The Tower of Babel, or the Tower of Babylon, is a significant part of the history in the Old Testament. But where did it stand?
Genesis 11
The story of the Tower of Babel can be found in Genesis 11.
“At one time all the people of the world spoke the same language and used the same words. As the people migrated to the east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there. They began saying to each other, “Let’s make bricks and harden them with fire.” (In this region bricks were used instead of stone, and tar was used for mortar.) Then they said, “Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves with a tower that reaches into the sky. This will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world.”
“But the Lord came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. “Look!” he said. “The people are united, and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them! Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.” In that way, the Lord scattered them all over the world, and they stopped building the city. That is why the city was called Babel, because that is where the Lord confused the people with different languages. In this way he scattered them all over the world (Genesis 11:1-9, NLT).
READ ALSO: CHRISTIAN WRESTLER PRAISES JESUS FOLLOWING HIS WIN: ‘HOLY SPIRIT POWER — IT’S EVERYTHING’
The Tower of Babel
The narrative of the Tower of Babel is told in the Bible: rebellion, confusion, and scattering. But do we know what happened to the tower? Joel of the Expedition Bible travels to Babylon, Iraq, to find out.
He discovered that the place had become a plain rock. Moreover, it’s too low and too hot for a forest; that’s why it’s just a plain structure.
But before, it was the biggest and most famous Ziggurat. “Now entirely destroyed, its ground plan shows that it was but a repetition on a larger scale of the Ziggurat at Ur, the best preserved of all of these monuments,” according to a German archeologist.
Robert Koldewey
Robert was a German archeologist who discovered where the Tower of Babel stood. It was described as “etemenanki,” or the house of the foundation of heaven and earth.
In 1908, Robert unearthed the foundation of the Tower of Babel. “From what once was a towering Ziggurat, only the lowliest portions of the base remain after its destruction by the Persian army. And where afterwards, for thousands of years, the local people took the valuable fired bricks for their own building projects,” Joel said.
Watch Joel’s complete description and explanation of the Tower of Babel:
Header image: Joel at a Ziggurat [Expedition Bible]. YouTube, 3 March 2023, https://youtu.be/cYc_VgjJfw8
