![]() Bezold, "Ninive und Babylon", 128 Jeremias, "Das alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients", 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1906, 286 Kaulen, "Assyrien und Babylonien", 89).Ī more probable reference to the Tower of Babel we find in the "History" of Berosus as it is handed down to us in two variations by Abydenus and Alexander Polyhistor respectively ("Histor. 15 Nikel, "Genesis und Keilschriftforschung", 188 sqq. ![]() "The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia", I, pl. Oppert finds an allusion to the Tower of Babel in a text of Nabuchodonosor but this opinion is hardly more than a theory (cf. Delitzch pointed out that the translation of the precise words which determine the meaning of the text is most uncertain (Smith-Delitzsch. Authorities like George Smith, Chad Boscawen, and Sayce believed they had discovered a reference to the Tower of Babel but Fr. Thus far no Babylonian document has been discovered which refers clearly to the subject. This is the Biblical account of the Tower of Babel. As their growing number forced them to live in localities more and more distant from their patriarchal homes, "they said: Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands." The work was soon fairly under way "and they had brick instead of stones, and slime (asphalt) instead of mortar." But God confounded their tongue, so that they did not understand one another's speech, and thus scattered them from that place into all lands, and they ceased to build the city. The descendants of Noah had migrated from the "east" ( Armenia) first southward, along the course of the Tigris, then westward across the Tigris into "a plain in the land of Sennar". ![]() The "Tower of Babel" is the name of the building mentioned in Genesis 11:9. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more all for only $19.99. This story features a ‘confusion of tongues’ as well as the construction of temples at Eridu and Uruk, so parallels have been drawn between it and the Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis.Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta is a Sumerian text from around four thousand years ago, describing the conflicts between Enmerkar, king of Uruk, and the king of Aratta. Although it was barely 325 feet in height, this still made it the tallest structure in southwestern Asia, and it would retain that record for many centuries afterwards.Īnd curiously enough, the Tower of Babel story may well have grown out of an earlier Sumerian myth, much as the account of Noah and the Great Flood finds a precursor in the Epic of Gilgamesh. ![]() A tower in Babel was eventually completed, by Nebuchadnezzar. It remained half-finished for centuries, so it may well have served as the real-life inspiration for the mythic Tower of Babel. Such a structure is known as a ziggurat: a pyramidal tower.Ī Sumerian king began building a ziggurat in Babel, but this was left unfinished, perhaps because the Sumerians were too busy fending off the Akkadians. As Isaac Asimov notes in Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: The Old Testament by Isaac Asimov, temples to the gods in these cities took the form of stepped pyramids which were ascended by inclined planes around the outside. ![]() Babylonia, the considerable region around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, was named for Babylon, which was itself the Greek version of Babel.īabel (or Babylon) did indeed have a real, historical tower, but then that needn’t surprise us, since most Sumerian and Babylonian cities boasted one. If its name sounds unfamiliar to us now, except in connection with the biblical Tower of Babel story, that’s because we know it better under its Greek name, which was Babylon. The sixth king of the Amorite dynasty was Hammurabi, who is remembered now for the code that bears his name: a long legal document which, among other things, contains one of the first references to the presumption of innocence until a person is proved guilty.įor the next two thousand years, Babel changed hands but remained an important city. Then, around 1900 BC, a group called the Amorites made Babel their capital, and it was transformed into a large metropolis. ![]()
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