Mystery of the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel is neither a legend nor a myth

In the first book of Moses' Genesis, it is said: "The whole earth had one language and one dialect. People who moved from the East found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to each other: Let's make bricks and burn them with fire. And they became bricks instead of stones and earthen tar instead of lime.” 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.

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men were building. And he 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 the name Babylon was given to her; for there the Lord confounded the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over all the earth" (Genesis 1 of Moses, ch. 11, paragraphs 1-9).

So, according to Old Testament", different languages ​​\u200b\u200bappeared on the earth and was built tower of babel. But did this grandiose structure really exist?

The German archaeologist Robert Koldewey (1855-1925) tried to answer this question. From 1898 to 1917, he excavated at the site of ancient Babylon and discovered a foundation with ruins. But the scientist suggested that the biblical tower was destroyed long before King Hammurabi, who ruled in the first half of the 18th century BC. e. In memory of her, people erected another, no less majestic building.

According to Koldewey, it had a square base. The length of each side reached 90 meters. The tower was also 90 meters high and consisted of 7 tiers. The first tier was the highest. Its height reached 33 meters. The height of the second tier was 18 meters. The third, fourth, fifth and sixth tiers were the same in height. It was 6 meters. The last tier was a sanctuary to the god Marduk. Its height reached 15 meters.

The majestic building towered on the left bank of the Euphrates. Around were temple buildings, dwellings of priests and houses intended for pilgrims. The sanctuary at the top was lined with blue tiles and decorated with gold ornaments. Such a description of the architectural masterpiece of antiquity was left by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the 5th century BC. e. But apparently he already described the third tower, since the second was destroyed by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in the 7th century BC. e.

The third version of the biblical shrine was restored only 100 years later by the king of the New Babylonian kingdom, Nebuchadnezzar II, who also built the gardens of Babylon. But Herodotus was in Babylon already during the time of Persian rule. He was the only inhabitant of Europe who described the majestic structure. Here's what it looked like in his words:

"In one part of the city is royal palace surrounded by a wall. In another part of the city there is a huge building, consisting of seven towers stacked on top of each other. You can climb to the very top by an external staircase. Next to it are benches where you can relax. The top of the tower is crowned by a temple. It contains a table and a bed made of gold. The temple is overseen by a woman chosen from among the locals. Next to the majestic building is a sanctuary. It has an altar where animals are sacrificed."

This could see the Tower of Babel Herodotus

It should be noted that each city of the Babylonian kingdom had its own tower or ziggurat - a religious building consisting of truncated pyramids stacked on top of each other, and with a sanctuary at the top. But all of them were significantly inferior in height to the Tower of Babel. Koldewey believed that at least 80 million bricks were spent on its construction, and several generations of rulers built it.

The tower was destroyed several times by the conquerors, but then it was restored and decorated again. At the same time, the restored building became higher and higher. It was the central place of worship for the god Marduk and was visited by thousands of pilgrims every year.

When Persian king Cyrus took possession of Babylon, then forbade the destruction of the city. All buildings remained intact. However, his descendant Xerxes I behaved differently. At the beginning of his reign, the inhabitants of the great city rebelled. The uprising lasted a long time, and the rebels captured a huge territory, since most of the Persian army was in Asia Minor, preparing to attack Ancient Greece.

Only after a year was it possible to restore order, and the city of Babylon was stormed for 7 months. When he fell, the formidable Xerxes ordered the destruction of all religious shrines and the execution of the priests. As a result of the order of the lord, the Tower of Babel was destroyed. Only huge ruins remained of it.

According to legend, next to the tower stood a huge statue of the god Marduk made of pure gold. Her weight reached 600 kg. The statue was taken out of the city and sent to Persepolis, the capital of the Persian kingdom of the Achaemenid dynasty. Apparently it was melted down there. Thus, the eternal city lost the status of the capital, since main character, giving the right to do so, has been destroyed.

When Alexander the Great defeated the Persians and decided to make Babylon the capital of his empire, he was struck by the huge ruins left after the tower. The plans of the new lord included dismantling the rubble, and in their place to revive the greatest building. But this required tens of thousands of workers. At that time, the great commander could not single out such a number of people, as he planned a new grandiose campaign in the Mediterranean.

However, fate had its own way. The formidable conqueror suddenly died, and all his great plans have sunk into oblivion. Alexander was replaced by Diadochus Seleucus. On the Tigris River, he founded the new capital of his kingdom, Seleucia, and the great city began to decline. It never occurred to anyone to engage in grandiose construction work to restore the huge Tower of Babel.

