Tradition says that once all people spoke the same language. Once they dared to build a tower as high as the heavens, and were punished. The Lord mixed the languages ​​so that people could no longer understand each other. As a result, the tower collapsed.

Archaeologists have found the first evidence of the existence of the Tower of Babel, the first material evidence of the existence of the Tower of Babel has been discovered - an ancient tablet dating back to the 6th century BC. The plate depicts the tower itself and the ruler of Mesopotamia, Nebuchadnezzar II.

The memorial plaque was found almost 100 years ago, but only now scientists have begun to study it. The find became an important proof of the existence of the tower, which, according to biblical history, caused the appearance of different languages ​​on earth.

Scientists suggest that the construction of the biblical tower was started near Nabopolassar during the reign of King Hammural (about 1792-1750 BC). However, the construction was completed only 43 years later, during the time of Nebuchadnezzar (604-562 BC).

Scientists report that the content of the ancient tablet largely coincides with the biblical story. In this regard, the question arose - if the tower actually existed, then how true is the story of the wrath of God, which deprived people of a common language.

Perhaps someday an answer will be found to this question.
Inside the legendary city of Babylon in present-day Iraq are the remains of a huge structure, and ancient records suggest it was tower of babel. For scholars, the tablet offers further evidence that the Tower of Babel was not just a work of fiction. It was a real building in antiquity.

Biblical legend of the Tower of Babel

The biblical legend about how people wanted to build a tower to heaven, and for this they were punished in the form of a division of languages, is better to read in the biblical original:

1. The whole earth had one language and one dialect.
2 Moving out from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 And they said to one another, Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. And they became bricks instead of stones, and earthen tar instead of lime.
4 And they said, Let us build ourselves a city and a tower as high as the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of all the earth.
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men were building.
6 And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and they all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do;
7 Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other.
8 And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city [and the tower].
9 Therefore a name was given to her: Babylon, for there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over all the earth.

History, construction and description of the Etemenanki ziggurat

Babylon is known for many of its structures. One of the main personalities in the exaltation of this glorious ancient city is Nebuchadnezzar II. It was in his time that the walls of Babylon were built, hanging gardens Semiramis, Ishtar Gate and Procession Road. But this is just the tip of the iceberg - throughout the forty years of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar was engaged in the construction, restoration and decoration of Babylon. He left behind a large text about his work done. We will not dwell on all the points, but it is here that there is a mention of a ziggurat in the city.
This Tower of Babel, which, according to legend, could not be completed due to the fact that the builders began to speak different languages, has another name - Etemenanki, which means the House of the cornerstone of heaven and earth. Archaeologists during excavations were able to find a huge foundation of this building. It turned out to be a ziggurat typical of Mesopotamia (we can also read about the ziggurat in Ur), located at the main temple of Babylon Esagila.

For all the time, the tower was demolished and restored several times. For the first time, a ziggurat was built on this site before Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC), but before him it had already been dismantled. The legendary building itself appeared under King Nabupalassar, and his successor Nebuchadnezzar took over the final construction of the peak.

The huge ziggurat was built under the direction of the Assyrian architect Aradahdeshu. It consisted of seven tiers with a total height of about 100 meters. The diameter of the structure was about 90 meters.

At the top of the ziggurat was a shrine covered with traditional Babylonian glazed bricks. The sanctuary was dedicated to the main deity of Babylon - Marduk, and it was for him that a gilded bed and a table were installed here, and gilded horns were fixed at the top of the sanctuary.

At the base of the Tower of Babel in the Lower Temple was a statue of Marduk himself made of pure gold with a total weight of 2.5 tons. About 85 million bricks were used to build the Etemenanki ziggurat in Babylon. The tower stood out among all the buildings of the city and created the impression of power and grandeur. The inhabitants of this city sincerely believed in the descent of Marduk to their place on earth and even spoke about this to the famous Herodotus, who visited here in 458 BC (a century and a half after construction).
Image

From the top of the Tower of Babel, another was visible from the neighboring city - Euryminanki in Barsippa. It was the ruins of this tower that for a long time were attributed to the biblical. When Alexander the Great lived in the city, he offered to rebuild the majestic building anew, but his death in 323 BC left the building forever dismantled. In 275, Esagila was restored, but Etemenanki was not rebuilt. Only its foundation and the immortal mention in the texts remained a reminder of the former great building.

