Belus (Babylonian)

Belus or Belos (Ancient Greek: Βῆλος, Belos) in classical Greek or classical Latin texts (and later material based on them) in a Babylonian context refers to the Babylonian god Bel Marduk.

Eusebius of Caesarea (Praeparatio Evangelica 9.18) cites Artabanus as stating in his Jewish History that Artabanus found in anonymous works that giants who had been dwelling in Babylonia were destroyed by the gods for impiety, but one of them named Belus escaped and settled in Babylon and lived in the tower which he built and named the Tower of Belus.

A little later Eusebius (9.41) cites Abydenus' Concerning the Assyrians for the information that the site of Babylon:[1]... was originally water, and called a sea.

But Belus put an end to this, and assigned a district to each, and surrounded Babylon with a wall; and at the appointed time he disappeared.This seems to be a rationalized version of Marduk's defeat of Tiamat in the Enuma Elish[citation needed] followed here by Belus becoming a god.

Diodorus also relates (17.112.3) how the Chaldean of Babylon requested Alexander the Great to restore the "Tomb of Belus" which had been demolished by the Persians.