"When Chaldea was first colonized, or at any rate when the seat
of empire was first established there, the emporium of trade
seems to have been at Ur of the Chaldees, which is now 150 miles
from the sea, the Persian Gulf having retired nearly that
distance before the sediment brought down by the Euphrates and
Tigris."
To which Baldwin adds:
"A little reflection on the vast period of time required to
effect geological changes so great as this will enable us to see
to what a remote age in the deeps of antiquity we must go to find
the beginning of civilization in the Mesopotamian Valley."[53]
[53] Prehistoric Nations, p. 191.
Although at the time of the building of the Tower of Babel the
worship of a Deity in which the male principle was pre-eminent
had not become universal, still the facts seem to indicate that
the doctrine of male superiority which for ages had been steadily
advancing had at length gained the ascendancy over the older
religion. The new faith and worship had corrupted the old, and
through the conditions which had been imposed upon women, and the
consequent stimulation of the lower nature in man, even the
adherents of the older faith were losing sight of those higher
principles which in preceding ages they had adored as God.
We have seen that in every country upon the earth there is a
tradition recounting the ravages of a flood. Whether or not this
legend is to be traced to an actual calamity by which a large
portion of Asia was inundated, is not for a certainty known; but
the fact that there was a deluge of contention and strife,
surpassing anything perhaps which the world has ever witnessed,
seems altogether probable.
Not long after the catastrophe designated as the flood, emblems
of the Deity, representations of the male and female elements,
appear in profusion. Babylon, at which place was erected the
Tower of Belus, and Memphis, which contained the Pyramids, were
among the first cities which were built. As the tower typified
the Deity worshipped by those who claimed superiority for the
male, so the pyramids symbolized the creative agency and peculiar
qualities of the female, or of the dual Deity which was
worshipped as female.
Although the grosser elements in human nature were rapidly
assuming a more intensely aggressive attitude, and although the
higher principles involved in an earlier religion were in a
