Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)

The Tower of Babel (Hebrew: ‫ ִמ ְג ַדּל ָבּ ֶבל‬, Migdal

Bāḇēl) as told in Genesis 11:1-9 is an origin myth meant
to explain why the world's peoples speak different
languages.[1][2][3][4]

According to the story, a united humanity in the

generations following the Great Flood, speaking a
single language and migrating eastward, comes to the
land of Shinar (‫) ִשׁנְ ָער‬. There they agree to build a
city and a tower tall enough to reach heaven. God,
observing their city and tower, confounds their
speech so that they can no longer understand each
other, and scatters them around the world.

Some modern scholars have associated the Tower of

Babel with known structures, notably the Etemenanki,
a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god
Marduk by Nabopolassar, the king of Babylonia circa
610 BCE.[5][6] The Great Ziggurat of Babylon was 91
metres (300 ft) in height. Alexander the Great ordered
it to be demolished circa 331 BCE in preparation for a
reconstruction that his death forestalled.[7][8] A
Sumerian story with some similar elements is told in
Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.[9]

Biblical narrative

German Late Medieval (c. 1370s) depiction of the construction of

the tower.

1 And the whole earth was of one

language, and of one speech.
2 And it came to pass, as they
journeyed from the east, that they
found a plain in the land of
Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3 And they said one to another,
Go to, let us make brick, and burn
them throughly. And they had
brick for stone, and slime had
they for morter.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build
us a city and a tower, whose top
may reach unto heaven; and let
us make us a name, lest we be
scattered abroad upon the face of
the whole earth.
5 And the LORD came down to see
the city and the tower, which the
children of men builded.
6 And the LORD said, Behold, the
people is one, and they have all
one language; and this they begin
to do: and now nothing will be
restrained from them, which they
have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there
confound their language, that
they may not understand one
another's speech.
8 So the LORD scattered them
abroad from thence upon the face
of all the earth: and they left off to
build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it

called Babel; because the LORD
did there confound the language
of all the earth: and from thence
did the LORD scatter them abroad
upon the face of all the earth.
 — Genesis 11:1–9[10]

Etymology
The phrase "Tower of Babel" does not appear in the
Bible; it is always "the city and the tower" (‫ה ִעיר‬-‫ת‬
ָ ‫ֶא‬
‫ה ִמּ ְג ָדּל‬-‫ת‬
ַ ‫ )וְ ֶא‬or just "the city" (‫) ָה ִעיר‬. The
original derivation of the name Babel (also the Hebrew
name for Babylon) is uncertain, but it may come from
bab-ilum, meaning "gate of God."[11] According to the
Bible, the city received the name "Babel" from the
Hebrew word balal, meaning to jumble or to
confuse.[12][13]

Composition
Genre

The narrative of the tower of Babel (Genesis 11.1–9) is

an etiology or explanation of a phenomenon.
Etiologies are narratives that explain the origin of a
custom, ritual, geographical feature, name, or other
phenomenon.[14]:426 The story of the Tower of Babel
explains the origins of the multiplicity of languages.
God was concerned that humans had blasphemed by
building the tower to avoid a second flood so God
brought into existence multiple languages.[14]:51 Thus,
humans were divided into linguistic groups, unable to
understand one another.

Themes
The story's theme of competition between God and
humans appears elsewhere in Genesis, in the story of
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.[15] The 1st-
century Jewish interpretation found in Flavius
Josephus explains the construction of the tower as a
hubristic act of defiance against God ordered by the
arrogant tyrant Nimrod. There have, however, been
some contemporary challenges to this classical
interpretation, with emphasis placed on the explicit
motive of cultural and linguistic homogeneity
mentioned in the narrative (v. 1, 4, 6).[16] This reading
of the text sees God's actions not as a punishment for
pride, but as an etiology of cultural differences,
presenting Babel as the cradle of civilization.

Authorship and source criticism

Tradition attributes the whole of the Pentateuch to
Moses; however, in the late 19th century, the
documentary hypothesis was proposed by Julius
Wellhausen.[17] This hypothesis proposes four sources:
J, E, P and D. Of these hypothetical sources,
proponents suggest that this narrative comes from
the J or Yahwist source. The etiological nature of the
narrative is considered typical of J. In addition, the
intentional word play regarding the city of Babel, and
the noise of the people's "babbling" is found in the
Hebrew words as easily as in English, and is considered
typical of the Yahwist source.[14]:51

Comparable myths
Sumerian and Assyrian parallel
There is a Sumerian myth similar to that of the Tower
of Babel, called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta,[9]
where Enmerkar of Uruk is building a massive ziggurat
in Eridu and demands a tribute of precious materials
from Aratta for its construction, at one point reciting
an incantation imploring the god Enki to restore (or in
Kramer's translation, to disrupt) the linguistic unity of
the inhabited regions — named as Shubur, Hamazi,
Sumer, Uri-ki (Akkad), and the Martu land, "the whole
universe, the well-guarded people — may they all
address Enlil together in a single language."[18]

In addition, a further Assyrian myth, dating from the

8th century BC during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-
605 BC) bears a number of similarities to the later
written Biblical story.[19]

