The Tower of Babel: The Legend That Was Born from Etemenanki of Babylon

2025-02-13 16:50:11 / MISTERE&KURIOZITETE ALFA PRESS

According to the biblical account, it was Babel (identified with the city of Babylon, in Mesopotamia, although some modern scholars disagree) where people began to no longer understand each other. In fact, in that case, it was not the fault of people, but everything happened as a result of the will of God.

“The whole earth had one language and the same words. (…) Then the people said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top may reach to heaven, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people were building, and he said, “Look! They are one people, and they all speak one language; this is the beginning of their work, and now what they plan to do will not be impossible. So let us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand each other’s speech.”

So according to God's will, people interrupted the great project, and scattered throughout the Earth. But the Tower of Babel is mentioned not only by the Bible. An ancient Sumerian poem also speaks of it, while later the Greek historian Herodotus, and after him the writers of the Roman era.

The biblical account was almost certainly inspired by the largest and most important ziqqurat (building) of Babylon, called the Etemenanki, a gigantic structure built by the Babylonians precisely to reach the sky.

From below, the Etemenanki might have looked like a staircase climbing through the clouds, leading to Heaven. It was at least 91 meters high (for comparison, the Piacentini Tower in Genoa is 108 meters high, and was the tallest inhabited building in Italy during the years 1940-1954).

Approaching the Gods was the main purpose of its construction. The Babylonians built it in a place they considered to be the exact center of the Universe. The place where the God Marduk had created the world. Only from there could heaven and earth enter into communication.

How? By building a staircase that was very high. The possibility of communication with God, or perhaps the aspiration towards infinity, is undoubtedly a need felt since ancient times. According to some sources, it was the ruler Hammurabi, who initiated the construction of the great zigzag in the 2nd millennium BC.

Then, the great step pyramid was destroyed and rebuilt several times. The top floor of Etemenanki was divided into several luxurious bedrooms intended for the Gods, each named after the deity for which it was intended, and all luxuriously furnished with comfortable sofas and very expensive beds.

One was for Marduk and his wife Sarpanitum, another chamber for Nabu and his wife Tashmetu. And then there were other chambers for the Gods of Water, Light, and the Sun. They were never used by humans, as they were intended for the Gods, who used them for their holidays, or so the Babylonian priests claimed.

Even higher up was a temple, with a central chamber used for sacred weddings: inside there was only a couch and a table, all made of gold. Only a woman, chosen by Marduk himself, could attend the wedding.

It was the priests who informed one of the women of Babylon of the attention that God had paid to her. The chosen one would ascend to the temple, close to heaven, and await Marduk. No one can say what happened up there, in the clouds, but when she returned to earth, the chosen one was certain that she had made love to God.

The construction of Etemenanki was a huge undertaking, rebuilt several times after it collapsed several times. Alexander the Great, who was amazed by the beauty of Babylon, leveled the ziggurat, which must have already been destroyed, with the promise of rebuilding it. He did not have time, as he died in Babylon at the age of 33.

Thus, for two millennia, the relics of the ziqqurat remained buried, while the Tower of Babel was now just a legend about the wrath of God and the arrogance of people. Then, archaeologists discovered the base of the Tower, a square measuring 91x91 meters, located in the center of an area of 500 meters, exactly as the ancients described it. Today, only a few clay bricks physically exist underground. But the myth of the creation of the world's different languages, and the distribution of people on Earth, will remain alive in eternity./ Bota.al