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- 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 habitat 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 is the ruins of this tower for a long time classified as biblical. When Alexander the Great lived in the city, he proposed to rebuild 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.

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 of 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, 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 of the ancient world: it had a million inhabitants.

International trade was concentrated here, 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 were decorated with huge bas-reliefs, and the walls of numerous temples and palaces were 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.

They 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 on the wall incomprehensible words in Aramaic: "Mene, mene, 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 stopped 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 of a high structure, and not a bunch of little 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, it was going to be reconstructed, 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 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 a great tower, one stadia long and wide.On this tower stands a second, and upon it another tower, altogether eight towers one upon the other. outdoor staircase leads up around all these towers. There are benches in the middle of the stairs - they must be for rest. A large temple was erected on the last tower. In this temple there is a large, luxuriously furnished bed and next to it is a golden table. However, there is no image of the deity there. And not a single person 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.

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. Was still in the sacred precinct at the time about which 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 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.

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.”

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 ceased to understand each other, abandoned their idea, and the place where this significant historical event took place was called Babylon, which means “mixing” in Aramaic.

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. The decoding of the inscriptions made it possible to establish that they contain a detailed description of the “Stela 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, 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, when building this grandiose temple, King Nebuchadnezzar used captive slaves captured in the Kingdom of Judah, who spoke different dialects, and such a variety of languages ​​\u200b\u200bstruck 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 of 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 - 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. There have been and still are a great many languages ​​and dialects on the planet, and a huge number of them are no longer subject to restoration.

Unfortunately, these initially imperceptible losses turn into complex puzzles over time, 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 the the greatest mysteries stories.

Who has not heard the myth about the legendary Tower of Babel? People learn about this unfinished structure to the skies even in deep childhood. This name has become a household name. But not everyone knows that tower of babel really exists. This is evidenced by the records of ancient and modern archaeological research.

Tower of Babel: the real story

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 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 the Etemenanki 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.

Tower of Babel: architectural features

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 Tower of Babel itself appeared under King Nabupalassar, and his successor Nebuchadnezzar took over the final construction of the peak.

The huge ziggurat of Etemenanki 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. The Tower of Babel was built with 85 million bricks. tower of babel 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 habitat 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. Esagila was restored in 275, but tower of babel has not been rebuilt. Only its foundation and the immortal mention in the texts remained a reminder of the former great building.

Tower of Babel: legend and real history

The Tower of Babel is an ancient wonder of the world that adorned itself. According to legend tower of babel reached the sky. However, the Gods were angry for the intention to get to heaven and punished people by giving them different languages. As a result, the construction of the tower was not completed.


The legend is best 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.

The descendants of Noah descend to the plain. After the flood, all people spoke the same language, since they were the descendants of Noah alone. Over time, they decided to look for a land more suitable for life and descended from the mountains to a flat plain, which they called Shinar (the meaning of this ancient word scientists have not been able to find out. Shinar is located in the south of Mesopotamia - a country through which two great rivers flow south and flow into the Persian Gulf, the swift Tigris with steep banks and smoothly carrying its muddy waters Euphrates. The ancient Greeks called this country Mesopotamia. [from the words "meso" - between, and "potamos" - river, hence our words Mesopotamia or Mesopotamia come from, and it is more correct to use the term "Mesopotamia", because we mean here not only the country between the Tigris and the Euphrates, but also adjacent to these rivers from the west and east of the territory].

People are building the first city on earth and a tower. There was no stone in Mesopotamia, and people built their dwellings from clay. The fortress walls and other structures and structures were made of clay, dishes were made of clay, special tablets for writing were made of clay, which replaced books and notebooks for the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia.

Bricks made of clay and air-dried were used for construction. [such a brick is called raw]. But somehow they noticed that a brick that fell into the fire acquires the strength of a stone. The Bible tells how people, having learned how to make baked bricks, decided to build the first city on earth, and in it - a huge tower (pillar), which with its top would reach the sky [let's not forget that the creators of the Bible considered the sky to be solid]. The tower was supposed to glorify the name of the builders and serve as a guide for travelers.

The builders got together, and the work began to boil: some sculpted bricks, others fired them, others brought bricks to the construction site, the fourth built the floors of the tower, which rose higher and higher. Natural asphalt, which in the Bible is called earthen tar, was used to fasten the bricks together. [whole asphalt lakes were in the south of Mesopotamia in those places where oil came to the surface of the earth].

God is mixing people's languages. Seeing a huge tower under construction, God was alarmed that people would really climb into heaven and do something in his own dwelling. He said to himself: “Here 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 decided to do.”

God came down and confused the languages ​​of the people - they stopped understanding each other's speech. Construction could not continue, the tower was abandoned unfinished, and people dispersed from there all over the earth. The city where the tower was built was called Babylon (“mixing”), since God mixed the languages ​​\u200b\u200bthere ...

Once a year, God spends the night in his temple.