After the Seleucids, the Parthians came to these lands, and then it was the turn of the Roman legions under the command of Trajan. The great city fell into complete decline, as trade routes already passed by. Indigenous people gradually died out, and the ancient buildings disappeared under a layer of earth. In the 7th century, only a small village inhabited by Arabs remained on the site of the once huge city. The rich historical past has sunk into the darkness of centuries, and with it the grandiose building built in honor of the god Marduk has become a distant history.

In what country was the Tower of Babel located? Does it exist now and where are its remains? We understand together with EG.

The name of the city of Babylon is mentioned in the sacred books - the Bible and the Koran. For a long time it was believed that in fact it did not exist at all, and the metaphors about the tower and pandemonium that are familiar today are taken from legends.

For several centuries, the inhabitants of Iraq did not even suspect that the hills near the outskirts of the modern city of Al-Hilla, a hundred kilometers from Baghdad, hide the ruins of the world's first metropolis and the very Tower of Babel. But in the XIX century there was a man who revealed to the world the secret of the ancient ruins. It was an archaeologist from Germany Robert Koldewey.

Like a phoenix bird

Reference: Babylon (in translation - "gates of the gods") was founded no later than the third millennium BC, located in the south of Ancient Mesopotamia (between the Tigris and Euphrates), in the region of Akkad. The Sumerians, one of the oldest peoples who settled here, called it Kadingirra. The city changed hands more than once during the invasions of numerous conquerors.B - I millennium BC e. it became the main city of the Babylonian kingdom created by the Amorites, where the descendants of the Sumerians and Akkadians lived.

Tsar Hammurabi(1793 -1750 BC) from the Amorite dynasty, having conquered all the significant cities of Mesopotamia, united most Mesopotamia and created a state with its capital in Babylon. Hammurabi is the author, in fact, of the first legislative code in history. The laws of Hammurabi written in cuneiform on clay tablets have come down to our time.

Under Hammurabi, Babylon began to grow rapidly. Many protective structures, palaces, temples were built here. The Babylonians had many gods, and therefore the temples were erected in honor of the goddess of healing Ninisina, the moon god Nanna, the thunder god Adad, the goddess of love, fertility and power Ishtar and other Sumero-Akkadian deities. But the main thing was Esagil - a temple dedicated to the patron of the city, the god Marduk.

However, the gods did not save Babylonia from the invasions of the invaders. At the end of the 17th century BC. e. The Babylonian kingdom was conquered by the Hittites, at the beginning of the 16th century BC. e. it passed to the Kassites, in the XIII century the Assyrians began to rule it, in the VII-VI - the Chaldeans, and in the IV century BC. e. the city of Babylon became the capital of the empire Alexander the Great. The conquerors did not spare the city, and therefore Babylon was repeatedly destroyed, so that in the end, like a Phoenix bird, it would again be reborn from the ashes.

City of Wonders

It is believed that Babylon reached its greatest prosperity under the Chaldean king Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled between 605 and 562 BC. He was the eldest son Nabopolassara founder of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty.

From an early age, Nebuchadnezzar ("the firstborn dedicated to the god Nabu") showed himself to be an excellent warrior. His army conquered several small states in the territory of the modern Middle East, and everything that was valuable there was taken to Babylonia. including free labor force, which turned the desert into an oasis with numerous channels.

Nebuchadnezzar pacified the recalcitrant Jews, who now and then rebelled against Babylonia. In 587 the Babylonian king destroyed Jerusalem and its main temple Solomon, took the sacred vessels from the temple and resettled the Jews under his supervision.

The "Babylonian captivity" of the Jews lasted 70 years - so much was measured to them in order to realize their mistakes, repent of their sins before God and again turn to the faith of their ancestors. They were allowed to return home when the Persian king Cyrus conquered Babylonia.

Oddly enough, but in his memoirs Nebuchadnezzar noted that most of all he was proud of the rebuilt cities and the roads that lie in them. Babylon would be the envy of many modern cities. It became the largest metropolis ancient world: it had a million inhabitants.

Focused here international trade science and the arts flourished. Its fortifications were impregnable: on all sides the city was surrounded by walls up to 30 meters thick with towers, high ramparts, and water tanks.

