The Tower of Babel really existed. tower of babel

Who in our time has not heard the myth about the legendary Tower of Babel? People learn about this unfinished structure to the skies even in deep childhood. But not every skeptic knows that this tower has a real existence. This is evidenced by the notes of ancient and modern archaeological research. Today we go to Babylon to the remains of the Tower of Babel.

Biblical legend of the Tower of Babel

The biblical legend about how people wanted to build a tower to heaven, and for this they were punished in the form of a division of languages, is better to read in the biblical original:

1. The whole earth had one language and one dialect.

2 Moving out from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

3 And they said to one another, Let us make bricks and burn them with fire. And they became bricks instead of stones, and earthen tar instead of lime.

4 And they said, Let us build ourselves a city and a tower as high as the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of all the earth.

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men were building.

6 And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and they all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do;

7 Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other.

8 And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city [and the tower].

9 Therefore a name was given to her: Babylon, for there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over all the earth.

History, construction and description of the Etemenanki ziggurat

Babylon is known for many of its structures. One of the main personalities in the exaltation of this glorious ancient city is Nebuchadnezzar II. It was during his time that the walls of Babylon, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Ishtar Gate and the Procession Road were built. But this is only the tip of the iceberg - throughout the forty years of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar was engaged in the construction, restoration and decoration of Babylon. He left behind a large text about his work done. We will not dwell on all the points, but it is here that there is a mention of a ziggurat in the city.

This tower of babel, which, according to legend, could not be completed due to the fact that the builders began to speak different languages, has another name - Etemenanki, which in translation means the House of the cornerstone of heaven and earth. Archaeologists during excavations were able to find a huge foundation of this building. It turned out to be a ziggurat typical of Mesopotamia (we can also read about the ziggurat in Ur), located at the main temple of Babylon Esagila.

Painting "Tower of Babel", Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1563 )

For all the time, the tower was demolished and restored several times. For the first time, a ziggurat was built on this site before Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC), but before him it had already been dismantled. The legendary building itself appeared under King Nabupalassar, and his successor Nebuchadnezzar took over the final construction of the peak.

The huge ziggurat was built under the direction of the Assyrian architect Aradahdeshu. It consisted of seven tiers with a total height of about 100 meters. The diameter of the structure was about 90 meters.

At the top of the ziggurat was a shrine covered with traditional Babylonian glazed bricks. The sanctuary was dedicated to the main deity of Babylon - Marduk, and it was for him that a gilded bed and table were installed here, and gilded horns were fixed at the top of the sanctuary.

At the base of the Tower of Babel in the Lower Temple was a statue of Marduk himself made of pure gold with a total weight of 2.5 tons. About 85 million bricks were used to build the Etemenanki ziggurat in Babylon. The tower stood out among all the buildings of the city and created the impression of power and grandeur. The inhabitants of this city sincerely believed in the descent of Marduk to their place on earth and even spoke about this to the famous Herodotus, who visited here in 458 BC (a century and a half after construction).

From the top of the Tower of Babel, another from the neighboring city, Euriminanki in Barsippa, was also visible. It was the ruins of this tower that for a long time were attributed to the biblical. When Alexander the Great lived in the city, he offered to rebuild the majestic building anew, but his death in 323 BC left the building forever dismantled. In 275, Esagila was restored, but Etemenanki was not rebuilt. Only its foundation and the immortal mention in the texts remained a reminder of the former great building.

The Tower of Babel is not included in the "official" list of wonders of the world. However, it is one of the most outstanding buildings of Ancient Babylon, and its name is still a symbol of confusion and disorder. During excavations in Babylon, the German scientist Robert Koldewey managed to discover the foundation and ruins of the tower. The tower referred to in the Bible was probably destroyed before the era of Hammurabi. To replace it, another was built, which was erected in memory of the first. According to Koldewey, it had a square base, each side of which was 90 meters. The height of the tower was also 90 meters, the first tier had a height of 33 meters, the second - 18, the third and fifth - 6 meters each, the seventh - the sanctuary of the god Marduk - was 15 meters high.