Mexico

Various traditions similar to that of the tower of

Babel are found in Central America. Some writers
connected the Great Pyramid of Cholula to the Tower
of Babel. The Dominican friar Diego Durán (1537–1588)
reported hearing an account about the pyramid from a
hundred-year-old priest at Cholula, shortly after the
conquest of Mexico. He wrote that he was told when
the light of the sun first appeared upon the land, giants
appeared and set off in search of the sun. Not finding
it, they built a tower to reach the sky. An angered
Lord of the Heavens called upon the inhabitants of the
sky, who destroyed the tower and scattered its
inhabitants. The story was not related to either a
flood or the confusion of languages, although Frazer
connects its construction and the scattering of the
giants with the Tower of Babel.[20]

Another story, attributed by the native historian

Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl (c. 1565–1648) to
the ancient Toltecs, states that after men had
multiplied following a great deluge, they erected a tall
zacuali or tower, to preserve themselves in the event
of a second deluge. However, their languages were
confounded and they went to separate parts of the
earth.

Arizona
Still another story, attributed to the Tohono O'odham
people, holds that Montezuma escaped a great flood,
then became wicked and attempted to build a house
reaching to heaven, but the Great Spirit destroyed it
with thunderbolts.[21][22]

Nepal

Traces of a somewhat similar story have also been

reported among the Tharu of Nepal and northern
India.[23]

Africa

According to David Livingstone, the Africans whom he

met living near Lake Ngami in 1849 had such a
tradition, but with the builders' heads getting "cracked
by the fall of the scaffolding" (Missionary Travels,
chap. 26).

Other traditions

In his 1918 book, Folklore in the Old Testament,

Scottish social anthropologist Sir James George
Frazer documented similarities between Old
Testament stories, such as the Flood, and indigenous
legends around the world. He identified Livingston's
account with a tale found in Lozi mythology, wherein
the wicked men build a tower of masts to pursue the
Creator-God, Nyambe, who has fled to Heaven on a
spider-web, but the men perish when the masts
collapse. He further relates similar tales of the Ashanti
that substitute a pile of porridge pestles for the
masts. Frazer moreover cites such legends found
among the Kongo people, as well as in Tanzania, where
the men stack poles or trees in a failed attempt to
reach the moon.[20] He further cited the Karbi and Kuki
people of Assam as having a similar story. The
traditions of the Karen people of Myanmar, which
Frazer considered to show clear 'Abrahamic' influence,
also relate that their ancestors migrated there
following the abandonment of a great pagoda in the
land of the Karenni 30 generations from Adam, when
the languages were confused and the Karen separated
from the Karenni. He notes yet another version
current in the Admiralty Islands, where mankind's
languages are confused following a failed attempt to
build houses reaching to heaven.
Historical context

Hanging Gardens of Babylon (19th century), depicts the Tower of

Babel in the background.

Some biblical scholars see the Book of Genesis as

mythological and not as a historical account of
events.[24] Nonetheless, the story of Babel can be
interpreted in terms of its context.

Genesis 10:10 states that Babel (LXX: Βαβυλών)

formed part of Nimrod's kingdom. The Bible does not
specifically mention that Nimrod ordered the building
of the tower, but many other sources have
associated its construction with Nimrod.[25]

Genesis 11:9 attributes the Hebrew version of the

name, Babel, to the verb balal, which means to confuse
or confound in Hebrew. The first century Roman-
Jewish author Flavius Josephus similarly explained that
the name was derived from the Hebrew word Babel
(βαβὲλ), meaning "confusion".[26]

Destruction
The account in Genesis makes no mention of any
destruction of the tower. The people whose
languages are confounded were simply scattered from
there over the face of the Earth and stopped building
their city. However, in other sources, such as the
Book of Jubilees (chapter 10 v.18–27), Cornelius
Alexander (frag. 10), Abydenus (frags. 5 and 6),
Josephus (Antiquities 1.4.3), and the Sibylline Oracles
(iii. 117–129), God overturns the tower with a great
wind. In the Midrash, it said that the top of the tower
was burnt, the bottom was swallowed, and the middle
was left standing to erode over time.

Etemenanki, the ziggurat at

Babylon

Reconstruction of the Etemenanki, which was 91 metres (300 ft) in

height.

Etemenanki (Sumerian: "temple of the foundation of

heaven and earth") was the name of a ziggurat
dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon. It was
famously rebuilt by the 6th-century BCE Neo-
Babylonian dynasty rulers Nabopolassar and
Nebuchadnezzar II. According to modern scholars,
such as Stephen L. Harris, the biblical story of the
Tower of Babel was likely influenced by Etemenanki
during the Babylonian captivity of the Hebrews.[5]

Nebuchadnezzar wrote that the original tower had

been built in antiquity: "A former king built the Temple
of the Seven Lights of the Earth, but he did not
complete its head. Since a remote time, people had
abandoned it, without order expressing their words.
Since that time earthquakes and lightning had
dispersed its sun-dried clay; the bricks of the casing
had split, and the earth of the interior had been
scattered in heaps."[27]

In 2011 scholars discovered, in the Schoyen Collection,

the oldest known representation of the
Etemenanki.[28] Carved on a black stone, The Tower
of Babel Stele (as it is known) dates from 604–562
BCE, the time of Nebuchadnezzar II.[29]

The Greek historian Herodotus (440 BCE) later wrote

of this ziggurat, which he called the "Temple of Zeus
Belus", giving an account of its vast dimensions.
The already decayed Great Ziggurat of Babylon was
finally destroyed by Alexander the Great in an attempt
to rebuild it. He managed to move the tiles of the
tower to another location, but his death stopped the
reconstruction.

