Rach. have been the Chemofh, or the Baal Peor of the Moabites. By the prophet Ifaiah, c. xlvi. he is joined with Bel, and generally fuppofed to have been the fun. Other gods the Babylonians and Affyrians had, namely, Rach, who is generally thought to have been intended for the fun *; Nego and Nego and Nengal, if they were not one and the fame, and MeroNengal, dach. In a word, we may call in the gods of the feveral naand Mero- tions, whofe hiftories we have already related, to complete the dach. lift of the Babylonian idols; for they are confefiedly fprung from the city of Babylon. Hence it is that Maimonides, in fpeaking of the death of Thammuz, who died a martyr to the Sabian religion, relates, that all the idols of the world flew to the great temple of the fun at Babylon, and there mourned the death of Thammuz. The Babylonians alfo worshiped the ferpent or afp; and agreed with the Egyptians in very many of their modes of religion, especially in the worship they paid to fishes, to the goat and to the onion †. Their temples, idols, and priests. We have a general view given us of their temples, idols, and priests, in the epiftle of Jeremiah. Their idols were of gold, of filver, and of wood, and carried about in proceffion, furrounded with multitudes worshiping them. They were crowned and cloathed in purple, and were black with the fmoke of incenfe. Their temples were full of fmoke and duft, occafioned by the numerous refort of votaries. The priests made fometimes free with the gold and filver prefented to their gods, and either kept it for themselves, or beftowed it upon lewd proftitutes, who were accounted facred. Whatever was offered a facrifice to their gods, they were wont to embezzle and appropriate to themfelves, and cloathed their wives and children with the garments that had been given to adorn their idols. The Babylonians having given rife to all the idolatries and fuperftitions in vogue among the neighbouring nations, are particularly charged with the horrible cuftom of facrificing human Human victims, to appease or conciliate their gods. This cuftom, viaims. which appears to have been propagated from the Babylonians among the other nations, grew at length fo fhocking to human nature, that it seems in the later days to have been confined to a particular fect or tribe. For the Sepharvites are faid, by way of diftinction from the other Babylonians, to have burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, who are fuppofed to be the fame with Moloch S. That thefe Sepharvites were Babylonians properly fo called would be paft all doubt, fhould we agree with the most learned geographers, that their city was that of Sipparg in Ptolemy. Their remarkable customs. Among the Affyrian and Babylonian cuftoms one of the chief feems to have been their method of difpofing of their young women in marriage. In every diftrict they affembled annually Willet upon Daniel, i. 16. vii. 31. Alex. ab Alex. § 2 Kings, all all the virgins of marriageable age on a certain day, and fold them one by one in the midst of a croud of men. The moft beautiful were firft put up and delivered to the highest bidder. The money that was raised by this fale was appropriated as fortunes to the ugly and lame, who were then offered to fuch as would take the leaft money with them. The poorer fort, who valued money more than beauty, were as eager in underbidding as the wealthy men had before been in overbidding each other. By this management their young women were all disposed of in marriage; but the poorer fort before they were allowed to carry off the women they had bargained for, were obliged to give fecurity to cohabit with them as their wives. This law, before the days of Herodotus, was totally abolished; but he relates that in his time the Babylonians thought themselves polluted even by the use of matrimony, and therefore refused to touch any thing next morning, till they had purified themfelves by washing and perfuming their bodies. men uni Every Babylonian woman once in her life-time was bound to The wo proftitute herself to a ftrange man at the temple of Venus. They were crowned with knots and garlands, and placed in verfally long ranks to be viewed by the men. When any man declared prostitute his choice by throwing money into the woman's lap, and fay-themfelves ing, I implore the goddefs Mylitta for thee, fhe was not at fi- to Venus berty to refuse the money, which was accounted facred, or reject the fuitor, but was obliged directly to retire with him. Having thus fulfilled the law, and performed fome ceremonies in honour of the goddefs, fhe returned home, and nothing could tempt her to grant the fame favour again to her new lover. Women of rank (for none were difpenfed with) might be conveyed to the appointed place in a covered vehicle, and keep in it while their fervants waited their return at fomé diftance. We have this cuftom with fome additional