The tower stood on the Sakhn plain (literal translation of this name - "frying pan") on the left bank of the Euphrates. It was surrounded by the houses of priests, temple buildings and houses for pilgrims who flocked here from all over Babylonia. The topmost tier of the tower was lined with blue tiles and covered with gold. The description of the Tower of Babel was left by Herodotus, who thoroughly examined it and, perhaps, even visited its top. This is the only documentary description of an eyewitness from Europe.
"A building was erected in the middle of each part of the city. In one part - the royal palace, surrounded by a huge and strong wall; in the other - the sanctuary of Zeus-Bel with copper gates that have survived to this day. The temple sacred site is quadrangular, each side is two stadia. In the middle of this temple-sacred precinct is erected an enormous tower, one stadia long and wide. On this tower stands a second, and on it another tower; in all, eight towers, one upon the other. An outer staircase leads upward round all these towers. In the middle of the stairs there are benches - probably for rest. A large temple was erected on the last tower. In this temple there is a large, luxuriously decorated bed and next to it is a golden table. There is no image of a deity there, however. a man does not spend the night here, with the exception of one woman, whom, according to the Chaldeans, the priests of this god, the god chooses for himself from all the local women.

There is another sanctuary in the sacred temple area in Babylon below, where there is a huge golden statue of Zeus. Nearby there is a large golden table, a footstool and a throne - also golden. According to the Chaldeans, 800 talents of gold went into making [all these things]. A golden altar was erected in front of this temple. There is another huge altar there - adult animals are sacrificed on it; on the golden altar, only suckers can be sacrificed. On a large altar, the Chaldeans annually burn 1000 talents of incense at a festival in honor of this god. There was still in the sacred precinct at the time in question a golden statue of the god, entirely of gold, 12 cubits high. I myself did not happen to see her, but I convey only what the Chaldeans told. Darius, the son of Hystapes, passionately desired this statue, but did not dare to seize it ... ".

According to Herodotus, the Tower of Babel had eight tiers, the width of the lowest was 180 meters. According to Koldevey's descriptions, the tower was a tier lower, and the lower tier was 90 meters wide, that is, half as much. It is hard not to believe Koldewey, a learned and conscientious man, but perhaps in the time of Herodotus the tower stood on some terrace, albeit not high, which was leveled to the ground over the millennia, and during excavations Koldewey did not find any trace of it. Each great Babylonian city had its own ziggurat, but none of them could compare with the Tower of Babel, which towered over the entire district in a colossal pyramid. It took 85 million bricks to build it, and entire generations of rulers built the Tower of Babel. The Babylonian ziggurat was repeatedly destroyed, but each time it was restored and decorated anew. The ziggurat was a shrine that belonged to all the people, it was a place where thousands of people flocked to worship the supreme deity Marduk.

Tukulti-Ninurta, Sargon, Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal stormed Babylon and destroyed the Tower of Babel - the sanctuary of Marduk. Nabopolazar and Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt it. Cyrus, who took possession of Babylon after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, was the first conqueror to leave the city intact. He was struck by the scale of E-temen-anka, and he not only forbade destroying anything, but ordered that a monument be erected on his grave in the form of a miniature ziggurat, a small Tower of Babel.

And yet the tower was again destroyed. Persian king Xerxes left only the ruins that Alexander the Great saw on his way to India. He, too, was struck by the gigantic ruins - he, too, stood in front of them as if spellbound. Alexander the Great intended to build it again. “But,” as Strabo writes, “this work required a lot of time and effort, because the ruins would have to be removed by ten thousand people for two months, and he did not fulfill his plan, as he soon fell ill and died.”

The biblical story about the grandiose structure - the Tower of Babel, still haunts numerous scientists who are trying to either refute or prove the veracity of this story. According to this well-known legend, once people wanted to build a tower that would reach the sky, and this did not please God, who, as a punishment for human pride and self-confidence, deprived people of a common language.

The builders, who had ceased to understand each other, abandoned their idea, and the place where this significant event took place historical event, was called Babylon, which in Aramaic means "mixing."

However, some philologists are ready to argue with this interpretation, since in Hebrew Babylon sounds like Babel. And the words Bab-il and Bab-ilu, which are often found in ancient inscriptions consonant with “Babylon”, most likely mean “gates of god”, which is more consonant with the original than the Aramaic balbel.

Be that as it may, but experts from all over the world are trying to find traces of the legendary building that took place in antiquity. According to British scientists, they managed to find reliable evidence of the existence of the Tower of Babel. And they were helped in this by a private collection of one of the businessmen, which includes cuneiform tablets and a fragment of carved stone. Deciphering the inscriptions made it possible to establish that they contain detailed description“The Steles of the Tower of Babel”, and the figure depicts King Nebuchadnezzar himself, who ruled Babylon 2500 years ago.