Isaac Asimov speculated that the authors of Genesis

11:1–9 were inspired by the existence of an apparently
incomplete ziggurat at Babylon, and by the
phonological similarity between Babylonian Bab-ilu,
meaning "gate of God", and the Hebrew word balal,
meaning "mixed", "confused", or "confounded".[30]

In other sources
Book of Jubilees
The Book of Jubilees contains one of the most
detailed accounts found anywhere of the Tower.

And they began to build, and in

the fourth week they made brick
with fire, and the bricks served
them for stone, and the clay with
which they cemented them
together was asphalt which
comes out of the sea, and out of
the fountains of water in the land
of Shinar. And they built it: forty
and three years were they
building it; its breadth was 203
 bricks, and the height [of a brick]
was the third of one; its height
amounted to 5433 cubits and 2
palms, and [the extent of one wall
was] thirteen stades [and of the
other thirty stades]. (Jubilees
10:20–21, Charles' 1913
translation)

Pseudo-Philo

In Pseudo-Philo, the direction for the building is

ascribed not only to Nimrod, who is made prince of
the Hamites, but also to Joktan, as prince of the
Semites, and to Phenech son of Dodanim, as prince of
the Japhetites. Twelve men are arrested for refusing
to bring bricks, including Abraham, Lot, Nahor, and
several sons of Joktan. However, Joktan finally saves
the twelve from the wrath of the other two
princes.[31]

Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews

Tower of Babel, by Lucas van Valckenborch, 1594, Louvre Museum

The Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus, in his
Antiquities of the Jews (c. 94 CE), recounted history
as found in the Hebrew Bible and mentioned the Tower
of Babel. He wrote that it was Nimrod who had the
tower built and that Nimrod was a tyrant who tried to
turn the people away from God. In this account, God
confused the people rather than destroying them
because annihilation with a Flood hadn't taught them
to be godly.

Now it was Nimrod who excited

them to such an affront and
contempt of God. He was the
grandson of Ham, the son of
Noah, a bold man, and of great
strength of hand. He persuaded
them not to ascribe it to God as if
it were through his means they
were happy, but to believe that it
was their own courage which
procured that happiness. He also
gradually changed the
government into tyranny, seeing
no other way of turning men from
the fear of God, but to bring them
into a constant dependence on his
power... Now the multitude were
very ready to follow the
determination of Nimrod and to
esteem it a piece of cowardice to
submit to God; and they built a
tower, neither sparing any pains,
nor being in any degree negligent
about the work: and, by reason of
the multitude of hands employed
in it, it grew very high, sooner
than any one could expect; but
the thickness of it was so great,
and it was so strongly built, that
thereby its great height seemed,
upon the view, to be less than it
really was. It was built of burnt
brick, cemented together with
mortar, made of bitumen, that it
might not be liable to admit
water. When God saw that they
acted so madly, he did not resolve
to destroy them utterly, since they
were not grown wiser by the
destruction of the former sinners
[in the Flood]; but he caused a
tumult among them, by producing
in them diverse languages, and
causing that, through the
multitude of those languages,
they should not be able to
understand one another. The
place wherein they built the
tower is now called Babylon,
because of the confusion of that
language which they readily
understood before; for the
Hebrews mean by the word Babel,
confusion. The Sibyl also makes
mention of this tower, and of the
confusion of the language, when
she says thus:--"When all men
were of one language, some of
them built a high tower, as if they
would thereby ascend up to
heaven; but the gods sent storms
 of wind and overthrew the tower,
and gave everyone a peculiar
language; and for this reason it
was that the city was called
Babylon."

Greek Apocalypse of Baruch

Third Apocalypse of Baruch (or 3 Baruch, c. 2nd

century), one of the pseudepigrapha, describes the
just rewards of sinners and the righteous in the
afterlife.[15] Among the sinners are those who
instigated the Tower of Babel. In the account, Baruch
is first taken (in a vision) to see the resting place of
the souls of "those who built the tower of strife
against God, and the Lord banished them." Next he is
shown another place, and there, occupying the form
of dogs,

Those who gave counsel to build

the tower, for they whom thou
seest drove forth multitudes of
both men and women, to make
bricks; among whom, a woman
making bricks was not allowed to
be released in the hour of child-
birth, but brought forth while she
was making bricks, and carried
her child in her apron, and
continued to make bricks. And the
Lord appeared to them and
confused their speech, when they
had built the tower to the height
of four hundred and sixty-three
cubits. And they took a gimlet,
and sought to pierce the heavens,
saying, Let us see (whether) the
heaven is made of clay, or of
brass, or of iron. When God saw
this He did not permit them, but
smote them with blindness and
confusion of speech, and rendered
 them as thou seest. (Greek
Apocalypse of Baruch, 3:5–8)

Midrash

Rabbinic literature offers many different accounts of

other causes for building the Tower of Babel, and of
the intentions of its builders. According to one
midrash the builders of the Tower, called "the
generation of secession" in the Jewish sources, said:
"God has no right to choose the upper world for
Himself, and to leave the lower world to us; therefore
we will build us a tower, with an idol on the top holding
a sword, so that it may appear as if it intended to war
with God" (Gen. R. xxxviii. 7 ; Tan., ed. Buber, Noah,
xxvii. et seq.).

