A Babel tower it was a construction mentioned in a mythical narrative found in the book of Genesis in the Bible. This myth has been used to explain the rise of humanity's linguistic diversity and the dispersal of humans across the Earth. Historians claim that the Tower of Babel was a ziggurat, being associated with an example built in Babylon.
Loginalso: Code of Hammurabi—important Babylonian law code
Topics of this article
- 1 - Summary about the Tower of Babel
- 2 - What was the Tower of Babel?
- 3 - Tower of Babel in history
Overview of the Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel was a myth narrated in the Bible, more specifically in Genesis.
This myth was used to explain the dispersion of human groups across the Earth and the wide existing linguistic variety.
Historians believe that the Tower of Babel was a ziggurat, a very common construction in mesopotamia.
Some historians believe that the Tower of Babel may have been the Etemenanki, built in Babylon.
What was the Tower of Babel?
The Tower of Babel was a
construction mentioned in Genesis, book of the Bible. This narrative is understood by historians as a myth and therefore not as a factual event. Historians consider this a mythfounder, that is, which is used to explain the origin of something. In the context of the myth, we can identify that the narrative seeks to give an origin to the linguistic variety of humanity and its dispersion across the Earth.The story begins with a group of people who decide, some time after the flood, to build a city, and in it, a tower that reached the heavens, with the intention of bringing fame to that city and, with that, avoiding the dispersion of men by Earth. It turns out that during construction, God decided to intervene.
Divine intervention took place when the disagreement between human beings was launched, and this happened because, suddenly, they no longer spoke the same language. The emergence of several languages caused the construction of the tower to be interrupted and forced the dispersion of humans across the Earth. The myth of the Tower of Babel can be found in Genesis 11:1-9.
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Tower of Babel in history
As mentioned, the story of the Tower of Babel is not understood as a fact, that is, as a concrete historical event. Historians consider this narrative a foundation myth of the Hebrews, as was common among different peoples of Aseniority.
The starting point when we talk about the Tower of Babel is that historians know that, if it existed, it was a ziggurat, very important construction in Mesopotamia. The ziggurat was a kind of palace developed by the sumerians, from 3000 a. C., and adopted by other Mesopotamian peoples.
Currently, through archeology, we are aware of the existence of dozens of ziggurats. The function of this construction is still the subject of studies among historians, who believe that it could centralize administration where it was built, but which would also have religious functions having temples inside.
These temples, of course, were built in honor of different gods (the peoples Mesopotamians were polytheists), and its construction in the ziggurat would fulfill the purpose of alienating the people of the temples. Finally, it is believed that the ziggurats would have a functioncosmological within Mesopotamian culture.
This is because the Mesopotamian peoples believed that the ziggurats were a place of connection between heaven and Earth. Historian Paul Kriwaczek, for example, asserted that the ziggurats for the Sumerians were designed to "allow the human scale and the divine scale to momentarily touch."|1|
Some historians claim that the Tower of Babel may have corresponded to Etemenanki, a ziggurat built in the city of Babylon, sometime between the 14th century BC. W. and the 9th century BC. W. It was built by the Babylonians in honor of Marduk, considered the creator god.
The Greek historian Herodotus described the Etemenanki as follows:
A tower of solid hewn stone, two hundred meters long and wide, on which a second tower rose, and on this, a third, and so on, until there were eight. The climb to the top is done from the outside, through a path that surrounds all the towers. About halfway up, there is a place for rest and seats, where people usually sit for a while on the way up to the summit. In the highest tower there is a spacious temple and, inside, a couch of unusual size, richly adorned, with a golden table beside it.|2|
the term It istemenanki was translated as "house that is the foundation of wit's me and da Tmiss”, and this construction was about 90 meters high, but it did not resist time. Its association with the Tower of Babel, however, is only a hypothesis raised by a group of historians.
Another curious fact is that the Sumerians had a myth with an episode similar to the Tower of Babel. This story was called Enmercar and the Lord of Arata, and in it the god Enki intervened by changing the language spoken by humans and, with that, causing a great misunderstanding between them.
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|1| KRIWACZEK, Paul. Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2018. P. 199.
|2| Same, p. 329.
By Daniel Neves
History teacher
Ancient Wars, Ancient World, Fertile Crescent, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Elamites, Tiglat Falasar III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Assaradon, Assur, Nineveh, Babylonian Empire, Empire Persian.
Get to know the Assyrian Civilization, made up of a Mesopotamian people who formed a great empire in the region until the 7th century BC. W.
Learn more about the Hittite Civilization, formed by an Indo-European people who conquered Anatolia in 1700 BC. W.
In this link you will have access to information about the peoples of Mesopotamia, from the settlement of the Sumerians in the region to the conquest of the Chaldeans.
Learn more about the first peoples that inhabited Mesopotamia: the Sumerians and the Akkadians.
