The Tower of Babel (Hebrew: מגדל בבל Migdal Bavel Arabic: برج بابل Burj Babil) is a structure
featured in chapter 11 of the Book of Genesis, 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 view of this story is preserved in Enmerkar and the Lord
of Aratta.