The beauty of Babylon was amazing. The streets were paved with tiles and bricks carved from rare rocks, the houses of the nobility are decorated with huge bas-reliefs, and the walls of numerous temples and palaces are decorated with images of mythical animals. To connect the East and West districts of the city, Nebuchadnezzar decided to build a bridge across the Euphrates River. This bridge, 115 meters long and 6 meters wide with a removable part for the passage of ships, is an engineering marvel of the time.

Paying tribute to the city, the king did not forget about his needs. He, according to an ancient source, tried a lot to "build a palace for the dwelling of my majesty in Babylon."

The palace had a throne room, richly decorated with images of columns and palm leaves, made in colored enamel. The palace was so beautiful that it was nicknamed the "Miracle of Mankind".

In the north of Babylon, on specially created stone elevations that looked like mountains, Nebuchadnezzar built a palace for his wife Amanis. She was from Media and missed her usual places. And then the king ordered to decorate the palace with lush vegetation, so that it would resemble the green oases of Media.

brought fertile soil and planted plants collected from all over the world. Water for irrigation was raised to the upper terraces by special pumps. The green waves descending in ledges looked like a gigantic stepped pyramid.

The Babylonian "Hanging Gardens", which laid the foundation for the legend of the "Hanging Gardens of Babylon" (the legendary Asian conqueror and queen of Babylon, who lived in a different period), became the seventh wonder of the world.

Feasts of Belshazzar

Nebuchadnezzar II ruled Babylonia for more than 40 years, and it seemed that nothing could stop the city from flourishing further. But the Jewish prophets predicted his fall 200 years before. This happened during the reign of the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar II (according to other sources - the son) Belshazzar.

According to the biblical legend, at that time the troops of the Persian king Cyrus approached the walls of Babylon. However, the Babylonians, confident in the strength of the walls and protective structures, were not very worried about this. The city lived luxuriously and cheerfully. The Jews generally considered it an immoral city, where debauchery reigns. King Belshazzar gathered at least a thousand people for the next feast and ordered wine to be served to the guests in sacred vessels from the Jerusalem temple, which had previously been used only to serve God. The nobles drank from these vessels and mocked the God of the Jews.

And suddenly a human hand appeared in the air and drew incomprehensible words in Aramaic on the wall: “Me, me, take, uparsin.” The amazed king called the prophet Daniel, who was still a youth in Babylonian captivity, and asked to translate the inscription. It read: “Numbered, calculated, weighed, divided,” Daniel explained that this was a message from God to Belshazzar, in which a quick death was predicted for the king and his kingdom. Nobody believed the prediction. But it came true on the same October night in 539 BC. e.

Cyrus took the city by cunning: he ordered the waters of the Euphrates River to be diverted into a special canal and entered Babylon along the drained channel. Belshazzar was killed by Persian soldiers, Babylon fell, its walls were destroyed. Later it was conquered by the Arab tribes. The glory of the great city has sunk into oblivion, it itself has turned into ruins, and the “gates of the gods” have closed forever for humanity.

Was there a tower?

Many Europeans who visited Babylon looked for traces of the tower, which the biblical legend told about.

Chapter 11 of the book of Genesis contains a legend about what the descendants of Noah, who escaped the Great Flood, planned to do. They spoke the same language and, moving from the east, came to a plain in the land of Shinar (in the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates), where they settled. And then we decided: let's make bricks and build ourselves a city and a tower, as high as the heavens, and make a name for ourselves, before we are scattered over the face of all the earth.

The tower kept growing, rising into the clouds. Watching this construction, God remarked: “Behold, there is one people, and one language for all; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they have planned to do.

He did not like that people imagined to exalt themselves above the sky, and he decided to mix their language so that they would no longer understand each other. And so it happened.

Construction came to a halt as everyone began to speak different languages, people were scattered throughout the earth, and the city where the Lord "confounded the language of the whole earth" was given the name Babylon, which means "mixing." Thus, the original "Babylonian Pillar-CREATION" is the creation tall building, and not a heap-small and confusion.

The story of the Tower of Babel would probably have remained a legend if during the excavations of Babylon no traces of a colossal structure were found. These were the ruins of a temple.

In ancient Mesopotamia, temples were built that were completely different from the usual European ones - tall towers, which were called ziggurats. Their peaks served as sites for religious rites and astronomical observations.

Among them stood out the Babylonian ziggurat Etemenanki, which meant "House where heaven meets earth." Its height is 91 meters, it had eight tiers, seven of which went in a spiral. The total height was about 100 meters.