The building of the Tower was meant to bid defiance

not only to God, but also to Abraham, who exhorted
the builders to reverence. The passage mentions that
the builders spoke sharp words against God, saying
that once every 1,656 years, heaven tottered so that
the water poured down upon the earth, therefore
they would support it by columns that there might not
be another deluge (Gen. R. l.c.; Tan. l.c.; similarly
Josephus, "Ant." i. 4, § 2).

Some among that generation even wanted to war

against God in heaven (Talmud Sanhedrin 109a). They
were encouraged in this undertaking by the notion
that arrows that they shot into the sky fell back
dripping with blood, so that the people really believed
that they could wage war against the inhabitants of
the heavens (Sefer ha-Yashar, Chapter 9:12–36).
According to Josephus and Midrash Pirke R. El. xxiv., it
was mainly Nimrod who persuaded his contemporaries
to build the Tower, while other rabbinical sources
assert, on the contrary, that Nimrod separated from
the builders.[25]

According to another midrashic account, one third of

the Tower builders were punished by being
transformed into semi-demonic creatures and
banished into three parallel dimensions, inhabited now
by their descendants.[32]
Islamic tradition

Turris Babel from Athanasius Kircher

Although not mentioned by name,the Quran has a

story with similarities to the biblical story of the
Tower of Babel, although set in the Egypt of Moses:
Pharaoh asks Haman to build him a stone (or clay)
tower so that he can mount up to heaven and
confront the God of Moses.[33]
Another story in Sura 2:102 mentions the name of
Babil, but tells of when the two angels Harut and
Marut taught magic to some people in Babylon and
warned them that magic is a sin and that their
teaching them magic is a test of faith.[34] A tale about
Babil appears more fully in the writings of Yaqut (i, 448
f.) and the Lisān al-ʿArab (xiii. 72), but without the
tower: mankind were swept together by winds into
the plain that was afterward called "Babil", where they
were assigned their separate languages by God, and
were then scattered again in the same way. In the
History of the Prophets and Kings by the 9th-century
Muslim theologian al-Tabari, a fuller version is given:
Nimrod has the tower built in Babil, God destroys it,
and the language of mankind, formerly Syriac, is then
confused into 72 languages. Another Muslim historian
of the 13th century, Abu al-Fida relates the same
story, adding that the patriarch Eber (an ancestor of
Abraham) was allowed to keep the original tongue,
Hebrew in this case, because he would not partake in
the building.[25]

Although variations similar to the biblical narrative of

the Tower of Babel exist within Islamic tradition, the
central theme of God separating humankind on the
basis of language is alien to Islam according to the
author Yahiya Emerick. In Islamic belief, he argues, God
created nations to know each other and not to be
separated.[35]

Book of Mormon
In the Book of Mormon, a man named Jared and his
family ask God that their language not be confounded
at the time of the Tower of Babel. Because of their
prayers, God preserves their language and leads them
to the Valley of Nimrod. From there, they travel
across the sea to the Americas.[36]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

teaches that the Tower of Babel story is historical
fact. "Although there are many in our day who
consider the accounts of the Flood and tower of Babel
to be fiction, Latter-day Saints affirm their reality."[37]

Confusion of tongues
Gustave Doré's interpretation of the confusion of tongues.

The confusion of tongues (confusio linguarum) is the

origin myth for the fragmentation of human languages
described in the Book of Genesis 11:1–9, as a result of
the construction of the Tower of Babel.

Biblical account

Genesis 11:1 claims that prior to the event, humanity

spoke a single language. In the confusion of tongues,
this language was split into seventy or seventy-two
dialects, depending on tradition. This has sometimes
been interpreted as being in contradiction to Genesis
10:5 ,

Of these were the isles of the nations divided in

their lands, every one after his tongue, after their
families, in their nations.

