain conjectures," says Bishop Horne, "offered by commentators on the construction of these two verses, it seems impossible for us to attain to any other than a general idea of their true import, which is this, that the Israelites, or some of them, passed in their way to Jerusalem through a valley that had the name of Baca, a noun derived from a verb which signifies to weep that in this valley they were refreshed with plenty of water-and that

with renewed vigour they proceeded from stage to stage, until they presented themselves before God in Zion." While we think that this explication is most satisfactory, and that it may have been a valley near Jerusalem, it is also stated that some writers understand the name Baca as not applying to any particular place, but to every valley which abounded with mulberry trees or weeping willows, through which the Hebrews travelled in their journeys to Jerusalem to attend their solemn festivals, and where they dug wells for refreshing themselves and their cattle. In Calmet's Fragments, it is alleged that this valley lay among the mountains of Lebanon, that some rivulets ran through it, and that it was one of the most northern districts whence travellers were supposed to journey to Jerusalem. De la Roque informs us that the plain, or, properly speaking, the whole territory of Baalbec towards the mountains, is called Al-bkaa by the Arabs, which we express by Bekaa. It is well watered, and produces the fine grapes sent to various parts under the name of grapes of Damascus. There was a village called Baca or Batatha, which served as a boundary between the Tyrians and Galilee.

BAHURIM, BACHOR, or BACHUR, choice, warlike, valiant, a village belonging to the tribe of Benjamin, situated little more than two miles north-east of Jerusalem, and alleged by some geographers to be the same as Almon. Phaltiel accompanied his wife Michal, the daughter of King Saul, "weeping behind her to Bahurim," when Ish-bosheth took her from him and sent her to David, 2 Sam. iii. 16. David passed Bahurim in his flight, just as his rebellious son Absalom entered Jerusalem, and on that occasion Shimei, the Benjamite, a relative of the family of Saul, came out of his house, and bitterly cursed the monarch in his misfortunes, exclaiming, "Come out, come out, thou man of blood, thou man of Belial! The Lord hath returned upon thee all the blood of the house of Saul, in whose stead thou hast reigned, and the Lord hath delivered the kingdom into

the hand of Absalom thy son; and be hold thee in thy evil, because thou art a man of blood," 2 Sam. xvi. 7-8. Abishai, one of David's friends, would have instantly slain the traitor, but was restrained by the king. Shimei afterwards bitterly repented of his conduct, and when David had put an end to Absalom's rebellion, hastened to express his contrition, and to proffer his allegiance, which was accepted by the king, and a promise given him that his life would be safe that day, 2 Sam. xix. 23. He was, however, afterwards put to death by Solomon, for disobeying an order of that prince commanding him to remain during his life within Jerusalem, from which we may infer that Shimei was a seditious and dangerous subject. Ahimaaz and Jonathan, the two messengers who were carrying the intelligence to David of Absalom's conspiracy, were hid in a well at Bahurim. They were pursued by Absalom's friends, but were denied by the woman who concealed them, and thus were enabled to join David while their pursuers returned to Jerusalem, 2 Sam. xvii. 18-21.

BAJITH, a place in the country of the Moabites where there was a celebrated idolatrous temple, which is thought to be the same as Baal-Meon. The king of Moab is represented as repairing to Bajith to supplicate the assistance of his idol against the Assyrian invaders: "He is gone to Bajith, and to Dibon, the high places, to weep," Isa. xv. 2. Bishop Lowth, however, interprets the prophecy thus: "He is used for the people of Moab. Bajith and Dibon are, in the Chaldee and Syriac version, made into the name of one place, Beth-Dibon. Beth may signify the house or temple of an idol."

BALA, otherwise called ZOHAR, a city belonging to the tribe of Simeon, Josh. xix. 3.

BALBEC, BAAL-BEC, BALBECK, or HELIOPOLIS, the vale of Baal, a city of Syria, described by the Arabians as the wonder of that district. It received its name from the worship of Baal, other

wise the sun, the chief idol of the country. It was beautifully situated near the north-eastern extremity of the valley of Bocat, or Bekaa, at the foot of Antilibanus, on a rising ground where the mountain terminates in a plain. It is celebrated for its magnificent ruins. See LIBANUS and VALLEY OF LEBANON.

BAMAH, the name of some noted high place which the Jews frequented when they relapsed into idolatry, Ezek. xx. 29. The word conveyed a reproof for their wickedness in acting against the express will of God, and conforming to the idolatrous practices of surrounding nations.

BAMOTH, the name of the place where the Israelites made their fortysecond encampment in their journey through the Wilderness, situated in the Plain of Moab, Numb. xxi. 19, 20.