According to the existing this moment version, the famous Tower of Babel is the ziggurat of Etemenanki, an ancient temple 91 meters high. Such an assumption was put forward by specialists a long time ago, since the ruins of the once great Babylon were discovered by Robert Koldewey at the end of the century before last. Again open city confirmed the existence of one of the wonders of the world - the Gardens of Babylon, and also provided "information for thought" about the biblical tower.

Actually, the found building (Temple Etemenanki) is not quite a tower, it is rather a pyramid, the width of which is 90 meters. The top of this building was once crowned with a golden statue of the supreme god of the Babylonians - Marduk. According to one version, in the construction of this grandiose temple, King Nebuchadnezzar used captive slaves captured in the Kingdom of Judah, who spoke different dialects, and such a variety of languages ​​amazed the Jews, who had not yet encountered multilingualism. Perhaps it was this moment that served as the basis for the plot of the Tower of Babel.

The found Etemenanki ziggurat has seven tiers, but the famous historian Herodotus describes the Tower of Babel as eight-tiered, with a width of 180 meters at the base. Archaeologists suggest that the "missing" tier may well be below, underground.

Despite the fact that experts seem to have decided on the location of the Tower of Babel, a similar legend is also made up of a pyramid located in the city of Cholula (Mexico). This grandiose structure, up to 160 feet high, closely resembles the pyramids of Egypt, and even surpasses them in size. The legend about this unique building was recorded back in 1579 by the historian Durand, and the plot is very similar to the biblical one. Although it is likely that it was the Spanish missionaries who presented the construction of this colossal pyramid in this way.

In general, the legend about the mixing of languages ​​​​with the help of the Tower of Babel is unique in its kind, since the legends of other peoples are similar to it either in the first part (the construction of a “staircase” to heaven), or in the second part, which simply talks about the mixing of languages.

For example, some African tribes in the vicinity of the Zambezi have legends that tell us that the god Niambe once demanded obedience from people. But people did not want to submit to him and decided to kill Niambe. Then the god hastily climbed into the sky, and the masts fastened together, along which people also climbed into the sky in an attempt to catch the fugitive, collapsed, and the pursuers died.

The Ashanti also have a similar legend, where the offended god left the earth, ascending to heaven. Only in this case, pestles for pushing grains, which were placed one on top of the other, acted as a ladder for people.

In the same Africa (in the Wa-Sena tribe) there is a very entertaining legend about how people began to speak different languages. As expected, at first all peoples had one language, but during a severe famine, people lost their minds and scattered around different parts light, while muttering incomprehensible words, which then became the language of any nationality. The Maidu Indians of California also have their own version of the mixing of languages, according to which, on the eve of one of the festivities, people stopped understanding each other, and only married couples could communicate with each other in the same language.

But God appeared at night to one of the spellcasters and gave him the gift to understand each of the languages, and this "intermediary" taught people everything: cook food, hunt, follow the established laws. Then all the people were sent to different directions.

The legends of many peoples find a reflection of what people once had mutual language, and some of the scientists are even trying to establish what language the first inhabitants of the Garden of Eden spoke, including the insidious serpent. Languages ​​and dialects on the planet existed and there is a great variety, and great amount of which are beyond recovery.

Unfortunately, these initially imperceptible losses eventually turn into complex puzzles, enclosed in symbols and letters incomprehensible to subsequent generations. Although some of these inscriptions no doubt contain information capable of shedding light on some of history's greatest mysteries.

THE TOWER OF BABYLON - the most important episode from the story of ancient mankind in the book of Genesis (11. 1-9).

According to the biblical story, the descendants of Noah spoke the same language and settled in the valley of Shinar. Here they began the construction of a city and a tower, "as high as the heavens, let us make a name for ourselves," they said, "before [in MT "lest"] we be scattered over the face of the whole earth" (Gen 11.4). However, the construction was stopped by the Lord, who "confounded the tongues." People, no longer understanding each other, stopped building and scattered over the earth (Genesis 11:8). The city was named "Babylon". Thus, the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:9) is based on the consonance of the Hebrew name "Babylon" and the verb "mix". According to legend, Nimrod, a descendant of Ham, led the construction of the Tower of Babel (Ios. Flav. Antiq. I 4. 2; Epiph. Adv. haer. I 1. 6).