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Tower of Babel. Artist Pieter Brueghel.

Among the problems related to ancient history humanity, the question of the origin of language is one of the most fascinating and at the same time the most difficult questions. The authors of the initial chapters of the book of Genesis, who reflected here their primitive ideas about the origin of man, do not tell us anything about how, in their opinion, man acquired the most important of all the abilities that distinguish him from animals - the ability to articulate speech. On the contrary, they seem to have imagined that man possessed this priceless gift from the very beginning; moreover, the animals shared with him the said property, judging by the example of the serpent that spoke to the man in Eden. Nevertheless, the variety of languages ​​spoken by various peoples naturally attracted the attention of the ancient Jews, and the following legend was invented to explain this phenomenon.

The descendants of Noah descend to the plain. After the flood, all people spoke the same language, since they were the descendants of Noah alone. Over time, they decided to look for a land more suitable for life and descended from the mountains to a flat plain, which they called Shinar (scientists could not figure out the meaning of this ancient word). Shinar is located in the south of Mesopotamia - a country through which two great rivers flow south and flow into the Persian Gulf, the swift Tigris with steep banks and the Euphrates smoothly carrying its muddy waters. The ancient Greeks called this country Mesopotamia [from the words "meso" - between, and "potamos" - a river, hence our words Mesopotamia or Mesopotamia come from, and it is more correct to use the term "Mesopotamia", because we mean here not only the country between the Tigris and the Euphrates , but also the territories adjacent to these rivers from the west and east.

People are building the first city on earth and a tower. There was no stone in Mesopotamia, and people built their dwellings from clay. The fortress walls and other structures and structures were made of clay, dishes were made of clay, special tablets for writing were made of clay, which replaced books and notebooks for the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia.

For construction, bricks made of clay and air-dried were used [such a brick is called raw brick]. But somehow they noticed that a brick that fell into the fire acquires the strength of a stone. The Bible tells how people, having learned how to make burnt bricks, decided to build the first city on earth, and in it - a huge tower (pillar), which with its top would reach the sky [let's not forget that the creators of the Bible considered the sky to be solid]. Their purpose was to glorify their name, as well as to prevent the possibility of scattering people all over the earth: if someone happens to leave the city and go astray among the boundless plain, then if the tower is to the west of it, he will see in the distance on against the clear background of the evening sky, its huge dark silhouette, and if it is to the east of the traveler, its top, illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun; this will help the traveler to choose the right direction; the tower will serve as a milestone for him and show him the way back to the house.

The plan was good, but people did not take into account the jealous suspicion and omnipotence of the deity.
The builders got together, and the work began to boil: some sculpted bricks, others fired them, others brought bricks to the construction site, the fourth built the floors of the tower, which rose higher and higher. The tower was not built for a year or two. It took thirty-five million bricks alone! And I also had to build houses for myself, so that there was a place to relax after work, and bushes and trees were planted near the houses so that the birds had a place to sing.
And on the mountain every day, higher and higher, by ledges, a beautiful tower rose; wide at the bottom, narrower and narrower at the top. And each ledge of this tower was painted in a different color; black, yellow, red, green, white, orange. The idea was to make the top blue, so that it was like the sky, and the roof - golden, so that it would sparkle like the sun!
To fasten the bricks together, they used natural asphalt, which in the Bible is called earthen tar [whole asphalt lakes were in the south of Mesopotamia in those places where oil came to the surface of the earth].
The tower has been under construction for many years. It finally reached such a height that a bricklayer with a burden on his back had to climb from the ground to the top for a whole year. If he fell to his death, then no one felt sorry for the man, but everyone wept when the brick fell, because it took at least a year to carry it back to the top of the tower. People worked so hard that the women who made bricks did not stop their work even during childbirth, and the newborn child was wrapped in cloth and tied to his body, continuing to sculpt clay bricks as if nothing had happened. Day and night, work was in full swing. From a dizzying height, people shot into the sky, and the arrows fell back, spattered with blood. Then they shouted: "We killed all the celestials."

