BABYLONIAN WRITING. 317 perfection. Their method of burning bricks has perhaps never since been equalled. Some foundations have been discovered at Babylon, which, from their thickness and depth in the earth, are allowed, by men of judgment, to be part of the foundations of the Tower of Babel. The bricks are square, and not unlike floor-bricks : some of them have come under my inspection; each has a stamp upon it, containing characters which have some resemblance to those of the Persepolitan. This circumstance might lead us to suppose the Antediluvians may have used the same sort of characters. These bricks, being in the foundations, must have been moulded previous to the confusion of tongues; therefore if the words they contain were deciphered, they would elucidate the question, as to which among the number that came from Babel, was the Antediluvian language; or, in the general confusion, whether no entire remains of it were left. Some may consider the Hebrew to have been the primitive tongue, because it was used by the chosen people; some may plead for the Sanscrit, on the ground that Sanscrit words are found in every language on earth; while others may support the Chinese, for its paucity of sounds and its simplicity of construction. But, after all arguments that can be adduced on the subject, the conclusion rests entirely on conjecture and uncertainty. The order of the Sabean alphabet agrees nearly with that of the Hebrew; but whether the Hebrew borrowed its order of the Sabean, or the Sabean of the Hebrew, is a point I am 318 BABYLONIAN WRITING. not able to decide; but, judging from comparison, I think it is likely the Hebrew borrowed its alphabet and order from the Sabean, because a few of its letters have an affinity to some of the Sabean letters. The Sabean bordering on the shape of the Persepolitan, which having an affinity to the Babylonian, renders it possible that the Persepolitan may be derived from the Babylonian alphabet, which is the highest antiquity we can trace. "The instrument that forms the basis of all the letters or characters in the Persepolitan inscriptions, is the head of an arrow--to a martial people, one of the most familiar objects. There is a singular coincidence in some of the Persepolitan numerals, in common with the Roman and Chinese; the letterformed of two arrow-heads joined together obliquely, represents the letter H; which letter, being the fifth of the Sabean, as well as of the Hebrew alphabet, represents the number five; and so in the Persepolitan : change the position of it, and you have the Roman V, the numeral for five. Two of these placed together, form the letter X, the Roman numeral for ten; the same in Persepolitan and in Chinese. There is another coincidence with regard to the letters a and m, which can scarcely be the effect of accident; the letters a and m rather appear to have been derived from the Persepolitan alphabet. It is useless, however, in this place, wandering farther into a wilderness of conjecture, without any hope of penetrating into the real origin of an art which is lost in the abyss of time; and which, if not invented by Moses, the BABYLONIAN WRITING. 319 presumed author of the book of Job, we are utterly at a loss to know to whom to ascribe the wonderful discovery. NOTE. "The ordinary buildings were constructed of bricks, baked in the sun only; these were in their nature loose and friable, and easily reduced to their original elements. The walls and public edifices in general consisted of bricks burned in the furnace; these, being hard and durable, were carried away for the purpose of constructing Seleucia, Ctesiphon, Bagdad, Bussora, and all the other great cities that rose to eminence upon the decline of Babylon. When, in addition to all this, it is considered that this same system of depredation has been going on for above 2000 years, in a country which, from its situation, has ever been the favourite region for the erection of great cities by the successive tyrants of Asia, and yet that such immense masses of them, as described by recent travellers, should still remain in the neighbourhood of Hillah, it must excite his wonder, that, instead of the enormous heaps of ruins described in their pages, any remains at all of the Babylonian capital should at this day exist."-Appendix to Observations on the Ruins of Babylon: by the Rev. Thomas Maurice, pp. 200, 201 4to. NOTE." We may be permitted to conjecture, that the Euphrates once pursued a course different from that which it now follows, and that it flowed between the pyramid of Haroot and Maroot, and the mound and ruins already mentioned as half a mile farther to the west. The present course of the river would appear to justify this conclusion; 320 BABYLONIAN WRITING. for it bends suddenly towards these mounds, and has the appearance of having formerly passed between them. Should this conjecture be admitted, then will the ruins just mentioned be found to answer the description given by the ancients of the materials, size, and situation of the two principal edifices in Babylon."-Kinneir's Geographical Memoir oft he Persian Empire, page 279. |