Subsequent interpretation

During the Middle Ages, the Hebrew language was

widely considered the language used by God to
address Adam in Paradise, and by Adam as lawgiver
(the Adamic language) by various Jewish, Christian,
and Muslim scholastics. Dante in the Divina commedia
implies however that the language of Paradise was
different from later Hebrew by saying that Adam
addressed God as I rather than El.[38]

Before the acceptance of the Indo-European language

family, these languages were considered to be
"Japhetite" by some authors (e.g. Rasmus Rask in 1815;
see Indo-European studies). Beginning in Renaissance
Europe, priority over Hebrew was claimed for the
alleged Japhetic languages, which were supposedly
never corrupted because their speakers had not
participated in the construction of the Tower of
Babel. Among the candidates for a living descendant of
the Adamic language were: Gaelic (see Auraicept na
n-Éces); Tuscan (Giovanni Battista Gelli, 1542, Piero
Francesco Giambullari, 1564); Dutch (Goropius
Becanus, 1569, Abraham Mylius, 1612); Swedish (Olaus
Rudbeck, 1675); German (Georg Philipp Harsdörffer,
1641, Schottel, 1641). The Swedish physician Andreas
Kempe wrote a satirical tract in 1688, where he made
fun of the contest between the European nationalists
to claim their native tongue as the Adamic language.
Caricaturing the attempts by the Swede Olaus
Rudbeck to pronounce Swedish the original language
of mankind, Kempe wrote a scathing parody where
Adam spoke Danish, God spoke Swedish, and the
serpent French.[39]

The primacy of Hebrew was still defended by some

authors until the emergence of modern linguistics in
the second half of the 18th century, e.g. by Pierre
Besnier (1648–1705) in A philosophicall essay for the
reunion of the languages, or, the art of knowing all by
the mastery of one (1675) and by Gottfried Hensel
(1687-1767) in his Synopsis Universae Philologiae
(1741).

Linguistics
Historical linguistics has long wrestled with the idea of
a single original language. In the Middle Ages, and down
to the 17th century, attempts were made to identify a
living descendant of the Adamic language.

Multiplication of languages
Tower of Babel by Endre Rozsda (1958)

The literal belief that the world's linguistic variety

originated with the tower of Babel is
pseudolinguistics, and is contrary to the known facts
about the origin and history of languages.[40]

In the Biblical introduction of the Tower of Babel

account, in Genesis 11:1 , it is said that everyone on
Earth spoke the same language, but this is
inconsistent with the Biblical description of the post-
Noahic world described in Genesis 10:5 , where it is
said that the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth
gave rise to different nations, each with their own
language.[2]:26 Some explain this discrepancy by saying
that the order of the narrative is not the same as the
order of events.[41]

There have also been a number of traditions around

the world that describe a divine confusion of the one
original language into several, albeit without any
tower. Aside from the Ancient Greek myth that
Hermes confused the languages, causing Zeus to give
his throne to Phoroneus, Frazer specifically mentions
such accounts among the Wasania of Kenya, the
Kacha Naga people of Assam, the inhabitants of
Encounter Bay in Australia, the Maidu of California, the
Tlingit of Alaska, and the K'iche' Maya of
Guatemala.[42]

The Estonian myth of "the Cooking of Languages"[43]

has also been compared.

Enumeration of scattered languages

There are several mediaeval historiographic accounts

that attempt to make an enumeration of the
languages scattered at the Tower of Babel. Because a
count of all the descendants of Noah listed by name in
chapter 10 of Genesis (LXX) provides 15 names for
Japheth's descendants, 30 for Ham's, and 27 for
Shem's, these figures became established as the 72
languages resulting from the confusion at Babel —
although the exact listing of these languages changed
over time. (The LXX Bible has two additional names,
Elisa and Cainan, not found in the Masoretic text of
this chapter, so early rabbinic traditions, such as the
Mishna, speak instead of "70 languages".) Some of the
earliest sources for 72 (sometimes 73) languages are
the 2nd-century Christian writers Clement of
Alexandria (Stromata I, 21) and Hippolytus of Rome
(On the Psalms 9); it is repeated in the Syriac book
Cave of Treasures (c. 350 CE), Epiphanius of Salamis'
Panarion (c. 375) and St. Augustine's The City of God
16.6 (c. 410). The chronicles attributed to Hippolytus
(c. 234) contain one of the first attempts to list each
of the 72 peoples who were believed to have spoken
these languages.
Isidore of Seville in his Etymologiae (c. 600) mentions
the number of 72; however, his list of names from the
Bible drops the sons of Joktan and substitutes the
sons of Abraham and Lot, resulting in only about 56
names total; he then appends a list of some of the
nations known in his own day, such as the Longobards
and the Franks. This listing was to prove quite
influential on later accounts that made the Lombards
and Franks themselves into descendants of
eponymous grandsons of Japheth, e.g. the Historia
Brittonum (c. 833), The Meadows of Gold by al Masudi
(c. 947) and Book of Roads and Kingdoms by al-Bakri
(1068), the 11th-century Lebor Gabála Érenn, and the
midrashic compilations Yosippon (c. 950), Chronicles
of Jerahmeel, and Sefer haYashar.
Other sources that mention 72 (or 70) languages
scattered from Babel are the Old Irish poem Cu cen
mathair by Luccreth moccu Chiara (c. 600); the Irish
monastic work Auraicept na n-Éces; History of the
Prophets and Kings by the Persian historian Muhammad
ibn Jarir al-Tabari (c. 915); the Anglo-Saxon dialogue
Solomon and Saturn; the Russian Primary Chronicle (c.
1113); the Jewish Kabbalistic work Bahir (1174); the
Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson (c. 1200); the Syriac
Book of the Bee (c. 1221); the Gesta Hunnorum et
Hungarorum (c. 1284; mentions 22 for Shem, 31 for
Ham and 17 for Japheth for a total of 70); Villani's 1300
account; and the rabbinic Midrash ha-Gadol (14th
century). Villani adds that it "was begun 700 years
after the Flood, and there were 2,354 years from the
beginning of the world to the confusion of the Tower
of Babel. And we find that they were 107 years
working at it; and men lived long in those times".
According to the Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum,
however, the project was begun only 200 years
following the Deluge.