And now the tower is almost ready. Blacksmiths are already forging gold for roofing, painters are dipping their brushes into buckets of blue paint.
God was seriously alarmed, lest people really climbed into heaven and did something in his own dwelling. He said to himself: “Here is one people, and one language for all; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they have decided to do.”
Finally, the patience of the god was exhausted. He turned to the seventy angels surrounding his throne and invited everyone to descend to earth and confuse the speech of people. No sooner said than done.
And then God sent a great storm to the earth. While the storm was raging, the wind carried away all the words that people used to say to each other.
Soon the storm subsided and the men got back to work. They did not yet know what trouble befell them. They no longer understand each other. Everyone quit their jobs, walk around as if lowered into the water and are looking for: who could understand them?
And people began to look closely: with whom they speak the same way, with those they tried to keep. And people dispersed to different ends of the earth, each with his own language, began to build their cities. And the tower began to fall apart little by little.

But people want to believe that brick fragments from the Tower of Babel can still be found in every city. Because many took them with them as a memory of those times when there was peace on earth and people understood each other.
And the city where the tower was built was called Babylon (“mixing”), since God mixed the languages ​​\u200b\u200bthere ...

After millennia, archaeologists came to the deserted, sandy plain. They dug up the hills under which lay the ruins of Babylon, one of the most famous cities of antiquity, and found out that the Tower of Babel really existed, and not alone. Stepped towers, which were called ziggurats, were built by the inhabitants of Mesopotamia in honor of local gods. The name of the chief god of Babylon is Marduk. His temple was at the top of the tower, and the Babylonians believed that once a year the god spent the night in his temple. The tower itself was called Esagila in ancient times. Until now, the hill where she was is called Babil (derived from "Babylon"). The word "Babylon" actually comes from the ancient "Bab-Ili", which means "gate of God".
The opinions of scientists differ: which of these ancient structures should be recognized
"Tower of Babel"? Local and Jewish traditions identify the legendary
the tower with the ruins of "Birs-Nimrud" in Borsippa. From found in that place
inscriptions, we learn that the ancient Babylonian king, who began construction
temple-tower in Borsippa, did not complete this structure, which remains
without a roof. It is possible that this huge unfinished temple served as a pretext for
origin of the legend of the Tower of Babel. However, in ancient Babylonia there were many other similar temple-towers, the legend that interests us may be related to any of them.
When did the construction of the Tower of Babel begin?

There are few legends in the Christian world more famous than the story of the Babylonian Pandemic. The Bible (Genesis 11:1-9) puts it this way:
“The whole earth had one language and one dialect. Moving from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. And they became bricks instead of stones, and earthen tar instead of lime. And they said, Let us build ourselves a city and a tower as high as the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of all the earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men were building. And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do; Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other. And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore the name was given to her: Babylon, for there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over all the earth.
What is Shinar, where the proud decided to build a colossus? So the Bible calls the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates in ancient times. He is Sumer, geographically - modern Iraq.
The events described take place between the Flood and the migration of Abraham from Mesopotamia to Palestine. Biblical scholars (biblical believers) date the life of Abraham to the beginning of the second millennium BC. Therefore, the Babylonian Mixing in the literal biblical version takes place somewhere in the third millennium BC, several generations before Abraham (the reality of the character is not the topic of this article).
Josephus supports this version: post-Flood people do not want to depend on the gods and build a tower to heaven. The gods are angry - a mixture of languages, the cessation of construction.
We already have something: the tower was built in Sumer in the III millennium BC. However, the Bible alone is not enough for historians, so let's listen to the inhabitants of Mesopotamia themselves:
“By this time, Marduk commanded me to erect the Tower of Babel, which had been weakened before me and brought to a fall, to erect, setting its foundation on the chest of the underworld, and its top so that it went into the skies,” writes the Babylonian king Nabopolassar.

