Babel

a place or circumstances in which confusion of sounds—as, for instance, by several people speaking at once —is the predominating characteristic. The reference is to the confusion of tongues divinely sent in consequence of the. building of the Tower of Babel temple of Belus, a erted to have been originally this tower, is said to have had lofty spires, and many statues of gold, one of them 40 feet high. In the upper part of this temwas the tomb of the founder, Beus (the Nimrod of the sacred pong tures), who was deified after death. «The Tower of Babel is most frequently identified with the enormous ruin at Birs, 2,000 ft. in base circumference, 156 ft. high, and two hours west of Hillah on the site of the ancient biblical city of Babylon.: Bab-el-Mandeb (i. ¢., the gate of tears), the name of the strait between Arabia and the continent of Africa, by which the Red Sea is connected with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.