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Updated: June 27, 2025
Moreover there were monstrous fish and reptiles and serpents, and divers other creatures, which had borrowed something from each other's shapes; of all which the likenesses are still preserved in the temple of Belus.
The reader may have a faint idea of the glory of the city when he remembers that it was a regular square, forty-five miles in compass, enclosed by a wall two hundred feet high, and fifty broad, in which there were one hundred gates of brass. Its principal ornaments were the Temple of Belus, and the famous "hanging gardens."
Its dimensions were large and well proportioned, its height being twenty cubits, and its breadth six cubits, elevated on a richly gilded pedestal, forty cubits in height, thus being perfectly visible to all the worshipers. Around its base stood the officiating priests of Belus, with solemn visages, their long flowing robes adorned with numerous articles of rich regalia.
It is very probable that the Chaldeans may have made spheres, like the armillary sphere, for representing the poles of the heavens; and with rings to show the ecliptic and zodiac, as well as the equinoctial and solstitial colures; but we have no record. We only know that the tower of Belus, on an eminence, was their observatory.
On the whole, therefore, it seems most probable that the race designated in Scripture by the hero-founder Nimrod, and among the Greeks by the eponym of Belus, passed from East Africa, by way of Arabia, to the valley of the Euphrates, shortly before the opening of the historical period.
And how glass was first found I care not greatly to remember, even at this present, although it be directly beside my purposed matter. In Syria Phenices, which bordereth upon Jewry, and near to the foot of Mount Carmel, there is a moor or marsh whereout riseth a brook called sometime Belus, and falleth into the sea near to Ptolemais.
Carthage, where the exiles had now arrived, was a spot on the coast of Africa opposite Sicily, where at that time a Tyrian colony under Dido their queen, were laying the foundations of a state destined in later ages to be the rival of Rome itself. Dido was the daughter of Belus, king of Tyre, and sister of Pygmalion who succeeded his father on the throne.
Gomer Chephoraod was so popular that the clay of all the plains round the Euphrates could scarcely furnish brick-kilns enough for his eulogists. It is recorded in particular that Pharonezzar, the Assyrian Pindar, published a bridge and four walls in his praise. One day the king was going in state from his palace to the temple of Belus.
Josephus tells how Jewish soldiers refused in spite of all punishments to bring earth with the other soldiers for the reparation of the Temple of Belus at Babylon.
The most remarkable buildings which the city contained were the two palaces, one on either side of the river, and the great temple of Belus. The basement platform of the Belus tower was, Herodotus tells us, a stade, or rather more than 200 yards, each way. The number of stages was eight.
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