circumftances in Baruch : The women alfo, fays he, with cords about ↑. them fitting in the highways burn bran for perfume; but if any of them drawn by fome that paffeth by lie with him, fhe reproacheth ber fellow that he was not thought as worthy as herself, nor her cord broken. Their manner of For five days every year they celebrated a feftival called Sacea or Sacca, during which the fervants commanded their mafters. They ufed no phyficians, but brought out their fick into the moft frequented places, that every one might fee them and offer their advice if they had any knowledge of the cafe, either from treating their own experience or from the experience of others, nor was it lawful for any that paffed by to omit this office. They embalmed the dead in honey, and their funeral lamentations are like thofe of the Egyptians. the fick. They were exceffively credulous and fuperftitious, and as Their lewd and debauched as a nation could be. Their credulity character. Herod. 1. 1. Strabo, 1. 16. + Baruch, vi. muft Their habit. Learning of the muft appear from the high veneration they had for their Chaldeans, priefts, or jugglers, fand their fuperftition from what we have faid of their religion. They were fo prone to idolatry, that we even find an inftance of their great Nebuchadnazzar falling down before Daniel to worship him, ch. ii. 46. Debauchery reigned among them without controul, their princes, on whom it was incumbent to reftrain it, living in the height of riot, as we may gather from the banquet Belshazzar was giving, when he faw the fatal infcription on the wall. Befides the example of their princes, their religion as inculcated by their priests, and the filthy rites of their different gods, together with the reverence paid to proftitutes, rendered them the moft fenfual and abandoned race that can be imagined. Parents and husbands did not fcruple to expofe for money their wives and children to the embraces of their guests. Drunkards they are particularly faid to have been, and their women were admitted to their debaucheries, where they gradually laid aside all restraints of modefty. They seem to have affected pride and effeminacy in their drefs. Their under-garment was a linen veft down to their heels, over which they had another of woolen, and over all a white mantle or cloak. They wore their own hair; their heads were adorned with a tiara or mitre, and their bodies anointed all over with oil of Sefame. Each of them wore a feal ring on the finger, and in their hand a staff curiously wrought, on the top of which was placed either an eagle, a rofe, a lilly, or an apple, or fome other thing, for to wear a ftick without fuch an ornament was accounted indecent *. The Babylonians, particularly the Chaldees, were famed for learning. Thefe Chaldees pretended alfo to fupernatural knowChaldees. ledge, and are faid to have inhabited a region peculiar to themfelves next to the Perfian gulf. They were divided into several fects, as the Orcheni, the Borfipenni, and known by other names of diftinction, borrowed either from particular places, where different doctrines on the fame point were held, or from particular perfons who had doctrines peculiar to themfelves. They acquired not their learning after the manner of the Greeks, but by tradition from father to fon; and being exempt from all offices, their only business was to apply themselves to the inftruction they received. Fully fatisfied of what they received from their ancestors, they never departed from what they imbibed, fo that they made little or no progress even in the learning they particularly profeffed. They taught that the world was eternal, Their that it never had a beginning, and never fhould have an end, doctrine However, they owned a divine providence, and afferted that the about the motions of the heavens were performed by the guidance and direction of fuperior agents or gods. They are univerfally faid to have been the firft that cultivated aftronomy, and they pre world. Quint. Curt. 1. 5. Herod. Strab. ut fupr. tended tended not only to have difcovered the exact motions of the heavenly bodies, but alfo certain influences they have over things below *. On this account they called the planets Interpreters, and had particularly a high opinion of the influence of Saturn, next of the fun, then of Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, which were all the planets they reckoned. Under thefe fix planets they ranged 30 ftars, which they called counfelling gods. Half of thefe took notice of what was done under the earth, and the other half of what was done by men, or tranfacted in the heavens. They reported that the chiefs of thefe counselling gods were twelve in number, and affigned to each a month of the year, and a whole fign of the Zodiac. Aftronomy they only cultivated as a fcience fecondary to aftrology, and accordingly their notions of it were very confined and