BABEL was the native name of the city called Babylon by the Greeks. It means “gate of god,” or “gate of the gods,” and was the Semitic translation of the original Accadian designation Ca-dimirra. According to Gen. xi. 1-9, mankind, after the deluge, travelled from the mountain of the East (or Elwand), where the ark had rested, and settled in Shinar (Sumir, or the north-west of Chaldea). Here they attempted to build â city and a tower whose top might reach unto heaven, but were miraculously prevented by their language being confounded. In this way the diversity of human speech was accounted for; and an etymology was found for the name of Babylon in the Hebrew verb balbel, “ to confound.” According to Alexander Polyhistor (frg. 10) and Abydenus (frgs. 5 and 6), the tower was overthrown by the winds. The native version of the story has recently been discovered among the cuneiform tablets in the British Museum. It is fuller and more complete than the account in Genesis, and formed part of a collection of Babylonian legends older, probably, than 2000 b.c. We learn from it that the tower was erected under the supervision of a semi-divine being called Etanna. The tower has been identified with the temple or tomb of Belus, which Strabo stated with some exaggeration to have been a stade (606 feet) high, but without sufficient reason. It is most probably represented by the modern Sirs Nimrud, the ruined remains of the a Temple of the Seven Lights of the Earth,” at Borsippa, a suburb of Babylon, which was dedicated to Nebo. The temple had been begun by “a former king,” and built to the height of 42 cubits, but it lay an uncompleted ruin for many centuries, and was not finished till the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. Dr Schrader believes that the state of wreck in ...

the tower and city founded by the descendants of Noah in the plain of Shinar. The different tribes descended from Noah were here collected, and from this point were dispersed, through the confusion of their language. The time when this tower was built is differently stated in the Hebrew and Samaritan chronologies. The former fixes it in the year 101 after the flood, which Mr. Faber thinks encumbered with insuperable difficulties. This writer then goes on to show, that the chronology of the Samaritan Pentateuch reconciles every date, and surmounts every difficulty. It represents Shem as dying nearly a century and a half before the death of Peleg, instead of more than that number of years afterward, and almost four centuries and a half before the death of Abraham; whom, in accordance with the history, it makes to survive his father Terah precisely a hundred years. It removes the difficulties with which the Hebrew chronology invests the whole history, by giving time, while it allows the dispersion to have taken place in the latter part of Peleg’s life, for the thirteen sons of his younger brother Joktan to have become heads of families; for Noah and his sons to have died, as it is proved they must have done, prior to the emigration from Armenia; for Nimrod, instead of being a boy, to have been of an age suitable to his exploits, and to have acquired the sovereign command, not, in the face of all probability, while the four great patriarchs were living, but after their decease; and for the families of mankind to have multiplied sufficiently to undertake the stupendous work of the tower. It explains also the silence respecting Shem in the history of Abraham, by making the former die in Armenia four hundred and forty years before the latter was born, instead of surviving ...

BABER. Zehir-ed-dîn Mahomet, sumamed Baber, or the Tiger, the famous conqueror of India and founder of the so-called Moghul dynasty, was born on the 14th February 1483. He was a descendant of Genghis Khan and Timur, and his father, Omar Sheikh, was king of Farghana, a district of Transoxiana, lying east of Samarcand. Omar died in 1495, and Baber, though only twelve years of age, succeeded to the throne. An attempt made by his uncles to dislodge him proved unsuccessful, and no sooner was the young sovereign firmly settled than he began to meditate an extension of his own dominions. In 1497 he attacked and gained possession of Samarcand, to which he always seems to have thought he had a natural and hereditary right. A rebellion among his nobles robbed him of his native kingdom, and while marching to recover it, his troops deserted him, and he lost Samarcand also. After some reverses he regained both these places, but in 1501 his most formidable enemy, Schaibani Khan, ruler of the Usbeks, defeated him in a great engagement, and drove him from Samarcand. For three years he wandered about trying in vain to recover his lost possessions; at last, in 1504, he gathered some troops, and crossing the snowy Hundu Kush, besieged and captured the strong city of Cabul. By this dexterous stroke he gained a new and wealthy kingdom, and completely re-established his fortunes. In the following year lie united with Hussain Mirza of Herat against Schaibani. The death of Hussain, put a stop to this expedition, but Baber spent a year at Herat, enjoying the pleasures of that capital. He returned to Cabul in time to quell a formidable rebellion, but two years later a revolt among some of the leading Moghuls drove him from his city. He was compelled to take to flight, with very few companions, ...

BABEUF, François-Noël, surnamed by himself Gracchus Babeuf, the earliest of the French socialists, was born in 1762, in the department of Aisne. From his father, a major in the Austrian army, he received special instruction in mathematics, but was deprived of him by death at the age of sixteen. Established as a land-surveyor at Roye, in the Somme department, he became a fervid advocate of the Revolution, and wrote articles in the Correspondant Picard, for which he was prosecuted in 1790. He was acquitted on that occasion, and was afterwards elected an administrator of the department; but a charge of forgery being brought against him, he was condemned by the Somme tribunal to twenty years’ imprisonment in 1793. Escaping to Paris, he became secretary to the Relief Committee of the Commune, and joined Garin in his denunciation of the Committee of Public Safety. This led to his incarceration, ostensibly under the former sentence. This was, however, annulled by the Court of Cassation; and he was also discharged by the Aisne tribunal <(18th July 1794), to which he had been remitted. Returning to Paris, he entered on a violent crusade against the remains of the Robespierre party, and started the Journal de la Liberté de la Presse to maintain his views. In the following year (1795) the Girondists acquired supremacy in the Convention; Babeuf’s journal was suspended, and himself imprisoned—first in Paris and then at Arras. Thrown into the society of certain partisans of Robespierre, he was won over by them, and was ready, on his release, to become the indiscriminating defender of the very men whom he had previously attacked (No. 34 of the Tribun, as he now called his journal). In April 1796 Babeuf, Lepelletier, and others, constituted themselves a “Secret Directory of ...