“I had a hand in building the top of the Etemenanka so that it could compete with the sky,” writes his son, Nebuchadnezzar.
In 1899, the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey, exploring the desert hills 100 kilometers south of Baghdad, discovers the ruins of a forgotten Babylon. Koldevey will excavate this city for the next 15 years of his life. And he will confirm two legends: about the Gardens of Babylon and about the Tower of Babel.
Koldewey discovered the square base of the Etemenanki temple, 90 meters wide. The words of the kings cited above were found precisely during these excavations on the cuneiform clay tablets of Babylon. Every Big city Babylon was supposed to have a ziggurat (pyramid-temple). The Temple of Etemenanki (“Temple of the Cornerstone of Heaven and Earth”) had 7 tiers, painted in different colors. Each tier functioned as a temple to some deity. The pyramid was crowned with a golden statue of Marduk, the supreme god of the Babylonians. The height of Etemenanka was 91 meters. When compared with the pyramid of Cheops (142 meters), this is a rather impressive structure. To ancient people, the pyramid seemed like a stairway to heaven. And this "ladder" was built from baked clay bricks, as it is written in the Bible.

Now let's join the data. How did the temple of Etemenanki get into the Bible?
Nebuchadnezzar II at the beginning of the VI century BC destroyed the kingdom of Judah and resettled its population in Babylon. There are Jews who by that time had not yet completed the formation Old Testament, and saw the ziggurats that struck their imagination. And the dilapidated or unfinished temple of Etemenanki. It is most likely that Nebuchadnezzar used the captives to restore the cultural monuments of his ancestors and build new ones. There, a version of the slaves appeared (“balal” - “mixing” in Hebrew). After all, the Jews had never encountered such multilingualism before. But on mother tongue"Babylon" meant "God's Gate". There, a version appeared that God once destroyed this tower. The ancient Jews, as it were, are trying, through myth, to condemn construction work involving slaves. Where the Babylonians wanted to get closer to the gods, the Jews saw sacrilege.
Herodotus describes the Tower of Babel as having 8 tiers, 180 meters at the base. It is quite possible that under our ziggurat there is another missing tier. In addition, there is indirect evidence that the temple of Etemenanki already stood under King Hammurabi (XVIII century BC). And yet, when the construction began, it is still not known for certain.

There are many peoples who have tried to explain the diversity of the human race without any connection with the construction of the Tower of Babel or other similar buildings. So, for example, the Greeks had a legend that in ancient times people lived in peace, had neither cities nor laws, they all spoke the same language and were ruled by one god Zeus. Subsequently, Hermes introduced various dialects and divided humanity into separate peoples. Then for the first time there were strife among mortals, and Zeus, tired of their strife, refused to rule them and transferred his dominion into the hands of the Argive hero Phoroneus, the first king on earth.
Wa-sena tribe (in East Africa) tells that once all the peoples of the earth knew only one language, but once during a severe famine, people went crazy and scattered to all ends of the earth, mumbling incomprehensible words; Since then, various human dialects have arisen.
The Tlingit of Alaska explain the existence of various dialects by the legend of the great flood, borrowed, apparently, from Christian missionaries or merchants. The Quiche tribe, living in Guatemala, had a legend about that primitive time when all people lived together, spoke only one language, did not worship Trees and stones, and sacredly kept in memory the words "the creator, the heart of heaven and earth." But over time, the tribes multiplied and, leaving their old homeland, gathered in one place called Tulan. Here, according to legend, broke up human language, various adverbs arose; people stopped understanding other people's speech and scattered around the world in search of a new homeland.
Many legends that try to explain the diversity of languages ​​do not mention the Tower of Babel at all and therefore, with the possible exception of the Tlingit legend, can be recognized as completely independent attempts of the human mind to solve such a difficult problem.

http://shkolazhizni.ru/archive/0/n-19863/
Nickname: Prim Palver

In the Bible, the history of construction Tower of Babel served as a parable about the perniciousness of excessive pride. God punished the same-language descendants of Noah who wanted to reach heaven by making them speak different languages. The builders lost the ability to understand each other, quarreled, and the tower was never completed. But is it really so?

