various sects, those who worshipped the male as the only creative
force, others who adored the female as the origin of life, and
those who paid homage to both, as alike important in the office
of reproduction.
It would seem that the fierce wars which had devastated the land
had ceased prior to the beginning of the Tower of Babel.
According to the testimony of Moses, the Lord himself declared
"Behold the people is one." This unanimity of belief, as is
plainly shown, 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:
