1. The soil of Babylonia is an alluvial deposit, rich and tenacious, and well adapted for brick making. While many of the bricks of that country were merely sun-dried, others were burned, as were those in the tower of Babel. Fire-burnt bricks were sometimes laid as an outer covering to walls of sun-dried brick. The finest quality of bricks was of a yellow color, resembling our firebricks; another very hard kind was of a dark blue; the commoner and coarser sorts were pink or red.
Amid the ruins of Babylonia ancient bricks have been discovered, in large quantities, stamped with inscriptions of great value to the archaeologist. The ordinary size of these bricks is twelve to fourteen inches square, and three to four inches thick. At the corners of buildings half-bricks were used in the alternate rows.
2. The “slime” here spoken of is bitumen, which is still found bubbling from the ground in the neighborhood of ancient Babylon, where it is now used for mortar, as in former times. It is also found in some parts of Palestine. At Hasbeiya, near the source of the Jordan, there are wells or pits dug, in which bitumen collects, exuding from the crevices in the rocks. The “slime-pits” mentioned in Genesis 14:1010And the vale of Siddim was full of slimepits; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain. (Genesis 14:10), may have been similar to these. They were near the Dead Sea, where bitumen is still to be found.
Loftus (Travels in Chaldea and Susiana, p. 31) approves the suggestion of Captain Newbold that the ancient Babylonians in some instances burned their bricks in the walls of their buildings, to render them more durable. Tine rude walls, erected with unburnt brick, cemented with hot bitumen, are supposed to have been exposed to the action of a furnace heat until they became a solid vitrified mass. This is indeed burning “thoroughly,” and it may have been the method which the Babel-builders intended to pursue had they been permitted to finish their tower; as they said, according to the marginal reading, “Let us make brick, and burn them to a burning.”