Tower of Babel in the artist's fantasy

Let's start with the fact that historians now have no doubt: Babylon actually existed. It was one of the greatest and most powerful ancient cities. It was located in Mesopotamia, southwest of present-day Baghdad. Its name (Bab-Eloi) is translated as "Gate of God". The population of the city was over a million people. From the 19th to the 6th century BC This city was the capital of Babylonia.

One of the greatest rulers of the Babylonian Empire was the Chaldean king Nebuchadnezzar II (according to the Babylonian pronunciation - Nabu-Kudur-Utzur). He ruled in Babylonia from 605 to 562 BC. He rebuilt Babylon, destroyed by numerous raids of warlike neighbors, laid canals, dug lakes and reservoirs, founded several cities. He died in Babylon in 562 BC.

Under him, the Tower of Babel was built. It was a ziggurat, the temple of the god Marduk, and outwardly looked like a seven-step pyramid 90 meters high. It is known that Alexander the Great, who conquered Babylon, saw its ruins. He ordered the demolition of the remains of the "tower" in order to rebuild the main sanctuary of his empire on this site.

For which he seems to have paid the price. There is a legend that all the conquerors who destroyed Babylon and stole the golden statue of Marduk from the temple died a violent death. The great commander did not escape this fate. Death overtook him at the age of just over 30, shortly after the remains of the ziggurat were dismantled on his orders.

Ziggurat at Ur

Such legends can be treated differently, but many researchers believe that such curses can work. We will not argue with them, but only say that the Tower of Babel was not the only one of its kind.

In Mesopotamia, along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, on the fertile plain of Mesopotamia, flourishing states began to emerge about 5500 years ago. Among them were Sumer and Akkad, inhabited by warlike and inventive peoples who created the world's first writing system and began to build impressive stepped stone structures tens of meters high. Each such tower served as a sanctuary for a local god with a temple at the top - as if a landing pad for his travels from heaven to earth.

The largest was the ziggurat of Etemenanki on the banks of the Euphrates in Babylon, the capital of Nebuchadnezzar II (630-562 BC). Almost certainly this was the prototype of the Tower of Babel.

The word "etemenanki" is translated as "a house that connects earth and sky." The Bible derives the name Babylon from the Hebrew word "babel" - "mess". But in fact, we are talking about the local phrase "Bab-Ilu" - "the gates of God."

So, perhaps the very idea of ​​a confusion of languages ​​that prevented the construction of the tower - appeared as a result of an incorrect linguistic interpretation, then beaten by the authors of the Old Testament.

The ziggurats were built of bricks, since there was not enough wood or suitable stone in Mesopotamia. This is also stated in the Bible: “And they said to one another, Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. And they became bricks instead of stones and asphalt instead of lime.

Asphalt is bitumen, a binder and roofing material imported from the Iranian highlands and widely used in the region. Archaeological data and chronicles say that many ziggurats were brightly painted and decorated with tiles and gilded sculptures. A Babylonian text describes Etemenanki as "shiny with blue glaze".

In total, about 30 ziggurats are known, built in different cities Mesopotamia in the period from 2200 to 500 BC. However, if Egyptian pyramids have hardly changed over the centuries, the Towers of Babel have not stood the test of time. And it is not so much nature that is to blame, but people.

They simply took the bricks to other buildings, and erosion did the rest. From Etemenanki only the contour of the stone foundation remained - covered with earth and overgrown with weeds.

Foundation of Etemenanki and its image on the tablet

However, during the era of its construction, Etemenanki was one of the greatest buildings in the world. Moreover, the pyramid was repeatedly rebuilt, the last time under Nebuchadnezzar II in the VI century BC. According to his testimonies and reviews of other Babylonian kings, the sides of the base of the tower were up to 90 m long, the height was the same. The surviving remains of the foundation confirm these dimensions.

