Babel
The first city in the land of Shinar
The term “Tower of Babel” does not appear anywhere in Scripture. More than a tower, the biblical Babel is described as a city with a tower:
Genesis 11:1-9
King James Version
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off [left undone] to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
The following verses also clarify that Babel was a city, listing it first among a group of cities that were established after the biblical Flood:
Genesis 10:8-10
King James Version
8 And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.
10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.
This suggests that Babel was the first city to come up in “the land of Shinar,” also identified previously in Genesis 11:2. Scholars agree that the land of Shinar was another name for Sumer, the oldest known civilization. Thus, the oldest city of Sumer should point us in the direction of Babel:
The Sumerians called themselves “the black headed people” and their land, in cuneiform script, was simply “the land” or “the land of the black headed people”and, in the biblical Book of Genesis, Sumer is known as Shinar. (Mark, “Sumer”)
The ‘land of Shinar’ referred to reflects the old Sumerian name for southern Mesopotamia, Sumer. (Finkel)
The account of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 offers numerous points for comparison with the ancient world. The narrative is set in the Land of Shinar, recognized as the region known as Sumer in southern Mesopotamia. (Walton)
Archaeologically, Eridu at Tell Abu Shahrain has been considered the oldest city in Mesopotamia and possibly the oldest city in the world. It has also been suggested as the location of the Tower of Babel due to its possible status as the “first city” and a massive, ancient ziggurat constructed there. (Kennedy, Unearthing the Bible)
Archaeologically, Eridu is often considered the earliest known city in the world, and the E-Abzu temple ziggurat is the largest and oldest known, yet it was also unfinished.
Based on Sumerian architecture and the method in which the largest tower temples and monuments were built in the ancient world, the Tower of Babel was probably a massive ziggurat. These ziggurats were designed as large stepped-platform structures made from fired clay bricks and constructed with a temple at the top as a house for the gods of heaven or as a link between heaven and earth. (Kennedy, Unearthing the Bible)
The Sumerian city of Eridu fits the description of Babel quite closely, even containing the remains of an unfinished tower, called a “ziggurat.” Famous artist renditions of the tower of Babel often depict a very tall structure, akin to the Tower of Pisa, reaching stupendous heights, but these depictions are not accurate. The first civilization after the Flood would have been incapable of constructing such a tall edifice and a more realistic expectation, which is supported by archaeological evidence, is the ziggurat. Ziggurats were religious sites connecting earth to heaven, as Genesis 11:4 implies (see also Daniel 4:18-22 for a vision associating reaching unto heaven with dominion), and the Sumerians were the first to build them:
Ziggurat, pyramidal stepped temple tower that is an architectural and religious structure characteristic of the major cities of Mesopotamia (now mainly in Iraq) from approximately 2200 until 500 BCE. The ziggurat was always built with a core of mud brick and an exterior covered with baked brick. It had no internal chambers and was usually square or rectangular, averaging either 170 feet (50 metres) square or 125 × 170 feet (40 × 50 metres) at the base. Approximately 25 ziggurats are known, being equally divided among Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria. (Britannica, “ziggurat”)
One single architectural feature dominated the landscape of early Mesopotamian cities: towers known as ziggurats. (Walton)
The ziggurat was a ladder to heaven to allow the king’s voice, confident, intercessional or pleading, the best chance of being heard. We are not well informed about the exact use of the building or of the small temple that reposed on top, but its function as a royal ‘hot line’ to heaven is beyond dispute. (Finkel)
It [the ziggurat] is thought to symbolize a mountain; the tower was the high place of the god, the link between earth and heaven. . . . It originated with the Sumerians and the first ziggurats were modest constructions but, by 2000 BC, more imposing examples dominated the great cities of southern Mesopotamia. (Kipfer)
The Sumerians themselves viewed Eridu as the first sacred place of their civilization, also where kingship began (consider Genesis 10:10):
Not long before 3000 BC, the first true cities in the world arose in Mesopotamia. Later Sumerian written tradition names the first place in Sumer, the earliest shrine: Eridu. Lost to the world for over two thousand years, Eridu was identified in 1853 by John Taylor, the British Vice-Consul in Basra who also did pioneering archaeological work at Ur, the city of Abraham. . . .
