Babel, (or of Belus as the Greeks termed it,) were made of clay mixed with chopped straw, or broken reeds, to compact it, and then dried in the sun. Their solidity is equal to that of the hardest stone.1

Of all modern travellers, no one has so happily described the form and structure of the eastern buildings as Dr. Shaw, from whose account the following particulars are derived, which admirably elucidate several interesting passages of holy writ. The general method of building, both in Barbary and the Levant (this distinguished scholar and traveller remarks), seems to have continued the same from the earliest ages down to this time without the least alteration or improvement. Large doors, spacious chambers, marble pavements, cloistered courts, with fountains sometimes playing in the midst, are certainly conveniences very well adapted to the circumstances of these climates, where the summer heats are generally so intense. The jealousy likewise of these people is less apt to be alarmed, whilst, if we except a small latticed window or balcony which sometimes looks into the street, all the other windows open into their respective courts or quadrangles. It is during the celebration of some Zeenah, as they call it, or public festival, that their houses, and their windows, and latticed balconies, are left open. For this being a time of great liberty, revelling, and extravagance, each family is ambitious of adorning both the inside and outside of their houses with their richest furniture: whilst crowds of both sexes, dressed in their best apparel, and laying aside all modesty, ceremony, and restraint, go in and out where they please. The account we have (2 Kings ix. 30.) of Jezebel's painting her face, and tiring her hair, and looking out at the window on Jehu's public entrance, gives us a lively idea of an eastern lady at one of these Zeenahs or solemnities.

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magnificent edifices, while they display the grandeur of former times, exhibit no less the meanness of the present. This temple, built of massive stone, with a portico of twenty-four pillars, adorned with innumerable hieroglyphics, and painted with beautiful colours, the brightness of which in many parts remains to this day, is choked up with dusty earth. Village after village, built of unburnt brick, crumbling into ruins, and giving place to new habitations, have raised the earth, in some parts, nearly to the level of the summit of the temple: and fragments of the walls of these mud huts appear, even on the roof of the temple. In every part of Egypt, we find the towns built in this manner, upon the ruins, or rather the rubbish of the former habitations. The expression in Jeremiah xxx. 18. literally ap plies to Egypt, in the very meanest sense-The city shall be builded upon her own heap and the expression in Job xv. 28. might be illustrated by many of these deserted hovels-He dwelleth in desolate cities, and in houses which no man inhabiteth, which are ready to become heaps. Still more touching is the allusion in Job iv. 19.; where the perishing generations of men are fitly compared to habitations of the frailest materials, built upon the heap of similar dwelling places, now reduced to rubbish-How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust !”—(Jowett's Christian Researches, pp. 131, 132.)—In one place, says the same intelligent traveller, "the people were making bricks, with straw cut into small pieces, and mingled with the clay to bind it. Hence it is, that, when villages built of these bricks fall into rubbish, which is often the case, the roads are full of small particles of straws extremely offensive to the eyes in a high wind. They were, in short, engaged exactly as the Israelites used to be, making bricks with straw; and for a similar purpose-to build extensive granaries for the bashaw; treasure-cities for Pharaoh." Exod. i. 11. (Ibid. p. 167.)

1 Sir R. K. Porter's Travels in Georgia, Persia, Babylonia, &c. vol. ii. pp. 329, 330

The streets of these cities, the better to shade them from the sun, are usually narrow, with sometimes a range of shops on each side. If from these we enter into any of the principal houses, we shall first pass through a porch or gateway with benches on each side, where the master of the family receives visits, and despatches business; few persons, not even the nearest relations, having admission any farther, except upon extraordinary occasions. From hence we are received into the court, which lying open to the weather, is, according to the ability of the owner, paved with marble, or such proper materials, as will carry off the water into the common sewers. There is something very analogous between this open space in these buildings, and the impluvium, or cava ædium of the Romans: both of them being alike exposed to the weather, and giving light to the house. When much people are to be admitted, as upon the celebration of a marriage, the circumcising of a child, or occasions of the like nature, the company is seldom or never admitted into one of the chambers. The court is the usual place of their reception, which is strewed accordingly with mats or carpets for their more commodious entertainment and as this is called el woost, or the middle of the house, literally answering to the Todov of St. Luke (v. 19.), it is probable that the place where our Saviour and his apostles were frequently accustomed to give their instructions, might have been in the like situation, i. e. in the area or quadrangle of one of these houses. In the summer season, and upon all occasions, when a large company is to be received, the court is commonly sheltered from the heat and inclemencies of the weather by a vellum umbrella or veil, which being expanded upon ropes from one side of the parallel wall to the other, may be folded or unfolded at pleasure. The Psalmist seems to allude either to the tents of the Bedoweens, or to some covering of this kind, in that beautiful expression, of spreading out the heavens like a veil or curtain. (Psal. civ. 2. See also Isaiah xl. 22.) Antiently, it was the custom to secure the door of a house, by a cross-bar or bolt, which by night was fastened by a little button or pin: in the upper part of the door was left a round hole, through which any person from without might thrust his arm, and remove the bar, unless this additional security were superadded. To such a mode of fastening the bride alludes in Cant. v. 4.2