According to ancient authors, at the top was a magnificent temple of the god Marduk with his golden statue, which, judging by its size, weighed more than 20 tons. Marduk was originally a local deity of Babylon. But when this city became the capital of the entire south of Mesopotamia, Marduk became the supreme god of the entire region. Hence its majesty.

However, even Marduk did not protect the ziggurat from destruction when, at the end of the 5th century BC. Babylonia became one of the provinces that captured it Persian power. In 331, Alexander the Great, who drove the Persians out of here, wanted to reconstruct Etemenanki in its former form. He razed the old building to the ground only because he was going to build a new tower in its place.

About 10,000 people were engaged in preparing the site for two months, but then the idea had to be abandoned. Alexander had more important things to do - it was necessary to continue the war with the restless Persians. After defeating the Persian army, Alexander returned to Babylon, but fell ill and died in 323.

Who has not heard the myth about the legendary Tower of Babel? People learn about this unfinished structure to the skies even in deep childhood. This name has become a household name. But not everyone knows what really exists. This is evidenced by the records of ancient and modern archaeological research.

Tower of Babel: real story

Babylon is known for many of its structures. One of the main personalities in the exaltation of this glorious ancient city is Nebuchadnezzar II. It was during his time that the walls of Babylon and the Procession Road were built.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg - throughout the forty years of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar was engaged in the construction, restoration and decoration of Babylon. He left behind a large text about his work done. We will not dwell on all the points, but it is here that there is a mention of the Etemenanki ziggurat in the city.

Video about the tower in Babylon:

This one, which, according to legend, could not be completed due to the fact that the builders began to speak different languages, has another name - Etemenanki, which in translation means the House of the cornerstone of heaven and earth. Archaeologists during excavations were able to find a huge foundation of this building. It turned out to be a ziggurat typical of Mesopotamia (we can also read about the ziggurat in Ur), located at the main temple of Babylon Esagila.

Tower of Babel: architectural features

For all the time, the tower was demolished and restored several times. For the first time, a ziggurat was built on this site before Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC), but before him it had already been dismantled. The Tower of Babel itself appeared under King Nabupalassar, and his successor Nebuchadnezzar took over the final construction of the peak.

The huge ziggurat of Etemenanki was built under the direction of the Assyrian architect Aradahdeshu. It consisted of seven tiers with a total height of about 100 meters. The diameter of the structure was about 90 meters.

At the top of the ziggurat was a shrine covered with traditional Babylonian glazed bricks. The sanctuary was dedicated to the main deity of Babylon - Marduk, and it was for him that a gilded bed and table were installed here, and gilded horns were fixed at the top of the sanctuary.

At the base of the Tower of Babel in the Lower Temple was a statue of Marduk himself made of pure gold with a total weight of 2.5 tons. The Tower of Babel was built with 85 million bricks. stood out among all the buildings of the city and created the impression of power and grandeur. The inhabitants of this city sincerely believed in the descent of Marduk to their place on earth and even spoke about this to the famous Herodotus, who visited here in 458 BC (a century and a half after construction).

From the top of the Tower of Babel, another from the neighboring city, Euriminanki in Barsippa, was also visible. It was the ruins of this tower that for a long time were attributed to the biblical. When Alexander the Great lived in the city, he offered to rebuild the majestic building anew, but his death in 323 BC left the building forever dismantled. Esagila was rebuilt in 275, but was not rebuilt. Only its foundation and the immortal mention in the texts remained a reminder of the former great building.

Tower of Babel: legend and real history

that adorned ancient city. According to legend, it reached the sky. However, the Gods were angry for the intention to get to heaven and punished people by giving them different languages. As a result, the construction of the tower was not completed.


The legend is best read in the biblical original:

1. The whole earth had one language and one dialect.

2 Moving out from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

3 And they said to one another, Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. And they became bricks instead of stones, and earthen tar instead of lime.

