flâneur

Library of Babylon by Ted Chiang

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Bibliographic record and links to related information available from the Library of Congress catalog Copyrighted sample text provided by the publisher and used with permission. May be incomplete or contain other coding.

Tower of Babylon Were the tower to be laid down across the plain of Shinar, it would be two days’ journey to walk from one end to the other. While the tower stands, it takes a full month and a half to climb from its base to its summit, if a man walks unburdened. But few men climb the tower with empty hands; the pace of most men is slowed by the cart of bricks that they pull behind them. Four months pass between the day a brick is loaded onto a cart, and the day it is taken off to form a part of the tower. * * * Hillalum had spent all his life in Elam, and knew Babylon only as a buyer of…

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