The biblical story about the Tower of Babel gives a symbolic explanation of the reason for the emergence of a variety of world languages, which can also be correlated with the modern understanding of the development of human languages. Research in the field of historical linguistics allows us to conclude that there is a single proto-language, conventionally called "Nostratic"; Indo-European (Japhetic), Hamito-Semitic, Altaic, Uralic, Dravidian, Kartvelian and other languages ​​emerged from it. The followers of this theory were such scientists as V.M. Illich-Svitych, I.M. Dyakonov, V.N. Toporov and V.V. Ivanov. In addition, the story of the Tower of Babel is an important indication of the biblical understanding of man and historical process and, in particular, on the secondary nature of the division into races and peoples for the human essence. Later this idea, expressed in a different form by the Apostle Paul, became one of the foundations of Christian anthropology (Col 3:11).

In the Christian tradition, the Tower of Babel is a symbol, firstly, of the pride of people who consider it possible to reach heaven on their own and have as main goal“make a name for yourself”, and, secondly, the inevitability of punishment for this and the futility of the human mind, not sanctified by Divine grace. In the gift of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, scattered humanity receives the once lost ability of complete mutual understanding. The antithesis of the Tower of Babel is the miracle of the founding of the Church, which unites the nations by the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4-6). The Tower of Babel is also a prototype of modern technocracy.

The image of the “city and tower” in the book of Genesis reflected a whole complex of mythological universals, for example, the idea of ​​the “center of the world”, which was supposed to be a city built by people. The historically attested temples of Mesopotamia did fulfill this mythological function (Oppenheim, p. 135). In Holy Scripture, the construction of the Tower of Babel is described from the standpoint of Divine Revelation, in the light of which it is primarily an expression of human pride.

Another aspect of the story about the Tower of Babel is an indication of the prospects for the progress of human civilization, and at the same time, there is a negative attitude towards the urbanism of the Mesopotamian civilization in the biblical narrative (Nelis J. T. Col. 1864).

The image of the Tower of Babel undoubtedly reveals parallels with the Mesopotamian tradition of temple building. The temples of Mesopotamia (ziggurats) were stepped structures of several terraces located one above the other (their number could reach 7), on the upper terrace there was a sanctuary of the deity (Parrot. R. 43). Holy Bible accurately conveys the realities of Mesopotamian temple construction, where, unlike most other states of the Ancient Near East, sun-dried or baked brick and resin were used as the main material (cf .: Gen 11. 3).

During the active archaeological study of Ancient Mesopotamia, many attempts were made to find the so-called "prototype" of the Tower of Babel in one of the excavated ziggurats, the most reasonable assumption can be considered the assumption of the Babylonian temple of Marduk (Jacobsen. P. 334), which had the Sumerian name "e-temen -an-ki" is the temple of the cornerstone of heaven and earth.

They tried to find the remains of the Tower of Babel already in the XII century. Up to late XIX- at the beginning of the 20th century, 2 ziggurats were identified with it, in Borsippa and Akar-Kufa, on the site of ancient cities located at a considerable distance from Babylon (in the description of Herodotus, the city was so large that it could include both points). With the ziggurat in Borsippa, the Tower of Babel was identified by Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, who visited Babylonia twice (between 1160-1173), the German explorer K. Niebuhr (1774), the English artist R. Kerr Porter (1818) and others. In Akar-Kufa, the Tower of Babel was seen by the German L. Rauwolf (1573-1576), the merchant J. Eldred, who described the ruins of the “tower” at the end of the 16th century. The Italian traveler Pietro della Valle, who compiled the first detailed description city ​​of Babylon (1616), considered the Tower of Babel the northernmost of its hills, which preserved ancient name"Babil". Attempts to find the Tower of Babel in one of the 3 tell - Babil, Borsippa and Akar-Kufa - continued until the end of the 19th century.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the boundaries of Ancient Babylon were revealed and the neighboring cities were no longer perceived as part of it. After the excavations by K. J. Rich and H. Rassam in Borsippa (Birs-Nimrud settlement, 17 km southwest of Babylon, II-I millennium BC), it became clear that in connection with the Tower of Babel we cannot talk about its ziggurat, which was part of the temple of the goddess Nabu (Old Babylonian period - the first half of the 2nd millennium BC; restructuring in the Neo-Babylonian period - 625-539). G.K. Rawlinson identified Akar-Kuf with Dur-Kurigalza, the capital of the kingdom of the Kassites (30 km west of Babylon, founded in the late XV - early XIV centuries, already abandoned by the inhabitants in the XII century BC), which excluded the possibility of his ziggurat, dedicated to the god Enlil (excavated in the 40s of the 20th century by S. Lloyd and T. Bakir), consider the Tower of Babel. Finally, the excavations of Babil, the northernmost of the hills of Babylon, have shown that it hides not a ziggurat, but one of the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar II.

