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Elevation of Birs Nimrood (North face)
according to Strabo and Herodotus

Supposed

Entrance.

The Dotted lines
Show ThePresent
Remains

500 feet

Plan of Birs Nimrood

Bel is confounded. Originally constructed of eight successive towers, one rising above another, it is now consolidated into one irregular hill, presenting a different aspect, and of different altitudes on every side, -a confused and misshapen mass. "The eastern face presents two stages of hill; the first shewing an elevation of about sixty feet cloven in the middle into a deep ravine, and intersected in all directions by furrows channelled there by the descending rains of succeeding ages. The summit of this first stage stretches in rather a flattened sweep to the base of the second ascent, which springs out of the first in a steep and abrupt conical form, terminated on the top by a solitary standing fragment of brick-work, like the ruin of a tower. From the foundation of the whole pile to the base of this piece of ruin, measures about two hundred feet; and from the bottom of the ruin to its shattered

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BIRS NIMROOD

Engraved by permission from a print in the Travels of Sir Robert Ker Porter.

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I will roll thee down from the rocks & make thee a burnt mountain. Jer LI 25.

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top, are thirty-five feet. On the western side, the entire mass rises at once from the plain in one stupendous, though irregular, pyramidal hill, broken, in the slopes of its sweeping acclivities, by the devastations of time and rougher destruction. The southern and northern fronts are particularly abrupt."s Such, and so confounded is now the temple of Belus.

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I will stretch out mine hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain. On the summit of the hill are "immense fragments of brick-work of no determinate figures, tumbled together, and converted into solid vitrified masses. "Some of these huge fragments measured twelve feet in height, by twenty-four in circumference; and from the circumstance of the standing brick-work having remained in a perfect state, the change exhibited in these is only accountable from their having been exposed to the fiercest fire, or rather, scathed by lightning." i "They are completely molten-a strong presumption that fire was used in the destruction of the tower, which in parts resembles what the Scriptures prophesied it should become, a burnt mountain.' In the denunciation respecting Babylon, fire is particularly mentioned as an agent against it. To this Jeremiah evidently alludes, when he says that it should be, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,' on which cities, it is said, the Lord rained brimstone and fire. Her high gates shall be burned with fire, and the people shall labour in vain, and the folk in the fire, and they shall be weary.""k "In many of these immense unshapen masses, might be traced the gradual effects of the

Sir R. K. Porter's Travels, vol. ii.

h Rich's Memoir, p. 36.

i Miguan's Travels, p. 207.

k Keppel's Narrative, pp. 194, 195.

p.

310.

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consuming power, which had produced so remarkable an appearance; exhibiting parts burnt to that variegated dark hue, seen in the vitrified matter lying about in glass manufactories; while, through the whole of these awful testimonies of the fire (whatever fire it was!) which, doubtless, hurled them from their original elevation," (I will roll thee down from the. rocks,)" the regular lines of the cement are visible, and so hardened in common with the bricks, that when the masses are struck they ring like glass. On examining the base of the standing wall, contiguous to these huge transmuted substances, it is found tolerably free from any similar changes, in short, quite in its original state; hence," continues Sir Robert Ker Porter, I draw the conclusion, that the consuming power acted from above, and that the scattered ruin fell from some higher point than the summit of the. present standing fragment. The heat of the fire. which produced such amazing effects, must have burned with the force of the strongest furnace; and from the general appearance of the cleft in the wall, and these vitrified masses, I should be induced to attribute the catastrophe to lightning from heaven. Ruins, by the explosion of any combustible matter, would have exhibited very different appearances."

“The fallen masses bear evident proof of the operation of fire having been continued on them, as well after they were broken down as before, since every part of their surface has been so equally exposed to it, that many of them have acquired a rounded form, and in none can the place of separation from its adjoining one be traced by any appearance of superior freshness, or any exemption from the influence of the destroying flame."m

1 Sir Robert Ker Porter's Travels, vol. ii. pp. 312, 313. m Buckingham's Travels, vol. ii. p. 375.

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