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Tower of Babel (ancient Bablylon)

 

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The Tower of Babel stood for mankind attempting  to become equal with God.  The people attempted to build a temple into heaven.  God did not like the direction He saw man headed in, so He made them speak in different languages. This led to a dispersion of mankind across the Earth.  The "tower of Babel" is only mentioned once in Scripture:
 
(Genesis 11:4,5), and then as incomplete. It was built of bricks, and the "slime" used for mortar was probably bitumen. Many scholars believe the the building was destroyed soon after its erection.  Even after the Tower had been crumbling for many years, the Greek historian Herodotus visited it and was very impressed. Herodotus was a Greek Historian who lived between 484 - c.424 BC.


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Herodotus wrote in 440 B.C.
"It has a solid central tower, one furlong square, with a second erected on top of it and then a third, and so on up to eight. All eight towers can be climbed by a spiral way running around the outside, and about halfway up there are seats for those who make the journey to rest on."  

Read what Herodotus wrote about his Babylon visit here
Tower of Babel-Ancient Babylon Ruins Inscription

Modern day Tower of Babel ruins (on the outskirts of ancient Babylon-current day Iraq) are currently 150 feet above the plain with a circumference of 2300 feet. "The Greeks used the word Borsippa, which means Tongue-tower." 1

Inscription of King Nebuchadnezzar on Tower of Babel (Borsippa) ruins reads:

I have completed its magnificence with silver, gold, other metals, stone, enameled bricks, fir and pine.

The first which is the house of the earth’s base,

the most ancient monument of Babylon;

I built and finished it.

I have highly exalted its head with bricks covered with copper.

We say for the other, that is, this edifice, the house of the seven lights of the earth, the most ancient monument of Borsippa.

A former king built it, (they reckon 42 ages) but he did not

complete its head.

Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without

order expressing their words.

Since that time the earthquake and the thunder had dispersed

the sun-dried clay.

The bricks of the casing had been split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps. Merodach, the great god, excited my mind to repair this building.

I did not change the site nor did I take away the foundation.

In a fortunate month, in an auspicious day,

I undertook to build porticoes around the crude brick masses,

and the casing of burnt bricks.

I adapted the circuits, I put the inscription of my name in the Kitir of the portico.

I set my hand to finish it. And to exalt its head.

As it had been in ancient days, so I exalted its summit.

Reference:
The Tower of Babel-Ancient Babylon Ruins Inscription inscription
is reported on Page 40 of Grant R. Jeffrey's very excellent book
"The Signature of God/The Handwriting of God". 

 

In addition, Mr. William Loftus translated this fascinating
inscription in his book, "Travels and Researches in
Chaldea and Sinai (London: James Nisbet, 1857),
page 29.
 
Tower of Babel-Genesis 11:1-9

1. Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3. They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

5. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6. The Lord said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

8. So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9. That is why it was called Babel--because the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

New International Version

 

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