Finding the Tower of Babel inside Babylon was one of the tasks assigned to the German expedition of R. Koldewey (1899-1917). In the central part of the city, the remains of a foundation platform were discovered, which in 1901 were identified with the foundation of the Etemenanki ziggurat. In 1913, F. Wetzel carried out cleaning and measurements of the monument. His materials, published in 1938, became the basis for new reconstructions. In 1962, Wetzel completed the study of the monument, and H. Schmid conducted a detailed analysis of the materials collected over a century and published (1995) a new, more reasonable periodization and reconstruction of the Etemenanki ziggurat.

Another mystery of history, to which modern scientists still cannot find an answer, is connected with the death of the biblical Babylon and the famous Tower of Babel in Borsippa. This tower, half burned down and melted to a glassy state by a monstrous temperature, has survived to this day as a symbol of God's wrath.

It is a clear confirmation of the veracity of the biblical texts about the terrible fury of heavenly fire that hit the Earth in the middle of the second millennium BC.

According to biblical legend, Babylon was built by Nimrod, who is usually identified with the giant hunter Orion. This is a very important circumstance in astral legend, determining one of the five places of the previous appearances of the "revenge comet" in the night sky, which will be told in the appropriate place.

Nimrod was the son of Cush and a descendant of Ham, one of the three sons of Noah: “Cush also begat Nimrod: this one began to be strong on earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said, A mighty hunter like Nimrod before the Lord. His kingdom at first consisted of: Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Halne, in the land of Senaar. / Gen. 10:8-10/

The biblical myth tells that after Noah's flood, people attempted to build the city of Babylon (from the Sumerians. Bab-ily - "the gates of God") and the Tower of Babel "as high as the heavens."

And here it is appropriate to say that in mythological texts the names “gates of God”, “gates of heaven”, as well as “gates of hell” are used to designate places of cosmic explosions, in the epicenter of which all living things died from heavenly fire.

Enraged by unheard of human insolence, G-d “confounded their tongues” and scattered the builders of the Tower of Babel throughout the earth, as a result of which people ceased to understand each other: “And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men were building. And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do. Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other. And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore a name was given to her: Babylon; For there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over all the earth” (Gen. 11:5-9/.

Therefore, another meaning of the word Babylon is reproduced from the Hebrew word balal - “mixing”.

Turris babel Athanasius Kircher, 1679
This deliberate biblical distortion of the name of the city, based on the similarity of the sound of words, actually reflects the historical reality. The results of archaeological excavations indicate that the time of the death of Babylon is the time of the great migration of tribes and peoples, the mixing of their languages ​​​​and customs, the development and seizure of new territories.

Not far from the city of Babylon are the ruins of Borsippa with the preserved ruins of a burnt ancient temple and a huge temple tower, which is considered to be the legendary Tower of Babel mentioned in the Bible.

True, some archaeologists dispute this name, on the grounds that within the city of Babylon there was a temple tower of no less respectable size.

As archaeologists have determined, the tower from Borsippa previously consisted of seven tiers of steps, standing on a massive square base.

Previously, they were painted in seven colors: black, white, purplish red, blue, bright red, silver and gold. Even now, the remains of the tower are impressive. Its melted skeleton, standing on a hill, rises 46 meters above the base of the tower.

The walls of the tower, built of baked bricks, as well as the huge cult premises inside, were badly damaged by fire.

From the heat of an unthinkable temperature, the upper, most of the tower literally evaporated, and the remaining, smaller part of the tower melted into a single glassy mass, both from the inside and from the outside.

Here is how Erich Zehren writes about it: “It is impossible to find an explanation of where such heat came from, which not only heated, but also melted hundreds of burnt bricks, singeing the entire skeleton of the tower, all of its clay walls.»

It is also curious to cite the testimony of Wilhelm Koenig, who tried to comprehend the cause of the unthinkable heat that literally melted the stepped ziggurat tower in Borsippa: “Ordinary building bricks can only melt in a very strong fire.

ROMANESQUE PAINTER, French The Building of the Tower of Babel Fresco - Abbey Church, Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe

And here is how Mark Twain, traveling through Mesopotamia in 1867, described the tower from Borsippa:
“... it had eight tiers, two of which stand to this day - a giant brickwork, scattered in the middle from an earthquake, scorched and half melted by the lightning of an angry G-d.”