imperfect. They held the earth to be like a veffel or boat, and hollow within. They had no notion of the immense diftance of fome of the planets from the fun, and accounted for the time they took up in their revolutions purely by the flownefs of their motion. They thought the moon fhone with a light not her own, and that when eclipfed fhe was immerged in the fhadow of the earth; but for eclipfes of the fun they were quite at a lofs, nor could they fix the time when they would happen. Daniel, fpeaking of these wife men, divides them into four claffes, namely magicians, aftrologers, forcerers, and Chaldeans, adding afterwards to them fuch as divined by lots, or fuch as foretold events by the inspection of intrails. As the Chaldees were peculiarly the men of learning in this nation, fo the Babylonians, properly fo called, applied themfelves to the arts, though perhaps we shall have more reason to call these the men of learning among them than the former, who were wholly addicted to the fidereal confultations, and the propagation of extravagancies, which appear to have made up the fyltem of their philofophy. In this cafe the Babylonians, as diftinguished from the Chaldeans, must have been good mathematicians and mechanics, as appears by the immenfe buildings they reared, which could not be effected without great kill in the several branches of mathematics and geometry. This may be affirmed in general; but to fay how far they excelled in perfpective and juftnefs of proportion may not be quite fo eafy a task. That their ornaments and decorations fell fhort of what was afterwards feen in Greece can never be doubted; and hence we may conclude the fame of their paintings and ftatues. To what perfection they carried their mufic is uncertain, but from Daniel we learn, that they had a variety of inftruments, fuch as flutes, cornets, harps, fackbuts, pfalteries, dulcimers, and all kinds of mufic. We are quite unacquainted with their poetry, but must leave the reader to form a judgment of it by that of the other eastern nations their neighbours, both • Strab. Geograph. Diod. Sic. 1. z. + Diod. ut fupra. The arts of the Ba bylonians. antient Their language. Particular tribes. Their ade. antient and modern. Their language, which was called the Chaldee, was only a different dialect of the Syriac, and the fame alphabet was common to them and the Syrians. The Babylonians, properly fo called, were famous for their manufactures, particularly for their rich embroideries, fumptuous veftments, magnificent carpets, and fine linen; infomuch that we read of Cato that he immediately fold a Babylonian cloak or mantle, which was left to him by inheritance, as being what he was afhamed to wear, and elfewhere that at Rome there had been paid for a fuit of Babylonian hangings for a dining room 6458 pounds fix fhillings and eight pence t. It were to no purpose to quote authors for farther inftances of this magnificence, which is known to a proverb. This people was not only divided into two great tribes, the Babylonians and Chaldeans properly fo called, but into other fubordinate fects, three of which are faid to have fed upon nothing but fish. As thefe tribes lived in the fens where no corn grew, it was probably neceffity that forced them to depart from the practice of their countrymen. Their fifh they dried in the fun, and having pounded them in a mortar, baked them in the manner of bread. The inhabitants of Borfippa, we are told, ufed to falt the bats, which in their neighbourhood were much larger than in other places, and to use them for food t. The trade of this antient people must have been very confiderable, efpecially when Babylon was in the meridian of her glory. Babylon was fituated as it were in the very midst of the old world; and by means of the two great rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris, had very eafy communication with the western and northern parts, as alfo with the eaftern by means of the Perfian gulf. As it was not only the feat of a potent monarchy, but alfo afforded many productions and manufactures of its own to exchange with its neighbours, and lay within reach of them all, it is not to be doubted but that trade was here very extenfive. It may be concluded alfo, that they had fhipping of their own, and were confiderable as navigators, fince their city is ftiled by the prophet a city of waters, and St. John gives us a large account of their extensive commerce. **********❀❀❀❀❀❀**** WE SECT. II. The Hiftory of the Babylonian kings. E are here to confider the Babylonians in two very different views; firft, as compofing a fmall, though, perhaps, a formidable kingdom immediately after the deluge; and, fecondly, as conftituting a potent and wide fpreading empire, founded by the Affyrians their brethren, and at laft rifing upon their ruins. Plut. in vit. Cat. Plin. Hift. Nat. I. 8. + Arbuthnot of Coins. Herod. 1. 1. The I |