m his seat above the
firmament.

As to the real reasons for the building of the towers which formed so
striking a feature in Chaldean architecture--any one of which may easily
have given rise to the explanatory myth which found its way into our
sacred books--there seems a substantial agreement among leading scholars
that they were erected primarily as parts of temples, but largely for
the purpose of astronomical observations, to which the Chaldeans were
so devoted, and to which their country, with its level surface and clear
atmosphere, was so well adapted. As to the real cause of the ruin of
such structures, one of the inscribed cylinders discovered in recent
times, speaking of a tower which most of the archaeologists identify
with the Tower of Babel, reads as follows:

"The building named the Stages of the Seven Spheres, which was the Tower
of Borsippa, had been built by a former king. He had completed forty-two
cubits, but he did not finish its head. During the lapse of time, it
had become ruined; they had not taken care of the exit of the waters,
so that rain and wet had penetrated into the brickwork; the casing
of burned brick had swollen out, and the terraces of crude brick are
scattered in heaps."

We can well understand how easily "the gods, assisted by the winds," as
stated in the Chaldean legend, could overthrow a tower thus built.

It may be instructive to compare with the explanatory myth developed
first by the Chaldeans, and in a slightly different form by the Hebrews,
various other legends to explain the same diversity of tongues. The
Hindu legend of the confusion of tongues is as follows:

"There grew in the centre of the earth the wonderful 'world tree,' or
'knowledge tree.' It was so tall that it reached almost to heaven.
It said in its heart, 'I shall hold my head in heaven and spread my
branches over all the earth, and gather all men together under my
shadow, and protect them, and prevent them from separating.' But Brahma,
to punish the pride of the tree, cut off its branches and cast them down
on the earth, when they sprang up as wata trees, and made differences of
belief and speech and customs to prevail on the earth, to disperse men
upon its surface."

Still more striking is a Mexican legend: according to this, the giant
Xelhua 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 s