BAMOTH-BAAL, heights sacred to Baal, the name of a town so called from the worship of Baal, and probably connected with Beth-Baal-meon, given to the Reubenites by Joshua, who conquered it from Sihon, king of the Amorites, Josh. xiii. 17. It was situated on the river Arnon, or in the plain through which that stream runs.

BARIS, the name of a tower which Josephus says was built by the Prophet Daniel at Ecbatane, where he was high in favour with the Persian king. He describes it as a "most elegant building, and wonderfully made," and where "they bury the kings of Media, Persia, and Parthia to this day; and he who was entrusted with the care of it was a Jewish priest, which thing is also observed to this day," namely, to the time in which Josephus lived.

BASCAMA, or BASCA, a town said to have been in the territory of the tribe of Judah, where Tryphon slew Jonathan Maccabeus, 1 Macc. xiii. 23.

BASHAN, BAASHAN, or BATANEA, in the tooth, or in the ivory; otherwise, in the change, or the sleep; or, in slumbering, or in confusion, or ignominy, the name of one of the most fertile districts of the Canaanites, bounded on the east

by the mountains of Gilead, on the west by the river Jordan and the Sea of Tiberias, on the south by the brook Jabbok, and on the north by the Land of Geshur, or Lebanon. The whole canton, which has since been termed Batanea, took its name from a mountain called Bashan, which rises in its centre, and contained sixty walled towns besides villages. Its capital cities were Ashtaroth and Edrei. The country was so greatly esteemed as one of the most fertile districts in Western Asia, that it is specially commended for its rich pastures and stately oaks. The hill of Bashan is particularly noticed in the 68th Psalm: "The hill of God is as the hill of Bashan; an high hill, as the hill of Bashan," which is here poetically represented with the neighbouring mountains as leaping for joy at Jehovah's presence, and ambitious of his abode upon them, as if there were a rivalship for that honour. The oaks of Bashan are mentioned as equalling the cedars of Lebanon, Isa. ii. 13. Its cattle were celebrated as the largest and fattest in the Land of Gilead, as were its sheep also, "rams of the breed of Bashan," Deut. xxxii. 14; and therefore it is joined with Gilead by the Prophet Micah (vii. 14), which, being woody and mountainous in some parts, was no less famous for breeding goats, animals which delighted to brouse on the pinetrees of Mount Gilead.

Bashan, or Batanea, is now called El Bottein, or Belad Erbad, and is the district south of Dicholan and Hauran, the geology of which is described by Seetzen and Burckhardt. Bashan belonged to Gilead in its widest sense, Josh. xiii. 30, 31; but, strictly speaking, it was situated to the north of Gilead, and comprehended Golan and its territory, Deut. iv. 43; Josh. xvii. 1, 5; xx. 8; xxi. 27; 2 Kings x. 33; Mic. vii. 14. It was a kingdom under Amoritish sovereigns, who resided in Ashtaroth and Edrei, Deut. i. 4; Josh. ix. 10; xii. 4. After Sihon, king of the Amorites, whose capital was Heshbon, had fallen before the victorious Israelites in their passage through the Wilderness, Og, the king of Bashan, and the last sovereign

of the Amoritish dynasty, encountered Moses at Edrei, where he fell "with his sons, and all his people, until there was none left him alive, and they (the Israelites) possessed the land," Numb. xxi. 33, 34, 35. This fine country was subsequently allotted to the half-tribe of Manasseh.

The inhabitants of Bashan at the time of Moses appear to have been a branch of the Amorites, and were of tall stature, exceeding in height the natives of the Desert and of Egypt. Hence the Prophet Amos figuratively describes them as high as cedars, and as strong as oaks (ii. 9). This poetical similitude is illustrated by the historical statement of the sacred writer, Deut. iii. 11. "For only Og, king of Bashan, remained of the remnant of the giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbah of the Children of Ammon? Nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man." We may hence infer that Og's stature was gigantic, although it was not necessary that he should have filled it, bedsteads being, according to the common custom, made a third part longer than the persons that lay upon them. "Og," says Bishop Patrick, "was perhaps about six cubits high, after the cubit of a man, that is, according to the cubit of ordinary men, which is little more than half a yard." It is most likely that this celebrated bedstead, as it is called, was a kind of divan. "The people of the East," says the author of Fragments to Calmet, use a kind of settle called a duan, or divan, or sofa, consisting of boards raised from the ground, about five feet broad and one and a half high, reaching sometimes quite round the room, sometimes only along a part of it; it is covered with a carpet, and furnished with mattresses, to rest upon cross-legged after the Turkish fashion, and with cushions placed upon the wall to lean upon. They serve for beds at night. This custom may tend to illustrate the dimensions of the bedstead of Og, which appears to have been about fifteen feet and a half long, and six feet ten inches broad. English

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