The tradition of 72 languages persisted into later

times. Both José de Acosta in his 1576 treatise De
procuranda indorum salute, and António Vieira a
century later in his Sermão da Epifania, expressed
amazement at how much this 'number of tongues'
could be surpassed, there being hundreds of mutually
unintelligible languages indigenous only to Peru and
Brazil.

Height
The Book of Genesis does not mention how tall the
tower was. The phrase used to describe the tower,
“its top in the sky” (v.4), was an idiom for impressive
height; rather than implying arrogance this was simply
a cliché for height.[16]:37 The tower's height is
discussed in various extra-canonical sources.

The Book of Jubilees mentions the tower's height as

being 5,433 cubits and 2 palms, or 2,484 m (8,150 ft),
about three times the height of Burj Khalifa, or roughly
1.6 miles high. The Third Apocalypse of Baruch
mentions that the 'tower of strife' reached a height of
463 cubits, or 211.8 m (695 ft), taller than any
structure built in human history until the construction
of the Eiffel Tower in 1889, which is 324 m (1,063 ft) in
height.
Gregory of Tours writing c. 594, quotes the earlier
historian Orosius (c. 417) as saying the tower was
"laid out foursquare on a very level plain. Its wall, made
of baked brick cemented with pitch, is fifty cubits
wide, two hundred high, and four hundred and seventy
stades in circumference. A stade contains five
agripennes. Twenty-five gates are situated on each
side, which make in all one hundred. The doors of these
gates, which are of wonderful size, are cast in bronze.
The same historian tells many other tales of this city,
and says: 'Although such was the glory of its building
still it was conquered and destroyed.'"[44]

A typical medieval account is given by Giovanni Villani

(1300): He relates that "it measured eighty miles [130
km] round, and it was already 4,000 paces high, or
5.92 km (3.68 mi) and 1,000 paces thick, and each
pace is three of our feet."[45] The 14th-century
traveler John Mandeville also included an account of
the tower and reported that its height had been 64
furlongs, or 13 km (8 mi), according to the local
inhabitants.

The 17th-century historian Verstegan provides yet

another figure – quoting Isidore, he says that the
tower was 5,164 paces high, or 7.6 km (4.7 mi), and
quoting Josephus that the tower was wider than it
was high, more like a mountain than a tower. He also
quotes unnamed authors who say that the spiral path
was so wide that it contained lodgings for workers
and animals, and other authors who claim that the
path was wide enough to have fields for growing grain
for the animals used in the construction.

In his book, Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down

(Pelican 1978–1984), Professor J.E. Gordon considers
the height of the Tower of Babel. He wrote, 'brick and
stone weigh about 120 lb per cubic foot (2,000 kg per
cubic metre) and the crushing strength of these
materials is generally rather better than 6,000 lbf per
square inch or 40 megapascals. Elementary arithmetic
shows that a tower with parallel walls could have
been built to a height of 2.1 km (1.3 mi) before the
bricks at the bottom were crushed. However, by
making the walls taper towards the top they ... could
well have been built to a height where the men of
Shinnar would run short of oxygen and had difficulty in
breathing before the brick walls crushed beneath their
own dead weight."

In popular culture
Pieter Brueghel's influential portrayal is based on the
Colosseum in Rome, while later conical depictions of
the tower (as depicted in Doré's illustration) resemble
much later Muslim towers observed by 19th-century
explorers in the area, notably the Minaret of Samarra.
M. C. Escher depicts a more stylized geometrical
structure in his woodcut representing the story.

The composer Anton Rubinstein wrote an opera

based on the story, Der Thurm zu Babel.
American choreographer Adam Darius staged a
multilingual theatrical interpretation of The Tower of
Babel in 1993 at the ICA in London.

Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis, in a flashback, plays

upon themes of lack of communication between the
designers of the tower and the workers who are
constructing it. The short scene states how the
words used to glorify the tower's construction by its
designers took on totally different, oppressive
meanings to the workers. This led to its destruction
as they rose up against the designers because of the
insufferable working conditions. The appearance of
the tower was modelled after Brueghel's 1563
painting.[46]
The political philosopher Michael Oakeshott surveyed
historic variations of the Tower of Babel in different
cultures[47] and produced a modern retelling of his
own in his 1983 book, On History.[48] In his retelling,
Oakeshott expresses disdain for human willingness to
sacrifice individuality, culture, and quality of life for
grand collective projects. He attributes this behaviour
to fascination with novelty, persistent dissatisfaction,
greed, and lack of self-reflection.[49]

A. S. Byatt's novel Babel Tower (1996) is about the

question "whether language can be shared, or, if that
turns out to be illusory, how individuals, in talking to
each other, fail to understand each other".[50]
The progressive band Soul Secret wrote a concept
album called BABEL based on a modernized version of
the myth.

