Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel (Hebrew: מגדל בבל‎ Migdal Bavel Arabic: برج بابل‎ Burj Babil) according to chapter 11 of the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower intended as the crowning achievement of the city of Babilu, the Akkadian name for Babylon. According to the biblical account, Babel was a city that united humanity, all speaking a single language and migrating from the east; it was the home city of the great king Nimrod, and the first city to be built after the Great Flood. The people decided their city should have a tower so immense that it would have "its top in the heavens." (וְרֹאשׁוֹ בַשָּׁמַיִם). However, the Tower of Babel was not built for the worship and praise of God, but was dedicated to the glory of man, with a motive of making a 'name' for the builders: "Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.'" (Genesis 11:4). God, seeing what the people were doing, gave each person a different language to confuse them and scattered the people throughout the earth.

Babel is the Hebrew equivalent of Akkadian Babilu (Greek Babylon), a cosmopolitan city typified by a confusion of languages.^[1] The Tower of Babel has often been associated with known structures, notably the Etemenanki, the ziggurat to Marduk, by Nabopolassar (610s BC). A Sumerian story with some similar elements is preserved in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.