It was estimated that at least 85 million bricks were needed to build the tower. A two-storey temple towered on the upper platform, a monumental staircase led to it.

At the top there was a sanctuary dedicated to the god Marduk, and a golden bed intended for him, as well as gilded horns. At the foot of the Tower of Babel, in the Lower Temple, stood a statue of Marduk made of pure gold, its age was 2.5 tons.

It is believed that the temple existed during the reign of Hammurabi, it was destroyed and rebuilt more than once. The last time was under Nebuchadnezzar. In 331 BC. e. by order of Alexander the Great, the tower was dismantled, they were going to reconstruct it, but the death of Alexander the Great prevented this plan from being carried out. Only majestic ruins and biblical legends remained in the memory of mankind.

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 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 had such big sizes, which could include both). 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 of 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.

In European painting, the most famous painting on this subject is Pieter Brueghel the Elder's "Babylon Pandemic" (1563). A more stylized geometric structure was depicted by M. Escher in an engraving in 1928.

Literature

The plot of the Tower of Babel has been widely understood in European literature:

• Franz Kafka wrote a parable on this subject called "The coat of arms of the city" (Emblem of the city)
• Clive Lewis, The Foulest Might novel
• Victor Pelevin, novel "Generation P"
• Neil Stevenson in The Avalanche gives an interesting version of the construction and meaning of the Tower of Babel.

Music

It should be noted that many of the above songs contain the word Babylon in the title, but they do not mention the Tower of Babel.

Theatre

Categories:

• ancient babylon
• Non-embodied ultra-tall structures
• Plots of the Old Testament
• Concepts and terms in the Bible
• Ziggurat
• tower of babel
• Genesis
• Jewish mythology

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See what the "Tower of Babel" is in other dictionaries:

TOWER OF BABYLON- and the confusion of languages, two legends about Ancient Babylon (combined in the canonical text of the Bible into a single story): 1) about the construction of the city and the confusion of languages, and 2) about the construction of the tower and the scattering of people. These legends are dated to the "beginning of history" ... ... Encyclopedia of mythology

TOWER OF BABYLON- THE TOWER OF BABYLON. Painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. a building that, according to biblical tradition (Genesis 11:1-9), the descendants of Noah erected in the land of Shinar (Babylonia) in order to reach heaven. God, angered by the plan and actions of the builders, ... ... Collier Encyclopedia

tower of babel- in the Bible, a legend dedicated to the beginning of the history of mankind (after the flood), when they built a city and a tower to heaven (the first great construction of people). If the city was built by settled residents who knew how to burn bricks, then the tower was built by nomads from the East; ... ... Historical dictionary

TOWER OF BABYLON- the most important episode from the story of ancient mankind in the book. Genesis (11.19). 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... Orthodox Encyclopedia

tower of babel- Babylonian pandemonium. Tower of Babel. Painting by P. Brueghel the Elder. 1563. Museum of the History of Art. Vein. Babel. Tower of Babel. Painting by P. Brueghel the Elder. 1563. Museum of the History of Art. Vein. Tower of Babel in ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary"The World History"

Babel Tower- the most important episode from the story of ancient mankind in the book of Genesis (see Gen. 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 the city and the tower, ... ... Orthodoxy. Dictionary-reference

tower of babel- Book. About a very tall building, structure. On that day, the ocean gave people a real massacre ... The ether was full of messages about the emergency condition of the ships of many countries. Under the blows, the "Tower of Babel" of our days collapsed, a cyclopean structure, ... ... Phraseological dictionary of the Russian literary language

To the question Where is the Tower of Babel in our time, asked by the author Prematurity the best answer is The ruins of the tower are located on the banks of the Euphrates, about 90 km south of modern Baghdad in Iraq.
The Tower of Babel (Heb. מגדל בבל‎ Migdal Bavel) is a tower to which the biblical tradition is dedicated, set forth in the first nine verses of Chapter 11 of Genesis. According to this legend, after the Flood, humanity was represented by one people who spoke the same language. From the east, people came to the land of Shinar (in the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates), where they decided to build a city (Babylon) and a tower as high as heaven in order to "make a name for themselves." The construction of the tower was interrupted by God, who created new languages ​​for different people, because of which they ceased to understand each other, could not continue the construction of the city and the tower, and scattered throughout the earth. Thus, the story of the Tower of Babel explains the appearance of various languages ​​after the Flood.

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 on top of the other. An outer staircase leads up around 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. Yes, and not one no man spends 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.