It must be said that to date, not a single researcher has been able to satisfactorily explain this monstrous melting, under the influence of an unthinkable temperature, due to which top part masonry turned into steam, and the remains of the melted tower seemed to split from top to bottom.

Attempts to explain this melting by a lightning strike of high power cannot be considered convincing, which is clearly seen from the information on linear lightning given below.

According to modern concepts, linear lightning is a giant spark that occurs between clouds, or between a cloud and the surface of the earth. Their average size is several kilometers, but sometimes there are lightnings up to fifty and even one hundred and fifty kilometers. The average discharge current is from 20 to 100 kiloamperes, but sometimes reaches 500 kiloamperes.

average temperature lightning channel 25000-30000 degrees Kelvin.

It is quite obvious that not a single, even super-powerful lightning could fuse the Tower of Babel into a single monolith. And even more so to destroy the temple adjacent to it, as well as the city of Babylon, located a dozen and a half kilometers from it, the circumference of which, according to the data specified by archaeologists, was 18 kilometers, and the thickness of the walls is estimated at 25 meters.

Pieter Brugel - THE TOWER OF BABYLON 1563
According to Herodotus, the city of Babylon was an almost regular quadrangle, and was located on both sides of the Euphrates River. Each side of this quadrangle was approximately 22 kilometers, and the thickness of the walls was 50 cubits (a cubit is about 52 cm), and six chariots in a row could simultaneously pass through them.

And the height of the walls, and it is almost impossible to believe, reached 100 meters. The walls of the city had 100 copper gates, and 250 towers rose on the walls themselves. The whole city was surrounded by a wide and deep moat.

In the middle of the second millennium BC, Babylon was a cultural, spiritual and political center Chaldea, and one of the richest and most powerful cities in all Ancient World. It was the time of prosperity and greatness of Babylon. The city had the largest reserve of gold in the world, and nothing seemed to shake its power.

Contemporaries called it "beauty of Chaldea", "granary of Chaldea", "pride of Chaldea", "glory of kingdoms", "golden city". Biblical texts report that "Babylon was a golden cup in the hand of the Lord."

So what destroyed Babylon and melted the Tower of Babel to a glassy state?

There is no doubt that this monstrous temperature, which is comparable only to the heat of a nuclear explosion, arose as a result of a giant electric discharge explosion of a falling celestial body, whose column of fire covered the temple tower, and the released energy of the discharge, in the form of a colossal power of the blast wave, fell on the city of Babylon, turning it into piles of ruins in a matter of minutes.

The death of the city was so terrible that the compilers of biblical texts find it difficult to select epithets to denote its terrible destruction.

Babylon, which was "a golden cup in the hand of the Lord," suddenly, in one day, "became a terror among the nations," "a deserted wilderness," a "heap of ruins," a "house of desolation," and a "dwelling of jackals."

This is what the biblical prophecies look like about the destruction of Babylon, which came true: “Behold, a fierce day comes, with anger and flaming fury, to make the earth a desert and destroy her sinners from it. The stars of heaven and the luminaries do not give light from themselves; the sun is darkened at its rising, and the moon does not shine with its light. I will punish the world for evil, and the wicked for their iniquities, and I will put an end to the arrogance of the proud, and I will humble the arrogance of the oppressors; ... For this I will shake the sky, and the earth will move from its place from the wrath of the Lord of Hosts, on the day of His burning wrath .... And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the pride of the Chaldeans, will be overthrown by God, like Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never be inhabited, and in the generations of generations there will be no inhabitants in it. /Is. 13:9-11,13,19-20/

It must be said that the power of an electric discharge explosion of a large meteorite can amount to hundreds of thousands of megatons of TNT, which significantly exceeds the power of modern thermonuclear charges, so the death of Babylon surrounded by cyclopean walls, with its giant ziggurats, as biblical texts testify, lasted less than one hour.

The city was literally swept off the face of the earth by a colossal blast wave, turning into huge mountains of charred rubble and debris.

The ruins of ancient Babylon are located on the banks of the Euphrates, about a hundred kilometers from the modern capital of Iraq, Baghdad, and after the explosion they were giant mountains of garbage and are located near the Arab settlement of Gillah that arose later.

The Arabs called these hills of rubble Amran ibn Ali, Babil, Jumjuma and Qasr.

The location of ancient Babylon was initially known to archaeologists, and some of them, including the successful Layard and Oppert, even made test excavations on its ruins, but realizing the huge amount of earthwork and the amount of money needed for this, did not dare to organize serious archaeological research.