The court is for the most part surrounded with a cloister, as a cava adium of the Romans was, with a peristylium or colonnade, over which, when the house has one or more stories (and they sometimes have two or three), there is a gallery erected of the same dimensions with the cloister, having a ballustrade, or else a piece of carved or

1 In Bengal, servants and others generally sleep in the verandah or porch, in front of their master's house. (Ward's History, &c. of the Hindoos, vol. ii. p. 323.) The Arab servants in Egypt do the same. (Wilson's Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land, p. 55.) In this way Uriah slept at the door of the king's house, with all the servants of his lord. (2 Sam. xi. 9.)

2 Bp. Percy's Translation of Solomon's Song, p. 76.

latticed work going round about it, to prevent people from falling from it into the court. From the cloisters and galleries, we are conducted into large spacious chambers of the same length of the court, but seldom or never communicating with one another. One of them frequently serves a whole family, particularly when a father indulges his married children to live with him; or when several persons join in the rent of the same house. Hence it is that the cities of these countries, which are generally much inferior in size to those of Europe, are so exceedingly populous, that great numbers of the inhabitants are swept away with the plague, or any other contagious distemper.

In houses of better fashion, these chambers, from the middle of the wall downwards, are covered and adorned with velvet or damask hangings, of white, blue, red, green, or other colours (Esth. i. 6.), suspended upon hooks, or taken down at pleasure. But the upper part is embellished with more permanent ornaments, being adorned with the most ingenious wreathings and devices in stucco and fretwork. The ceiling is generally of wainscot, either very artfully painted, or else thrown into a variety of pannels, with gilded mouldings and scrolls of their Koran intermixed. The prophet Jeremiah (xxii. 14.) exclaims against the eastern houses that were ceiled with cedar, and painted with vermilion. The floors are laid with painted tiles, or plaster of terrace. But as these people make little or no use of chairs (either sitting cross-legged or lying at length) they always cover and spread them over with carpets which for the most part are of the richest materials. Along the sides of the wall or floor, a range of narrow beds or mattresses is often placed upon these carpets: and for their farther ease and convenience, several velvet or damask bolsters are placed upon these carpets or mattresses; indulgences which seem to be alluded to by their stretching themselves upon couches, and by the sewing of pillows to the arm-holes, as we have it expressed in Amos vi. 4. and Ezek. xii. 8. At one end of the chamber there is a little gallery, raised three, four, or five feet above the floor, with a balustrade in the front of it, with a few steps likewise leading up to it. Here they place their beds; a situation frequently alluded to in the holy Scriptures; which may likewise illustrate the circumstance of Hezekiah's turning his face when he prayed towards the wall, i. e. from his attendants, (2 Kings xx. 4.) that the fervency of his devotion might be the less taken notice of and observed. The

1 Similar costly hangings appear to have decorated the pavilion or state tent of Solomon, alluded to in Cant. i. 5.; the beauty and elegance of which would form a striking contrast to the black tents of the nomadic Arabs. The state tents of modern oriental sovereigns, it is well known, are very superb: of this gorgeous splendour, Mr. Harmer has given some instances from the travels of Egmont and Hayman. The tent of the Grand Seignior was covered and lined with silk. Nadir Shah had a very superb one covered on the outside with scarlet broad cloth, and lined within with violet-coloured satin, ornamented with a great variety of animals, flowers, &c. formed entirely of pearls and precious stones. (Harmer on Sol. Song, p. 186.)

2 Thus the apartment, in which our Lord and his apostles celebrated the passover is said to be corpwpevov, spread with a carpet. Mark xiv. 15. Luke xxii. 12. See Macknight in loc.

like is related of Ahab (1 Kings xxi. 4.), though probably not upon a religious account, but in order to conceal from his attendants the anguish he felt for his late disappointments.

The stairs are sometimes placed in the porch, sometimes at the entrance into the court. When there is one or more stories, they are afterwards continued through one corner or other of the gallery to the top of the house, whither they conduct us through a door that is constantly kept shut to prevent their domestic animals from daubing the terrace, and thereby spoiling the water which falls from thence into the cisterns below the court. This door, like most others we meet with in these countries, is hung, not with hinges, but by having the jamb formed at each end into an axle-tree or pivot, whereof the uppermost, which is the longest, is to be received into a correspondent socket in the lintel, while the other falls into a cavity of the same fashion in the threshold.

