Genesis 11:3 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And they said one to another, &c.— United in language and sentiment, they agreed to provide proper materials, and so to build a city, which might be a more certain habitation than moveable tents, which might also unite them under one government and polity, and give them strength and celebrity. The materials they provided, were brick instead of stone, and for mortar or cement they had slime, bitumen, a kind of liquid pitch, which sometimes is gathered under ground in brittle masses of a fat, inflammable substance, and sometimes like the glutinous matter or pitch which distils from the pine-tree; though generally bitumen boils up out of the earth, and swims on the surface of the water like a black oil or scum, which thickens to a consistence after having been exposed a little while to the air: and in that form it is found in certain springs, of which there are many in Assyria. Several authors describe the walls of Babylon to have been built of such materials as are here mentioned. Coctilibus muris cinxisse Semiramis urbem, says Ovid, Met. iv. 57. "surrounded Babylon with walls of brick." And Herodotus says, the walls were cemented with asphaltus, or the pitch above described.