The Midway Creatures

77:3.1Af­ter the sub­mer­gence of Dala­ma­tia the Nod­ites moved north and east, pres­ently found­ing the new city of Dil­mun as their racial and cul­tural head­quar­ters. And about fifty thou­sand years af­ter the death of Nod, when the off­spring of the Prince’s staff had be­come too nu­mer­ous to find sub­sis­tence in the lands im­me­di­ately sur­round­ing their new city of Dil­mun, and af­ter they had reached out to in­ter­marry with the An­don­ite and San­gik tribes ad­join­ing their bor­ders, it oc­curred to their lead­ers that some­thing should be done to pre­serve their racial unity. Ac­cord­ingly a coun­cil of the tribes was called, and af­ter much de­lib­er­a­tion the plan of Bablot, a de­scen­dant of Nod, was en­dorsed.

77:3.2Bablot pro­posed to erect a pre­ten­tious tem­ple of racial glo­ri­fi­ca­tion at the cen­ter of their then oc­cu­pied ter­ri­tory. This tem­ple was to have a tower the like of which the world had never seen. It was to be a mon­u­men­tal memo­rial to their pass­ing great­ness. There were many who wished to have this mon­u­ment erected in Dil­mun, but oth­ers con­tended that such a great struc­ture should be placed a safe dis­tance from the dan­gers of the sea, re­mem­ber­ing the tra­di­tions of the en­gulf­ment of their first cap­i­tal, Dala­ma­tia.

77:3.3Bablot planned that the new build­ings should be­come the nu­cleus of the fu­ture cen­ter of the Nod­ite cul­ture and civ­i­liza­tion. His coun­sel fi­nally pre­vailed, and con­struc­tion was started in ac­cor­dance with his plans. The new city was to be named Bablot af­ter the ar­chi­tect and builder of the tower. This lo­ca­tion later be­came known as Bablod and even­tu­ally as Ba­bel.

77:3.4But the Nod­ites were still some­what di­vided in sen­ti­ment as to the plans and pur­poses of this un­der­tak­ing. Nei­ther were their lead­ers al­to­gether agreed con­cern­ing ei­ther con­struc­tion plans or us­age of the build­ings af­ter they should be com­pleted. Af­ter four and one-half years of work a great dis­pute arose about the ob­ject and mo­tive for the erec­tion of the tower. The con­tentions be­came so bit­ter that all work stopped. The food car­ri­ers spread the news of the dis­sen­sion, and large num­bers of the tribes be­gan to for­gather at the build­ing site. Three dif­fer­ing views were pro­pounded as to the pur­pose of build­ing the tower:

77:3.51. The largest group, al­most one half, de­sired to see the tower built as a memo­rial of Nod­ite his­tory and racial su­pe­ri­or­ity. They thought it ought to be a great and im­pos­ing struc­ture which would chal­lenge the ad­mi­ra­tion of all fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

77:3.62. The next largest fac­tion wanted the tower de­signed to com­mem­o­rate the Dil­mun cul­ture. They fore­saw that Bablot would be­come a great cen­ter of com­merce, art, and man­u­fac­ture.

77:3.73. The small­est and mi­nor­ity con­tin­gent held that the erec­tion of the tower pre­sented an op­por­tu­nity for mak­ing atone­ment for the folly of their pro­gen­i­tors in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Cali­gas­tia re­bel­lion. They main­tained that the tower should be de­voted to the wor­ship of the Fa­ther of all, that the whole pur­pose of the new city should be to take the place of Dala­ma­tia—to func­tion as the cul­tural and re­li­gious cen­ter for the sur­round­ing bar­bar­ians.

77:3.8The re­li­gious group were promptly voted down. The ma­jor­ity re­jected the teach­ing that their an­ces­tors had been guilty of re­bel­lion; they re­sented such a racial stigma. Hav­ing dis­posed of one of the three an­gles to the dis­pute and fail­ing to set­tle the other two by de­bate, they fell to fight­ing. The re­li­gion­ists, the non­com­bat­ants, fled to their homes in the south, while their fel­lows fought un­til well-nigh oblit­er­ated.

77:3.9About twelve thou­sand years ago a sec­ond at­tempt to erect the tower of Ba­bel was made. The mixed races of the And­ites (Nod­ites and Adamites) un­der­took to raise a new tem­ple on the ru­ins of the first struc­ture, but there was not suf­fi­cient sup­port for the en­ter­prise; it fell of its own pre­ten­tious weight. This re­gion was long known as the land of Ba­bel.