Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel (Syriac: ܡܓܕܠܐ ܕܒܒܠ‎, Maḡdlā d-Bāḇēl; Hebrew: מִגְדַּל בָּבֶל‎‎‎, Migdal Bāḇēl) is a Near Eastern etiological myth that is recorded in the Jewish Tanakh's first book (Genesis); it is meant to explain the origin of different languages. According to the story, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating eastward, came to the land of Shinar (Hebrew: שנער‎‎). There they agreed to build a city and a tower "tall enough to reach heaven"; seeing this, God confounded their speech so that they could no longer understand each other and scattered them around the world.

The Tower of Babel has been associated with known structures according to some modern scholars, notably the Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk by Nabopolassar, king of Babylonia (c. 610 BCE). The Great Ziggurat of Babylon was 91 metres (300 ft) in height. Alexander the Great ordered it demolished circa 331 BCE in preparation for a reconstruction that his death forestalled. A Sumerian story with some similar elements is told in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.

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