. . . The Sumerians believed that it [Eridu] was the site of the mound of creation, the first land which rose from the primal sea at the beginning of time. They thought that kingship – that is political society – first came down to earth here. Their myths also describe how the arts of civilization were initially possessed by Eridu before any other city. It originally stood at the edge of a great sea of fresh water stretching out to the south, the Apsu, from which apparently comes our word ‘abyss.’ The great temple here, the most ancient shrine in Sumer, was also named Apsu. (Wood)
The Sumerian King List cites Eridu as the “city of the first kings”, stating, “After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridu” and the city was looked back upon by the various city-states of Mesopotamia as a metropolis of a ‘golden age’ . . . . (Mark, “Eridu”)
The ancients certainly believed Eridu to be the first city . . . while Sumerian scribes maintained that kingship in the land first came from heaven to be established at Eridu. (Mark, “Eridu”)
The city in direct succession to Eridu was Uruk. Uruk also happens to be the city immediately following Babel in Genesis 10:10:
Sixty-five kilometres from Eridu, on the other, sunrise, side of the fickle Buranun River, another settlement grew around another temple. It first became known as Unug, later Uruk in the land of Sumer, which the Hebrews would one day call Erech in the land of Shinar (and some think gave Iraq its present name). (Kriwaczek)
In the Bible, Uruk (Erech) appears in the list of the first four cities mentioned in Genesis after the descendants of Noah began to disperse and settle in “Shinar” or Sumer . . . . (Kennedy, The Essential Archaeological)
At that point [the Uruk Period] Uruk replaced Eridu as main center of urban civilization. This important shift appears to be reflected in the later Sumerian myth “Inanna and Enki” which describes how Inanna, the goddess of Uruk, stole all the arts of civilization from Enki, the god of Eridu. (Beaulieu)
Finally Inanna‐NUN, often translated as Princely‐Inanna (NUN is the sign for “prince”), could also represent Inanna‐of‐Eridu (NUN followed by the determinative KI appears later as the sign for the city of Eridu), possibly reflecting the principal motif of the later myth “Inanna and Enki,” Inanna’s theft of the attributes of civilization from Eridu and their transfer to Uruk. (Beaulieu)
Uruk’s link to Eridu is significant in that Eridu’s initial importance was later eclipsed by the rise of Uruk. This transferrence of power and prestige has been seen by some scholars (Samuel Noah Kramer and Paul Kriwaczek among them) as the beginnings of urbanization in Mesopotamia and a significant shift from the rural model of agrarian life to an urban-centered model. The story of Inanna and the God of Wisdom, in which the goddess of Uruk takes away the sacred meh (gifts of civilization) from Enki, the god of Eridu, can be seen as an ancient story symbolizing this shift in the paradigm of Sumerian culture. The prosperous commercial center of Uruk superceded the rural Eridu. (Mark, “Eridu”)
Every Mesopotamian knew that civilization had been born at Eridu, but its god Enki had kept its principles, . . . hidden away in his Apsu, reserved for divine use, and unavailable to humans. By thus liberating them, the goddess Inanna, queen of sex, had acquired for her people the ideology of progress and development, and had made it possible for her city Uruk, on the sunrise side of the Great Rushing Flood, to become the world’s first true city. (Kriwaczek)
Throughout the ages, Mesopotamian tradition identified Eridu as the most ancient of cities, as a holy place, the very site of creation. Mesopotamian notions of the city have little to do with size, population density or political status. . . . It was not a centre of political power during any of the historical periods. Nor was it very important economically or strategically. Eridu’s importance was mainly symbolic. It stood for Mesopotamia’s link with the beginning of the world, proof of the astounding longevity of its civilization. It was also very holy. (Leick)
The city of Babylon
Some suggest that the account of Babel is mythology that alludes to a magnificent ziggurat finalized much later in the city of Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar II (also Nebuchadrezzar), a project started by his father Nabopolassar. The reason given is that the Jews must have been so impressed with the structure during their exile in Babylon that sentiments made their way into Genesis in mythological form, penned by authors other than Moses (the traditional author of Genesis) (“How Was The”):
