Chapter XXXIV
J. Buchan (John Buchan) Telfer translation
The Tower of Babel, represented as being 54 stadia from the city, must have been distant 6.75 Italian, or 6.21 English miles, precisely the position of Birs Nimroud—Prison of Nimrod—called “Marburtirudt”, for Marbout Nimroud. It was to these ruins that Benjamin of Tudela (Ritter, Die Erdkunde etc., x, 263) referred when describing the tower constructed before the dispersion of the people, situated on the right bank of the Euphrates, and one and a half hour’s journey from Hillah; it measured 240 yards in diameter, and was about 100 canna in height; a gallery conducted to the summit, whence the view around extended over the plain to a distance of eight leagues. Schiltberger expresses himself to the same effect when he says, “in several places it is x leagues in length and in breadth”. In adding that the tower stood on the Chaldæan side of the Arabian desert, he has no intention of directing us to Arabia proper, but to Irak Araby, the country of the ancient Chaldæans.—Bruun.
(3A.) This is confirmed by Colonel Chesney (Exped. to the Euphr. and Tigris, i, 60), who writes that Shatt, or more correctly Shatt-el-Arab, is the name given to the rivers Euphrates and Tigris after their junction at the walled town of Kournah; but that the designation belongs properly to the Tigris. This river is clearly called Schot by Olearius.—Ed.
Schiltberger was under the impression, as was his contemporary De Lannoy (Voy. et Ambass., 88), that the Nile traversed India before entering Egypt,1 which accounts for his supposition that the giraffe was indigenous to the former country.—Bruun.
(6A.) Zerypha—yellow-coloured—is the Persian for giraffe, from zerd—yellow—and fam—colour; a name corrupted by the Turks and Arabs to zerafè, whence “surnasa”. The giraffe at the British Museum could have reached food at a height of at least twenty feet, as Dr. Günther, Keeper of Zoology, has been good enough to inform me. The finest specimen at the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle, at Paris, is even inferior in size, according to the measurements kindly supplied by Professor Milne-Edward of that institution. Schiltberger must have greatly miscalculated the proportions of the animal he saw, allowing even for probable degeneration; large giraffes having now become very scarce.—Ed.