And only at the very end of the nineteenth century, in the spring of 1899, the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey, having received a fabulous sum of half a million gold marks for the production of works, ventured to start excavations, of course not assuming that it would take him eighteen years to get to the ruins of the capital ancient Chaldea.

In order to carry out a volume of excavation work that had never been done before, he had to order a field railway from Germany and lay a railway track to the excavation site. It must be said that Railway the first, and, it seems, the only time, was used in archaeological work of this magnitude.

The thickness of the layer of earth, mixed with desert sand, ash and ashes, over the ruins of Babylon exceeded ten meters, but hard labour in the hellish conditions of the desert, he was rewarded with discoveries that brought Robert Koldewey the well-deserved world fame.

Based on the excavations of the expedition of Robert Koldewey, it became possible to reproduce the reconstruction of Ancient Babylon, in the ruins of which, during the excavation of the gates of the goddess Ishtar, images of the syncretic animal "Sirrush" were found, consisting of parts of four syncretic animals: a fantastic quadrupedal animal, which could not be identified, an eagle, a snake and a scorpion, which allows us to consider it a prototype of the Great Sphinx.

Biblical texts call Babylon a city of sin and debauchery, but in fact it was a real city of the gods. Archaeologists have unearthed dozens of temples of the supreme god Marduk and hundreds of sanctuaries of other deities on its territory. For example, according to cuneiform texts, the city had "53 temples, 55 sanctuaries of the supreme god Marduk, 300 sanctuaries of earthly and 600 heavenly deities, 180 altars of Ishtar, 180 altars of Nergal and Adadi and 12 other altars."
But this did not save him from the fury of cosmic fire and flood.

Remains of the original Tower of Babel excavated by Robert Koldewey
It must be said that none of the researchers and archaeologists wants to pay attention to the fact that the ruins of Babylon, destroyed by an electric discharge explosion, were also flooded by the waters of Noah's flood.

Babylon, which was excavated by the workers of Koldevey, was a city built on the ruins of numerous, even more ancient buildings, but many years of attempts to get to these cultural layers were unsuccessful, groundwater constantly flooded the mines.

The catastrophe that destroyed Babylon undermined all the foundations of the Babylonian kingdom and caused its decline.

Historical documents absolutely accurately recorded the date that is considered the beginning of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom - 1596 BC. in modern chronology.
And this once again indicates that the death of the Old Babylonian kingdom was the result of a cosmic catastrophe in 1596 BC, which modern historians are not yet aware of.

Tower of Babel bible illustration by Gustave Dore

Tower of Babel.

The Tower of Babel (Heb. מִגְדָּל בָּלַל‎ Migdal Bavel) is the tower to which the biblical tradition is dedicated, set forth in chapter 2 “Noah” (verses 11:1-11:9) of the book of Genesis.

The Tower of Babel is not included in the "official" list of wonders of the world. However, it is one of the most prominent structures of ancient Babylon, and its name is still a symbol of confusion and disorder.

Jan Collaert 1579

According to an ancient biblical legend, after the Flood, more than four thousand years ago, all people lived in Mesopotamia (from the east people came to the land of Shinar), that is, in the basin of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and everyone spoke the same language. Since the land of these places was very fertile, people lived richly. They decided to build a city (Babylon) and a tower as high as the heavens to "make a name for themselves".

Marten Van Valckenborch I (1535-1612)

For the construction of a monumental structure, people used not a stone, but an unbaked raw brick; to connect bricks, bitumen (mountain resin) was used instead of lime. The tower grew and grew in height.

Theodosius Rihel 1574-1578

Finally, God was angry with the unreasonable and conceited people and punished them: he forced the builders to speak in different languages. Because of this, the stupid proud people ceased to understand each other and, having abandoned their tools, stopped building the tower, and then dispersed into different sides Earth. So the tower turned out to be unfinished, and the city where construction took place and all languages ​​\u200b\u200bmixed was called Babylon. Thus, the story of the Tower of Babel explains the appearance of various languages ​​after the Flood.

A number of biblical scholars trace the connection of the legend of the Tower of Babel with the construction of high temple towers called ziggurats in Mesopotamia. The tops of the towers were used for religious rites and astronomical observations.

Fresco 1100.

The highest ziggurat (91 m high, one rectangular step and seven spiral ones - 8 in total) was located in Babylon. It was called Etemenanki, which means "the house where the heavens meet the earth." It is not known exactly when the original construction of this tower was carried out, but it already existed during the reign of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC).