. . . [Nebuchadrezzar II] is best remembered for the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem in 587 BCE and for the ensuing Babylonian captivity of the Jews. He also revitalized Babylon, constructing the wondrous hanging gardens and rebuilding the Temple of Marduk and its accompanying ziggurat. (Britannica, “Babylonia”)
The project to make Babylon into a metropolis grand enough to represent the aspirations of an empire, however, was initiated by his [Nebuchadrezzar II] father, Nabopolassar. He . . . began the most ambitious architectural undertaking of all, the reconstruction of Etemenanki, ‘Foundation of Heaven and Earth’, as the ‘Tower of Babel’ or ziggurat was called. (Leick)
Nebuchadrezzar duly continued his father’s work and saw it [the Etemenanki ziggurat] to completion after some forty-three years. It has been calculated that at least 17 million bricks had to be made and fired. The sight of the building, even before completion, made such an impression on the exiled Jews that the story of the Tower of Babel was never to be forgotten. (Leick)
This view conflates Babel with the later city of Babylon, which housed this great Etemenanki ziggurat. The Sumerians and Babylonians were not the same people, however (“Sites associated with”; “A Short History”). Sumer had fallen by the time Nabopolassar began constructing the Etemenanki ziggurat. Moreover, the ziggurat of Babel was never fully completed (Genesis 11:8), while the ziggurat of Babylon was:
The biblical tale never identifies the city [of Babel] as Babylon, only that the tower is built “upon a plain in the land of Shinar,” which has been understood to mean Sumer. The term ‘Tower of Babel’ also never occurs in the Bible as the site God visits is only called “the city” or “the city and the tower.” Still, the association [with Babylon] has stuck . . . . (Mark, “Ziggurat”)
The subject of the history of Babylon cannot be studied without first considering the context of the rise of civilization in that part of the world. By the end of the fourth millennium southern Iraq had acquired most of the distinctive traits that would make it one of the first great civilizations in history, notably the development of irrigation technology which provided the foundations for a prosperous agrarian society, the invention of writing and the emergence of bookkeeping and bureaucracy, and a communal life focused on the city and its temples. However, Babylon played no leading role in these developments. (Beaulieu)
Some of the earliest cities [of Mesopotamia], such as Sippar, Borsippa and Kish in the north, and Ur, Uruk and Eridu in the south formed the endpoints of what became that complex network of cities and canals. Girsu and Nippur were highly important religious centres, but other cities, such as Larsa, Eshnunna, Babylon and Isin didn’t really emerge as such until after the end of Sumerian civilisation in circa 2000 BC. (Kessler)
Though traces of prehistoric settlement exist, Babylon’s development as a major city was late by Mesopotamian standards; no mention of it existed before the 23rd century BCE. (Saggs)
Built on the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia during the late third millennium, Babylon’s ruins are located about 55 miles (88 km) south of Baghdad, Iraq . . . . (Saggs)
During the Sumerian Uruk Period (4100-2900 BCE) ziggurats were raised in every city in honor of that community’s patron deity. The ziggurat/temple was not a public house of worship, but the earthly home of the god of the city, who was attended by the high priest and lesser priests of the temple complex. Ziggurat construction continued through the Early Dynastic Period of Mesopotamia (2900-2334 BCE) and was then adopted by the later Akkadian, Babylonian, and other civilizations of the region. (Mark, “Ziggurat”)
Babylon’s cultural legacy was enhanced by previous Akkadian and Sumerian cultural achievements, which included the cuneiform writing system, a significant tool for today’s knowledge of the history and evolution of the region [southern Mesopotamia] in general and Babylon in particular. (“Babylon”)
Before Babylon’s rise to political prominence (c. 1850 BCE), however, the area [southeastern Mesopotamia] was divided into two countries: Sumer in the southeast and Akkad in the northwest.
. . .
The history of Sumer and Akkad is one of constant warfare. The Sumerian city-states fought one another for the control of the region and rendered it vulnerable to invasion from Akkad and from its neighbour to the east, Elam. Despite the series of political crises that marked their history, however, Sumer and Akkad developed rich cultures. . . .
