Temple of Belus. If this temple was indeed the most ancient of the pagan temples, as we are led to believe, it was surely also the most striking in terms of its structure. According to Flavius Josephus, Berossus attributed its construction to (King) Belus who, once deified, was worshiped therein. [1] But if it is all but certain that the king Berossus refers to as Belus is none other than Nimrod – and this view is widely shared among specialists – then rather than to build a temple , his plan was to erect a tower to protect him and his retinue from floods and other calamities.

The famous tower commonly referred to as the Tower of Babel was elevated on a square base whose sides measured a stade , for a parameter of one-half mile. [2] The structure was made up of eight towers, built one upon the other in decreasing size. Prideaux points out that some authors, following a Latin version of Herodotus, claim that each tower was one stade high, which would make the structure a mile high! [3] But the Greek text says nothing of the sort and does not mention the building’s height at all. Strabo, [4] who describes this temple , claims it to have been a stade high and the same in width.

The learned editor of Prideaux’s work, which was published at Trévoux, stipulates that according to the length of the stade in the time of Herodotus – the only one of the Ancients to have seen the building – the building was some 69 toises high, in other words slightly higher than the towers of Notre Dame in Paris. [5] This after all does not seem so excessive given the imposing height of some of our buildings in Europe.

The same editor points out that since the building was made of bricks, carried on men’s backs, as we learn from the Ancients, it was not exactly a miracle of engineering, although higher by some 119 feet than the Great Pyramid. This last structure, we note, was built or a least faced with enormous blocks of cut stone which had to be raised to a prodigious height. We are left to conclude that the Great Pyramid must have been infinitely more difficult to build [than the Temple of Belus].

Be that as it may, Herodotus tells us that the tower was climbed by means of an outside staircase, that wound its way up. The 8 towers were as many floors, each one 75 feet high, and each containing several large state apartments supported by pillars, in addition to smaller bed chambers where those who had climbed could take rest. [6] The highest and the most elaborate stateroom was also the one held in the highest veneration. Again, according to Herodotus, this room featured a luxurious bed, and a table of solid gold, but no statues.

Until the time of Nebuchadnezzar, this temple comprised the tower and the staterooms previously mentioned, each one with several private chapels. However, according to Berossus, this monarch enlarged the tower complex, surrounding it with buildings and enclosing the whole within a wall, the bronze doors of which were cast in the same metal looted in the Temple of Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar’s temple was still in existence in the time of Xerces who, upon his fateful return from Greece, stripped it of its sumptuous riches and had it demolished. These riches included solid gold statues, one of which, according to Diodorus Siculus, [7] was more than 40 feet high, and could very well be the one that Nebuchadnezzar consecrated on the plain of Dura. The Scriptures refer to a colossus 90 feet high, but we must consider that that measurement included the pedestal. [8]

In the same temple there were many idols, all solid gold, and many sacred vessels, also in gold, According to Diodorus, these last items were worth 5030 talents, [9] which taken with the golden statue would have constituted an immense treasury. It was this temple that Herodotus saw and which he described in his first book. He is consequently a more reliable source than Diodorus Siculus whose account was second-hand. In fact, Herodotus states that located in a ground-level chapel of this temple was a large golden statue of Jupiter [Zeus], in other words Belus, but he gives neither its weight, nor its size, being content to say that the statue, with a golden table, a throne, and a footstool were all together worth 800 talents or £175,000 sterling. [10]

The same author adds that besides the altar in this chapel, there was another cast in solid gold, and yet another where full-grown animals were sacrificed, and this because it was not permitted to carry out this type of sacrifice on the golden altar where only sucklings might be immolated. He also mentions that each year 100,000 talents worth of frankincense were consumed on the great altar. [11] Finally, he mentions without having seen it, a golden statue reputed to be 12 cubits high, that is to say, 18 feet. [12] This statue is doubtless the same one described by Diodorus as being 40 feet high, on which point, the later writer is the more credible of the two, that is if, in fact, we are speaking of the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, as would seem to be the case.

Leaving that aside, I reported earlier that Herodotus speaks of the highest tower in which was placed a magnificent bed. The same author adds that no one was permitted to sleep there, save a woman from the town chosen each day by the high priest of Belus, convincing her that she would thus be honoured by the presence of the god.

1. Josephus was a Romano-Jewish scholar, historian and hagiographer, (37-100 CE). The work referenced is Contra Apionem or In Apionem . Berossus lived in the 3 ^rd century BCE and wrote the Babyloniaca , now lost.

2. Accordingly, 120, 125 or 200 paces, the pace corresponding to 30 inches.

3. Humphrey Prideaux (1648 –1724), English churchman, author of The Old and New Testament connected in the History of the Jews and Neighbouring Nations (1715–17). The French translation was by Moses Solanus and Jean-Baptiste Brutel de la Rivière (Amsterdam, 1722).

4. Greek geographer (63/64 BCE- 24 CE).

5. The toise corresponds to the English fathom, roughly 6 feet.

6. These are sometimes referred to as “resting chambers.”

7. 1st century BCE Greek historian.

8. Daniel 3:1-18.

9. Talent refers to a talent-weight of gold or of silver. Opinions differ, but the gold talent weighed roughly the same as a person, and so perhaps in ancient times 50 kg (110 lb. avoirdupois).

10. According to this calculation a gold talent was worth roughly £ 21 sterling.

11. 1000 talents in the original. Herodotus 1:183.

12. Cubit: 18 inches.