Award-winning science fiction writer, Ted Chiang,

wrote a story called "Tower of Babylon" that imagined
a miner climbing the tower all the way to the top
where it meets the vault of heaven.[51]

See also
Babel fish
Babylonian astronomy
Borsippa
Enuma Anu Enlil
Evolutionary linguistics
 List of world's tallest structures
Minar (Firuzabad)
Origin of speech
Sons of Noah

Notes
1. Metzger, Bruce Manning; Coogan, Michael D (2004).
The Oxford Guide To People And Places Of The Bible .
Oxford University Press. p. 28. ISBN 978-0-19-517610-
0. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
2. Levenson, Jon D. (2004). "Genesis: Introduction and
Annotations". In Berlin, Adele; Brettler, Marc Zvi. The
Jewish Study Bible . Oxford University Press. p. 29.
ISBN 9780195297515.
3. Graves, Robert; Patai, Raphael (1986). Hebrew
Myths: The Book of Genesis . Random House. p. 315.
ISBN 9780795337154.
4. Schwartz, Howard; Loebel-Fried, Caren; Ginsburg,
Elliot K. (2007). Tree of Souls: The Mythology of
Judaism . Oxford University Press. p. 704.
ISBN 9780195358704.
5. Harris, Stephen L. (2002). Understanding the Bible.
McGraw-Hill. pp. 50–51. ISBN 9780767429160.
6. Streck, Michael P. (2006). "Die Stadt, an deren
Freuden man nicht satt wird". Damals (in German).
Vol. Special volume. pp. 11–28.
7. Diodorus Siculus, 2.9.9; Strabo, Geography, 16.1.5.
8. van der Spek, Robartus (2003). "Darius III, Alexander
the Great and Babylonian Scholarship" . Achaemenid
History. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije
Oosten. XIII: 289–346.
9. Kramer, Samuel Noah (1968). "The "Babel of
Tongues": A Sumerian Version". Journal of the
American Oriental Society. 88 (1). pp. 108–111.
10. Genesis 11:1–9 KJV
11. Day, John (24 April 2014). From Creation to Babel:
Studies in Genesis 1-11 . Bloomsbury Publishing.
pp. 179–180. ISBN 978-0-567-37030-3.
12. Genesis 11:9
13. John L. Mckenzie (October 1995). The Dictionary
Of The Bible . Simon and Schuster. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-
684-81913-6.
14. Coogan, Michael D. (2009). A Brief Introduction to
the Old Testament: the Hebrew Bible in its Context.
Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195332728.
15. Harris, Stephen L. (1985). Understanding the Bible:
A Reader's Introduction. Palo Alto: Mayfield.
ISBN 9780874846966.
16. Hiebert, Theodore (2007). "The Tower of Babel and
the Origin of the World's Cultures". Journal of Biblical
Literature. 126 (1): 29–58. doi:10.2307/27638419 .
JSTOR 27638419 .
17. Blenkinsopp, Joseph (1995). "Introduction to the
Pentateuch". In Keck, Leander E. The New Interpreter's
Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press. p. 310.
ISBN 9780687278145.
18. "Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta: composite text."
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Line
145f. : an-ki ningin2-na ung3 sang sig10-ga den-lil2-ra
eme 1-am3 he2-en-na-da-ab-dug4.
19. "Gateway to the Heavens: The Assyrian Account
to the Tower of Babel" . Ancient Origins. Retrieved
11 September 2017.
20. Frazer, James George (1919). Folk-lore in the Old
Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend
and Law . London: Macmillan. pp. 362–387.
21. Bancroft, vol. 3, p. 76.
22. Farish, Thomas Edwin (1918). History of Arizona,
Volume VII . Phoenix. pp. 309–310. Retrieved 5 March
2014.
23. Beverley, H. (1872). Report On The Census Of
Bengal . Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press. p. 160.
24. Levenson 2004, p. 11 "How much history lies behind
the story of Genesis? Because the action of the
primeval story is not represented as taking place on
the plane of ordinary human history and has so many
affinities with ancient mythology, it is very far-fetched
to speak of its narratives as historical at all."
25. Jastrow, Morris; Price, Ira Maurice; Jastrow,
Marcus; Ginzberg, Louis; MacDonald, Duncan B. (1906).
"Babel, Tower of" . Jewish Encyclopedia. New York:
Funk & Wagnalls. pp. 395–398.
26. Josephus, Antiquities, 1.4.3
27. Jeffrey, Grant R. (2013). Unveiling Mysteries of the
Bible . Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press. pp. 33–
39. ISBN 9780307508607.
28. Lorenzi, Rossella (27 December 2011). "Ancient
Texts Part of Earliest Known Documents" . Discovery
Channel News. Archived from the original on 21
August 2015.
29. "The Tower of Babel Stele" . Schoyen Collection.
Retrieved 28 December 2011.
30. Asimov, Isaac (1971). Asimov's Guide to the Bible,
vol.1: The Old Testament. Avon Books. pp. 54–55.
ISBN 9780380010325.
31. The Biblical Antiquities of Philo . Translated by
James, M. R. London: SPCK. 1917. pp. 90–94.
32. Ginzberg, Louis (1909). Legends of the Jews,
Volume 1 . New York. Archived from the original on 1
October 2015.
33. Pickthal, M. "Quran" (in English), Suras 28:36 and
40:36–37. Amana Publishers, UK 1996
34. "Surat Al-Baqarah [2:102] – The Noble Qur'an –
‫ "اﻟﻘﺮآن اﻟﻜﺮﻳﻢ‬. Quran.com. Retrieved 7 November
2013.
35. Emerick, Yahiya (2002). The Complete Idiot's
Guide to Understanding Islam . Indianapolis: Alpha.
p. 108. ISBN 9780028642338.
36. Ether 1:33–38
37. Parry, Donald W. (January 1998), "The Flood and
the Tower of Babel" , Ensign
38. Moevs, Christian (21 March 2014). "Dante and
Adam in Paradiso of the Divine Comedy The Eucharist
and self-knowledge" . News.VA. Retrieved 24 October
2014.
39. Olender, Maurice (1992). The Languages of
Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth
Century. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge,
Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press.
ISBN 0-674-51052-6.
40. Pennock, Robert T. (2000). Tower of Babel: The
Evidence against the New Creationism . Bradford
Books. ISBN 9780262661652.
41. "Contradictions: The Order of Nations" . Answers
in Genesis. Retrieved 6 October 2016.
42. Frazer, James George (1919). Folk-lore in the Old
Testament: Studies in Comparative Religion, Legend
and Law . London: Macmillan. p. 384.
43. Kohl, Reisen in die 'Ostseeprovinzen, ii. 251–255
44. Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, from the
1916 translation by Earnest Brehaut, Book I, chapter 6.
Available online in abridged form .
45. Selections from Giovanni's Chronicle in English .
46. Bukatman, Scott (1997). Blade Runner. London:
British Film Institute. pp. 62–63. ISBN 0-85170-623-1.
47. Worthington, G. (2016). Religious and Poetic
Experience in the Thought of Michael Oakeshott .
British Idealist Studies 1: Oakeshott. Andrews UK
Limited. p. 121f. ISBN 978-1-84540-594-6.
48. Reprinted as Oakeshott, Michael (1989). "The
tower of Babel". In Clarke, S.G.; Simpson, E. Anti-
Theory in Ethics and Moral Conservatism . SUNY
Series in Ethical Theory. State University of New York
Press. p. 185ff. ISBN 978-0-88706-912-3. Retrieved
25 May 2018.
49. Corey, E.C. (2006). Michael Oakeshott on
Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics . Eric Voegelin
Institute series in political philosophy. University of
Missouri Press. p. 129-131. ISBN 978-0-8262-6517-3.
50. Dorschel, Andreas (25 November 2004). "Ach, Sie
waren nicht in Oxford? Antonia S. Byatts Roman "Der
Turm zu Babel" ". Süddeutsche Zeitung 274 (in
German). p. 16.
51. Joshua Rothman, "Ted Chiang's Soulful Science
Fiction" , The New Yorker, 2017