This cultural heritage was adopted by the Sumerians’ and Akkadians’ successors, the Amorites [Babylonians], a western Semitic tribe that had conquered all of Mesopotamia by about 1900 BCE. Under the rule of the Amorites, which lasted until about 1600 BCE, Babylon became the political and commercial centre of the Tigris-Euphrates area, and Babylonia became a great empire, encompassing all of southern Mesopotamia and part of Assyria to the north. The ruler largely responsible for this rise to power was Hammurabi (c. 1792–1750 BCE), the sixth king of the 1st dynasty of Babylon . . . . (Britannica, “Babylonia”)
. . . Amorite rulers would move the civilized and civilizing arts and sciences to new heights. Their time could be said to be the veritable golden age of Mesopotamian civilization. They would forge all the different ethnic groups into a new people: the Babylonians. Their state would be centred on a new city: Babylon. (Kriwaczek)
The region we call Babylonia corresponds by and large to the southern half of the modern Republic of Iraq, beginning north of its present capital Baghdad and extending all the way to the shores of the Persian Gulf. This region acquired the designation “Babylonia” quite late. For most of its history Babylonia was known as “Sumer and Akkad” and the dividing line between these two entities ran near the city of Nippur. By the end of the third and the beginning of the second millennia the kings of Ur, Isin, and Babylon often claimed and effectively exercised kingship over Sumer and Akkad. The rulers of the Babylonian empire in the sixth century still bore the title “king of Sumer and Akkad” in their inscriptions, although it had by then become an archaism. (Beaulieu)
Ancient Mesopotamia had many languages and cultures; its history is broken up into many periods and eras; it had no real geographic unity, and above all no permanent capital city, so that by its very variety it stands out from other civilizations with greater uniformity, particularly that of Egypt. The script and the pantheon constitute the unifying factors, but in these also Mesopotamia shows its predilection for multiplicity and variety. (Soden et al.)
The older ziggurat of Eridu with its direct association to the land of Shinar (Sumer) and its more rudimentary construction better matches the account of Babel. Genesis 11:3 states that baked bricks were used in the construction and this technique is observed for the first time precisely in the city of Eridu. This strengthens the case that the events of Babel are very close to this time period, and not a mythical allusion to the later ziggurat of Babylon:
The great Ziggurat of Amar-Suen (r. 1982-1973 BCE), son of Shulgi of Ur, in the center of the city [of Eridu] has been associated with the Biblical Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis and the city itself with the Biblical city of Babel. This association springs from archaeological discoveries which support the claim that the Ziggurat of Amar-Suen more closely resembles the description of the biblical tower than any description of the ziggurat at Babylon.
Further, the Babylonian historian Berossus (l. c. 200 BCE), who was a major source for later Greek historians, seems to be clearly referring to Eridu when he writes of ‘Babel’ as ‘Babylon’. His ‘Babylon’ is in the southern marshes of the Euphrates and is patronized by the god of wisdom and fresh water. This association strongly suggests that Eridu is the original biblical Babel as the story of the great Ziggurat of Amar-Suen was most likely passed down orally before Berossus set the legendary structure down in writing. (Mark, “Eridu”)
A great ziggurat once rose up in Eridu, built by Amar-Sin, son of Shulgi, as a counterpart to the temple of Ur. It was, however, never completed, its construction halted by the fall of the empire. This looming, half-built ‘skyscraper’ across the plains from the city of Ur is an even stronger candidate for the original Tower of Babel. The eerie, abandoned building site must have made a powerful impression on the people of Mesopotamia who came after the destruction of Ur – perhaps so powerful that they passed on its fate as a tale of architectural ambition undone by man’s hubris. (Crawford)
There were problems in the south of Mesopotamia where dry bricks did not meet the building requirements, because it was irresistible to moisture, in addition to the high groundwater levels in the area, the lack of stone and the difficulty of carrying it out of northern Mesopotamia. At the same time, people already knew ceramics and its properties that were resistant to moisture, so the builders began to burn bricks before being built, and thereby appeared burnt bricks with new properties such as being resistant to humidity. Moreover, for the first time evidence of the baked brick appeared during the Uruk period, and exactly in the buildings of Eridu city. (Hnaihen)
No baked bricks have been found earlier than the Uruk period (latter part of the fourth millennium). (Walton)
No baked bricks have yet been reported before the Uruk period, save for an anomalous instance in Gawra XIII. (Moorey)
We can derive a more sure indication of the earliest date for the building of the tower of Babel from the fact that the builders used baked bricks extensively (v. 3 almost implies exclusively) as a building material. Baked bricks were very expensive in Mesopotamia because fuel was so scarce, and their use shows how committed the builders were to making a luxurious and impressive building. This points to the age of urbanism; but the testimony of the baked bricks is even more specific. For we know when baked bricks first appear in the archaeological record of the ancient Near East as building materials.
Nor are we arguing from silence. There are hundreds of archaeological sites in the ancient Near East which have architectural remains. A number of them display layer after layer of architectural remains covering many centuries or even millennia. . . .
