n, was of short
duration, for the Tower arose "upright and defiant," not, however, as an
emblem of the primeval dual or triune God in which the female energy was
predominant, but as a symbol of male creative power. It was the type of
virility which in the subsequent history of religion was to assume the
position of the "one only and true God."

It is not improbable that idolatry began with the Tower of Babel.

Indeed it has been confidently asserted by certain writers that the
earliest idols set up as emblems of the Deity, or as expressions of the
peculiar worship of the Lingajas, were obelisks, columns, or towers,
the first of which we have any account being the Tower of Babel, erected
probably at Nipur in Chaldea. Until a comparatively recent time,
the actual significance of this monument seems to have been little
understood. Later research, however, points to the fact that it was a
phallic device erected in opposition to a religion which recognized the
female element throughout Nature as God. The length of time which the
adherents of these two doctrines had contended for the mastery is not
known, but through the deciphered monuments of ancient nations, by
facts gathered from their sacred writings, and by the general voice
of tradition, it has been ascertained with a considerable degree of
certainty that this great upheaval of society was the culmination of
a dispute which had long been waged between two contending powers, and
which finally resulted in a separation of the people, and in the
final success, for the time being, of the sect which refused longer to
recognize the superior importance of the female in the god-idea.

At what time in the history of mankind the Tower of Babel was erected
has not been ascertained, but the great antiquity of Chaldea is no
longer questioned. Sir Henry Rawlinson, in the Royal Geographical
Journal says:

"When Chaldea was first colonized, or at any rate when the seat of
empire was first established there, the emporium of trade seems to have
been at Ur of the Chaldees, which is now 150 miles from the sea, the
Persian Gulf having retired nearly that distance before the sediment
brought down by the Euphrates and Tigris."

To which Baldwin adds:

"A little reflection on the vast period of time required to effect
geological changes so great as this will enable us to see to what a
remote age in the deeps of antiquity we must go to find the beginning of
civilization in the Mesopotami