Assyrian king Sennacherib in 689 BC e. destroyed Babylon, Etemenanki suffered the same fate. The ziggurat was restored by Nebuchadnezzar II. The Jews, forcibly resettled by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon after the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah, got acquainted with the culture and religion of Mesopotamia and, undoubtedly, knew about the existence of ziggurats.

During excavations in Babylon, the German scientist Robert Koldewey managed to discover the foundation and ruins of the tower. The tower referred to in the Bible was probably destroyed even before the era of Hammurabi. To replace it, another was built, which was erected in memory of the first. According to Koldewey, it had a square base, each side of which was 90 meters. The height of the tower was also 90 m, the first tier had a height of 33 m, the second - 18, the third and fifth - 6 m each, the seventh - the sanctuary of the god Marduk - was 15 m high. By today's standards, the structure reached a height of 30 storey skyscraper.

Calculations suggest that about 85 million bricks were used to build this tower. A monumental staircase led to the upper platform of the tower, where the temple rushed into the sky. The tower was part of a temple complex located on the banks of the Euphrates River. Clay tablets with inscriptions found by archaeologists suggest that each section of the tower had its own special meaning. The same tablets give information about the religious rituals that took place in this temple.

The tower stood on the left bank of the Euphrates in the Sahn plain, which literally translates as “frying pan”. It was surrounded by the houses of priests, temple buildings and houses for pilgrims who flocked here from all over Babylonia. The description of the Tower of Babel was left by Herodotus, who thoroughly examined it and, perhaps, even visited its top. This is the only documentary description of an eyewitness from Europe.

Tobias Verhaecht, The Tower Of Babel.

The Tower of Babel was a stepped eight-tiered pyramid lined with burnt bricks on the outside. Moreover, each tier had a strictly defined color. At the top of the ziggurat there was a sanctuary lined with blue tiles and decorated with golden horns (a symbol of fertility) at the corners. It was considered the dwelling place of the god Marduk, the patron of the city. In addition, inside the sanctuary were the gilded table and bed of Marduk. Stairs led to the tiers; religious processions rose along them. The ziggurat was a shrine that belonged to all the people, it was a place where thousands of people flocked to worship the supreme deity Marduk.

The upper platforms of the ziggurats were used not only for cult, but also for practical purposes: for the observation of the surrounding area by the guard soldiers. Cyrus, who took possession of Babylon after the death of Nebuchadnezzar, was the first conqueror to leave the city intact. He was struck by the scale of Etemenanki, and he not only forbade anything to be destroyed, but ordered that a monument be erected on his grave in the form of a miniature ziggurat, a small Tower of Babel.

Hendrick III van Cleve (1525 - 1589)

And yet the tower was again destroyed. The Persian king Xerxes left only the ruins that Alexander the Great saw on his way to India. He, too, was struck by the gigantic ruins - he, too, stood in front of them as if spellbound. Alexander the Great intended to build it again. “But,” as Strabo writes, “this work required a lot of time and effort, because the ruins would have to be removed by ten thousand people for two months, and he did not fulfill his plan, as he soon fell ill and died.”

Lucas van Valckenborch 1594

Lucas van Valckenborch 1595

At present, only the foundation and the lower part of the wall remain from the legendary Tower of Babel. But thanks to cuneiform tablets, there is a description of the famous ziggurat and even its image.

Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Tower of Babel 1564.

The plot of the Tower of Babel is widespread in Christian iconography - in numerous miniatures, handwritten and printed publications Bibles (for example, in a miniature of an English manuscript of the 11th century); as well as in mosaics and frescoes of cathedrals and churches (for example, the mosaic of the Cathedral of San Marco in Venice, the end of the 12th - the beginning of the 13th century).

Fresco of the Tower of Babel from the Venetian Cathedral of San Marco.

In Iraq, there are still towers of this type - very high, stepped or spiral. In Babylon itself, almost nothing reminds of the tower, only part of the wall and the foundation, as well as beautiful ancient reliefs, have been preserved there. royal palace in excavations.

The current building of the European Parliament is modeled after a painting of the unfinished Tower of Babel painted in 1563 by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. The motto of the European Parliament in French: "Many languages ​​- one voice" distorts the meaning of the biblical text. The building was built in such a way as to give the impression of being unfinished. In fact, this is the completed building of the European Parliament, the construction of which was completed in December 2000.