The ancient Near Eastern archaeological data regarding building materials used in the ancient Near East is so abundant and clear that every modern scholar writing about the history of architecture in the Near East comes to the same conclusion: although unbaked brick was extensively used for architecture from c. 8500 b.c. to Christian times, baked brick, though used occasionally for such things as drains or walkways, did not make an architectural appearance until c. 3500 b.c. and it was rarely used in architecture until c. 3100 b.c. Whether viewed in terms of breadth as at Chatal Hüyük with its dozens of unearthed buildings or in terms of depth as at Eridu with its eighteen successive building levels from c. 5000 to c. 2100 b.c., the archaeological data from the Near East universally testify that prior to c. 3100 b.c. the bricks used in architecture were unbaked. Indeed, Jacquetta Hawkes indicates in her archaeological survey that baked brick was not used for architecture anywhere in the entire world until c. 3000 b.c. The use of baked brick in the tower of Babel indicates very clearly, therefore, that it was not built before c. 3500 to 3000 b.c. (Seely)
The Babel and Babylon dilemma
The Old Testament uses the same Hebrew word for the city of Babel and the city of Babylon (“H894 - bāḇel - Strong’s”), but as we have seen, Babylon came to exist only later in the timeline. The intent seemingly was to associate the two cities together, but why? There are possible explanations. Similarities do exist between Babylonian culture and the more ancient Sumerian one, as evident in the adoption of ziggurats by the Babylonians. Additionally, records indicate that the Babylonians sometimes referred to Babylon as Eridu (the first city of Sumer/Shinar, a strong candidate for Babel) and vice versa. The Babylonians felt they had a common connection to this primeval city of southern Mesopotamia, although Babylon and Eridu were geographically separate cities:
Archaeologists have unearthed sixteen levels at Eridu, which forms the largest and best known Ubaid [Sumerian] site and the one with the longest history. . . .
. . . we can single out traits of the Ubaid culture that herald emblematic aspects of the later Babylonian civilization. First and foremost, the Ubaid culture witnessed the development of the tripartite building characterized by a central rectangular space flanked by two rows of auxiliary or storage rooms, which became later the distinctive plan for Babylonian temples. (Beaulieu)
Another city whose name became interchangeable with Babylon was Eridu. The lexical list Erimhus V 26 and the topographical list TIN.TIRki I 21 and V 90–91 show that Eridu was a name for Babylon proper. . . . In the Neo-Babylonian period the king of Babylon occasionally called himself LUGAL NUNki, meaning king of Eridu (in Babylon). (Dalley, “Babylon as a”)
There is quite a range of different types of evidence indicating that “Babylon” was the name given deliberately to other cities in Babylonia by the end of the second millennium B.C. (Dalley, “Babylon as a”)
The Babylonians later viewed Eridu as their oldest city, the earliest one in their canonical list of antediluvian cities, and archaeology has confirmed this ancient belief in the city’s temporal priority. (Beaulieu)
Eridu’s reputation in later times as the first shrine was amply justified by the archaeological sequence. (Leick)
A district in Babylon was also named after Eridu, continuing this tradition:
Hammurabi’s [early king of Babylon] conquests, and his ambitious programme of law and education that accompanied them, enabled him to promote his city. Even before then he had associated his kingship with the oldest city, Eridu, by holding his coronation ceremony there. . . . At that time or a little later, Babylon began to incorporate the gods of those cities into its own walls, by setting up branch temples. This move allowed the area of Babylon in which a branch temple stood to bear the name of the parent city, so that districts in Babylon were named ‘Eridu’, ‘Ku’ara’, and so on. In exchange the parent city might be called a ‘Babylon’.
. . .
