Did the Tower of Babel Really Exist?: A Have a look at the Archaeological Proof

For all of the technique of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and change we’ve estab­lished between the cul­tures of the world, no mat­ter how dis­tant they might be from one anoth­er, we nonetheless haven’t any tru­ly uni­ver­sal sin­gle human lan­guage. The rea­son may date again to antiq­ui­ty, once we first try­ed a grand col­lec­tive venture: that of construct­ing a tow­er that will attain the heav­ens. Deter­mined to pun­ish our effron­tery, God not solely destroyed the work in progress, however ren­dered our lan­guages mutu­al­ly unin­tel­li­gi­ble in an effort to hin­der any fur­ther makes an attempt to do it once more. Or at the very least that’s how one sto­ry goes.

It’s possible you’ll not sub­scribe to a lit­er­al learn­ing of the account of the Tow­er of Babel because it seems in the Bible’s E-book of Gen­e­sis, however accord­ing to the Hochela­ga video above, the struc­ture does have a good­ly plau­si­ble foundation in his­to­ry.

It could possibly be a leg­endary ver­sion of Ete­me­nan­ki, a Mesopotami­an zig­gu­rat constructed to hon­or the god Mar­duk at such a scale that it impressed tall tales, because it have been, unfold far and huge within the historical world, such because the rumor that its con­struc­tion required mobi­liz­ing the person­pow­er of all human­i­ty. Nevertheless it actual­ly did exist, as evi­denced by its ruins dis­cov­ered on the website of the traditional metropolis of Child­lon — which, in Hebrew, was referred to as Babel.

A cuneiform-cov­ered pill con­ve­nient­ly discovered on the identical loca­tion describes a con­struc­tion venture of Ete­me­nanki’s measurement as utilizing mate­ri­als like bitu­males and baked brick, which aligns with bib­li­cal particulars of the Tow­er of Babel, as do the Greek his­to­ri­an Herodotus’s ref­er­ences to its lay­out and struc­ture. Additionally rel­e­vant is the Child­lo­ni­ans’ 587 BC inva­sion of Jerusalem, which introduced cap­tives to the cap­i­tal. It’s onerous­ly impos­si­ble that a few of these dis­positioned Jews would have the loom­ing Ete­me­nan­ki in thoughts after they went on to jot down the his­to­ries that will ulti­mate­ly discover their manner into the Hebrew Bible. They might have had no hope of return­ing to their dwelling­land, however they need to, at the very least, have felt rea­son­ably cer­tain that Mar­duk’s days have been num­bered.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Map of All of the Coun­tries Males­tioned within the Bible: What The Coun­tries Have been Referred to as Then, and Now

Lit­er­ary Crit­ic Northrop Frye Educate­es “The Bible and Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture”: All 25 Lec­tures Free On-line

A Sur­vival Information to the Bib­li­cal Apoc­a­lypse

Isaac Asimov’s Information to the Bible: A Wit­ty, Eru­dite Atheist’s Information to the World’s Most Well-known E-book

Did Psy­che­del­ic Mush­rooms Seem in Medieval Chris­t­ian Artwork?: A Video Essay

Vis­it the On-line Library of Babel: New Net Website Turns Borges’ “Library of Babel” Right into a Vir­tu­al Actual­i­ty

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly referred to as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.