4 And they said, Let us build ourselves a city and a tower as high as the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of all the earth.

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men were building.

6 And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and they all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do;

7 Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other.

8 And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city [and the tower].

9 Therefore a name was given to her: Babylon, for there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over all the earth.

And now we are looking at photos and videos about the legendary building.
Tower of Babel photo:

Tower of Babel: Fiction or Truth?

There are few legends in Christendom more famous than the story of the Babylonian Pandemic.

The Bible (Genesis 11:1-9) puts it this way:

“The whole earth had one language and one dialect. Moving from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. And they became bricks instead of stones, and earthen tar instead of lime. And they said, Let us build ourselves a city and a tower as high as the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of all the earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men were building. And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do; Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other. And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore the name was given to her: Babylon, for there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over all the earth.

What is Shinar, where the proud decided to build a hulk? So the Bible calls the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates in ancient times. He is Sumer, geographically - modern Iraq.

According to Genesis, this is the time between the Flood and the migration of Abraham from Mesopotamia to Palestine. Biblical scholars (biblical believers) date the life of Abraham to the beginning of the second millennium BC. Therefore, the Babylonian Mixing in the literal biblical version takes place somewhere in the third millennium BC, several generations before Abraham (the reality of the character is not the topic of this article).

Josephus supports this version: post-Flood people do not want to depend on the gods, they build a tower to heaven, the gods are angry, the confusion of languages, the cessation of construction.

We already have something: it was built in Sumer in the III millennium BC. For historians, one Bible is not enough, so let's listen to the inhabitants of Mesopotamia themselves:

“By this time, Marduk commanded me to erect the Tower of Babel, which had been weakened before me and brought to a fall, to erect, setting its foundation on the chest of the underworld, and its top so that it went into the skies,” writes Nabopolassar.

“I had a hand in building the top of the Etemenanka so that it could compete with the sky,” writes his son, Nebuchadnezzar.

In 1899, the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey, exploring the desert hills 100 km south of Baghdad, discovers the ruins of a forgotten Babylon. Koldevey will dig it out for the next 15 years of his life. And he will confirm two legends: about the Gardens of Babylon and about the Tower of Babel.

Koldewey discovered the square base of the Etemenanki temple, 90 meters wide. The above words of the kings were found during the same excavations on cuneiform clay tablets of Babylon. Every big city in Babylon had to have a ziggurat (pyramid-temple). The Temple of Etemenanki (Temple of the Cornerstone of Heaven and Earth) had 7 tiers, painted in different colors. Each tier functioned as a temple to some deity. The pyramid was crowned with a golden statue of Marduk, the supreme god of the Babylonians. The height of Etemenanka was 91 meters. When compared with the pyramid of Cheops (142 meters) - a rather impressive structure. For ancient man gave the impression of a stairway to heaven. And this "ladder" was built from baked clay bricks, as it is written in the Bible.

Now let's join the data. How did the temple of Etemenanki get into the Bible?

Nebuchadnezzar II (Nebuchadnezzar II) at the beginning of the VI century BC destroyed the kingdom of Judah, resettling the population in Babylon. It was there that the Jews, who by that time had not yet completed the formation of the Old Testament, saw the ziggurats that struck their imagination. And the dilapidated or unfinished temple of Etemenanki. It is most likely that it was precisely the captives that Nebuchadnezzar used to restore cultural monument ancestors and building new ones. There, a version of the slaves appeared: "balal" - "mixing" (Old Hebrew). After all, the Jews had never encountered such multilingualism before. But in the native language "Babylon" meant "God's Gate". There, a version appeared that God once destroyed this tower. The ancient Jews, as it were, are trying, through myth, to condemn construction work involving slaves. Where the Babylonians wanted to get closer to the gods, the Jews saw sacrilege.

Herodotus describes the Tower of Babel as having 8 tiers, 180 meters at the base. It is quite possible that under our ziggurat there is another missing tier. In addition, there is indirect evidence that the Temple of Etemenanki stood already under Hammurabi (XVIII century BC). When the construction began is still unknown.