Dr. Shaw does not remember ever to have observed the staircase conducted along the outside of the house; neither indeed will the contiguity and relation which these houses bear to the street, and to each other (exclusive of the supposed privacy of them) admit of any such contrivance. However, we may go up or down by the stair above described, without entering into any of the offices or apartments, and consequently without interfering with the business of the house.

"The top of the house, which is always flat, is covered with a strong plaster of terrace, whence in the Frank language it has obtained the name of the terrace. This is usually surrounded by two walls, the outermost whereof is partly built over the street, and partly makes the partition with the contiguous houses, being frequently so low that one may easily climb over it. The other, which may be called the parapet wall, hangs immediately over the court, being always breast high, and answers to the y, or lorica, Deut. xxii. 8., which we render the battlements. Instead of this parapet wall, some terraces are guarded, like the galleries, with balustrades only, or latticed work; in which fashion probably, as the name seems to import, was then, or net, or lattice, as we render it, that Ahaziah (2 Kings i. 2.) might be carelessly leaning over, when he fell down from thence into the court. For upon those terraces, several offices of the family are performed, such as the drying of linen and flax, (Josh. ii. 6.) the preparing of figs or raisins, where likewise they enjoy the cool refreshing breezes of the evening, converse with one

1 Thus our Lord saith, let him who is on the house-top not come down to take any thing out of his house. (Matt. xxiv. 17.) The houses of the Jews, says Bp. Newton, as well as those of the antient Greeks and Romans, were flat on the top for them to walk upon, and had usually stairs on the outside, by which they might ascend and descend without coming into the house. Bp. Newton on the Prophecies, vol. ii. p. 266.3d. edit. 2 On these terraces, the inhabitants of the East sleep, in the open air, during the hot season. See instances, illustrating various passages of the Scriptures, in the Travels of Ali Bey, vol. ii. p. 293.; Mr. Kinneir's Travels in Armenia, &c. p. 134. ; Mr. Morier's Second Journey in Persia, p. 230., where a wood-cut is given explanatory of this practice; and Mr. Ward's History, &c. of the Hindoos, vol. ii. p. 323.

another, and offer up their devotions. At the feast of tabernacles, booths were erected upon them. (Nehem. viii. 6.) As these terraces are thus frequently used and trampled upon, not to mention the solidity of the materials with which they are made, they will not easily permit any vegetable substances to take root or thrive upon them which perhaps may illustrate the comparison (Isaiah xxxvii. 27.) of the Assyrians, and (Psalm cxxix. 6.) of the wicked, to the grass upon the house-tops, which withereth before it is grown up. "When any of these cities are built upon level ground, one may pass along the tops of houses from one end of them to the other, without coming down into the street. Such in general is the manner and contrivance of these houses. If then it may be presumed that our Saviour at the healing of the paralytic was preaching in a house of this fashion, we may, by attending only to the structure of it, give no small light to one circumstance of that history, which has lately given great offence to some unbelievers. For among other pretended difficulties and absurdities, relating to this fact, it has been urged. that as the uncovering or breaking up of the roof (Mark ii. 4.), or the letting a person down through it (Luke v. 19.), supposes the breaking up of tiles, spars, rafters, &c. so it was well if Jesus and his disciples escaped with only a broken pate, by the falling of tiles, and if the rest were not smothered with dust.2 But that nothing of this nature happened will appear probable, from a different construction that may be put upon the words in the original. For it may be observed with relation to the words of St. Mark, απέστεγασαν την στεγην όπου ην, και εξορυξαντες, &c. that as στεγη, no less perhaps than tatilo, the correspondent word in the Syriac version, will denote with propriety enough any kind of covering, the veil which I have mentioned, as well as a roof or ceiling properly so called; so for the same reason aodesys may signify the undoing, or removal only of such a covering. Egogugavrss, which we render breaking up, is omitted in the Cambridge MS. and not regarded in the Syriac and some other versions: the translators perhaps either not rightly comprehending the meaning of it, or finding the context clear without it. In St. Jerome's translation the correspondent word is patefacientes, as if goguğavres was farther explanatory of arsorsyadav. The same in the Persian version is expressed by quatuor angulis lectuli totidem fanibus annexis; as if sogugavres related either to the letting down of the bed, or, preparatory thereto, to the making holes in it for the cords to pass through. According to this explication therefore, the context may run thus: When they could not come at Jesus for the press, they got upon the roof of the house, and drew back the veil where he was: or they laid open and uncovered that part of it especially which was spread over the place, orov nv, where he was sitting: and having removed and plucked away, according to St. Jerome, whatever might

1 Thus we read that Samuel communed with Saul upon the house-top (1 Sam. ix. 25.); David walked upon the roof of the king's house (2 Sam. xi. 2.); and Peter went up upon the house-top to pray. (Acts x. 9.)

2 Woolston, p. 58.