References
 Sayce, Archibald Henry (1878), "Babel", in Baynes,
T.S., Encyclopædia Britannica, 3 (9th ed.), New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 178
 Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Babel". Encyclopædia
Britannica. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
p. 91.
Pr. Diego Duran, Historia Antiqua de la Nueva
Espana (Madrid, 1585).
Ixtilxochitl, Don Ferdinand d'Alva, Historia
Chichimeca, 1658
Lord Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, vol. 9
H.H. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States
(New York, 1874)
Klaus Seybold, "Der Turmbau zu Babel: Zur
Entstehung von Genesis XI 1–9," Vetus
Testamentum (1976).
Samuel Noah Kramer, The "Babel of Tongues": A
Sumerian Version, Journal of the American Oriental
Society (1968).
Kyle Dugdale: Babel's Present. Ed. by Reto Geiser
and Tilo Richter, Standpunkte, Basel 2016,
 ISBN 978-3-9523540-8-7 (Standpunkte
Dokumente No. 5).

External links
"Tower of Babel." Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Babel In Biblia: The Tower in Ancient Literature by
Jim Rovira
Our People: A History of the Jews – The Tower of
Babel
Livius.org: The tower of Babel
Book of Genesis, Chapter 11
"The Tower of Babel and the Birth of Nationhood"
by Daniel Gordis at Azure: Ideas for the Jewish
Nation
SkyscraperPage – Tower of Babel , Tower of Babel
– Baruch
HERBARIUM Art Project. Anatomy of the Tower of
Babel. 2010
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
(ISBE), James Orr, M.A., D.D., General Editor – 1915
(online )
Easton's Bible Dictionary, M.G. Easton M.A., D.D.,
published by Thomas Nelson, 1897. (online )
Nave Topical Bible, Orville J. Nave, AM., D.D., LL.D.
(online )
Smith's Bible Dictionary (1896) (online )
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title=Tower_of_Babel&oldid=845736444"

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