it in the twelfth century, after which, for more than six hundred
years, it remained unnoticed and unknown. The ruins were rediscovered
by Niebuhr in 1756; subsequent explorers more accurately described
them; and they were thoroughly examined, and their monumental records
deciphered, about thirty years ago.

The myth attaching to it is not unique. As Kalisch observes, "most
of the ancient nations possessed myths concerning impious giants, who
attempted to storm heaven, either to share it with the immortal gods, or
to expel them from it." And even the orthodox Delitzsch allows that
"the Mexicans have a legend of a tower-building, as well as of a Flood.
Xelhua, one of the seven giants rescued in the flood, built the great
pyramid of Cholula, in order to reach heaven, until the gods, angry at
his audacity, threw fire upon the building, and broke it down, whereupon
every separate family received a language of its own." To lessen the
force of this, Delitzsch says that the Mexican legend has been much
colored by its narrators, chiefly Dominicans and Jesuits; but he is
obliged to admit that there is great significance in the fact that the
Mexican terrace-pyramid closely resembles the construction of the Temple
of Belus. No argument can vitiate the conclusion that as similar myths
to that of Genesis abounded in ancient times, it is highly illogical to
attach particular importance to any one of them. If one is historic, all
are historic. We are justified in holding that the Jewish story of the
Tower of Babel is only a modification of the older story of the Temple
of Belus.

We will conclude this Number by mentioning a few facts, not
speculations, which are exceedingly curious, and which present grave
difficulty to the orthodox believer.

According to the Bible, in Abraham's time, not four centuries after the
Deluge, the descendants of Noah's three sons had multiplied into the
four great kingdoms of _Shinar_ (Babylon), _Elam_, _Egypt_, and _Gerar_,
besides a multitude of smaller nations. Does any instructed man believe
in the possibility of such multiplication? It is altogether incredible.

Some of these nations had reached a high degree of civilisation. Indeed,
the temples, tombs, pyramids, manners, customs, and arts of Egypt
betoken a _full-grown_ nation. The sculptures of the Fourth Dynasty, the
earliest extant, and which must be assigned to the date of about 3500
b.c., are almost as perfect as those of her Augustan age,