Eridu, as a name for a district of Babylon, was the most sacred area which encompassed the great temple and ziggurat of Marduk [the Etemenanki ziggurat]. (Dalley, The Mystery of)
The Babylonians went a step further and began revising old king lists of southern Mesopotamia, desiring to claim the coveted title of “first city” which belonged to Eridu:
Eridu was revered as the oldest city in Sumer, according to the king lists, and its patron god was Ea (Enki), “lord of the sweet waters that flow under the earth.” (Britannica, “Eridu”)
Before Babylon began to record the existence of its earliest kings in the nineteenth century BC, it was a place of so little importance that it played no part in the great myths and epics of earlier times. The name of Gilgamesh, and the many stories about him, are not linked to the city, nor is any version of the Flood story, nor the myths of Etana, Anzu, Ishtar’s Descent to the Underworld, Nergal, or Ereshkigal. Even when the Epic of Atrahasis, with the Creation of mankind and the Flood as its central themes, was written around the nineteenth century BC, the city of Babylon did not feature. Babylon inserted itself into the mythological past through subsequent compositions, most notably the Enūma Eliš (Epic of Creation). This shows how strong the tradition of those earlier myths was, and how the kings of Babylon accepted and revered the antiquity of the archaic cities, eventually adjusting the Sumerian King-List so that Babylon replaced other versions to insert itself as the first city in human history to have a king. (Dalley, The City of)
The Babylonian Epic of Creation has been called the sacred text of ancient Mesopotamia. It was recited at the great rituals of the New Year Festival in Babylon at the spring equinox, developing and revising a collective memory of a mythological past, replacing the Sumerian King-List by describing how Babylon was the first city ever built by the gods on earth, rather than older versions which named Kish or Kuʾara or Eridu as the first. One of Babylon’s quarters was named ‘Eridu’, another ‘Kuʾara’, to assimilate an older tradition, in order to represent Babylon as the first city to receive kingship. (Dalley, The City of)
The concept of Babylon as the first city arose quite naturally in the Cassite period. There was a tradition of first cities among the Sumerians . . . . Babylon had taken over the tradition that previously belonged to Eridu. This is certain because even the name Eridu is used for Babylon. . . . When Nebuchadnezzar I calls himself “regent of Eridu”, he means of course Babylon. (Lambert)
A later Babylonian creation myth records the deliberate ambiguity between Eridu and Babylon:
A [later Babylonian creation] myth known as The Founding of Eridu claimed that Babylon and Eridu were essentially the same city, which allowed Babylon the key role as first city:
No city had yet been built, no living creature had been placed there.
Nippur had not been made, Ekur had not been built,
Uruk had not been made, Eanna had not been built, . . .
All the lands were sea . . .
At that time Eridu was built, Esagila was created,
Esagila, which the King of the Holy Mound, Lugal-Dukuga (Marduk) erected in the midst of the Apsu:
Babylon was built, Esagila was perfected. (Dalley, The City of)
The Babylonians also established a new father-son relationship between the chief god of Eridu (Enki) and the chief god of Babylon (Marduk), aiming to further legitimize Babylon’s claims of supremacy. To do this, they made more revisions to older Mesopotamian mythology:
The Eridu system focused on Enki (Akkadian Ea), presented as the son of the old Eridu goddess Nammu and the sky-god An, the chief of the Sumerian pantheon. Enki’s wife was Damgalnunna and they both lived in the E-engur, the House of the Apsu, as the temple of Eridu was called. Their son was Asarluhhi, who was later identified with the Babylonian god Marduk. . . .
Towards the end of the second millennium, Marduk assumed many of the functions of Ea/Enki without, however, fully replacing the older water deity. Enki was the ‘master magician of the gods’, a function later assumed by his son, Marduk. (Leick)
The real problem of the gods of Babylon in the Old Babylonian period is their relationship to those of Eridu. Certainly during the latter half of the First Dynasty of Babylon, Marduk was considered the same as Asalluḫi, god of the town Kuʾar near Eridu and son of Enki. Since the earliest attainable meaning of the name Marduk is “Bull-calf of Utu,” which teaches a different paternity, it is conceivable that originally Marduk had nothing to do with Asalluḫi and that the identification of the two was a theological ploy to make him more respectable when his city [Babylon] rose in esteem. (Lambert)
The significant fact is that the Marduk cult, as soon as knowledge becomes available, is under the influence of the cult of Eridu. This town [Eridu] was ancient and prestigious in religion and had a long-established mythology. Thus, whether Marduk and Asalluḫi were considered identical in the third millennium or not, certainly in the second millennium when Babylon rose to power the original Marduk is overlaid with the theology of another town [Eridu] and will probably never be recovered. (Lambert)
These facts can help explain why the Old Testament uses the same Hebrew word for both Babel and Babylon. The Babylonians sought to connect themselves to older Mesopotamian cities of the past, especially Eridu. Part of their cultural heritage also points back to Sumer/Shinar.
Conclusion
The identity of the land of Shinar and the composition of the bricks used for Babel most definitively give away its approximate location and time period. Placing Babel further or even earlier than these parameters allow creates problems with the biblical timeline. What is very clear from archeological evidence is that the biblical account is not suggesting a myth, but a real city with a primitive ziggurat that was partially built, long before Babylon raised the most impressive one ever known to the ancient world.
Works cited
✅“A Short History of Sumer and the Sumerian Civilization from Mesopotamia.” YouTube, uploaded by World History Encyclopedia, 22 Feb. 2021, https://youtu.be/JS4dc1lEhZk.
✅“Babylon.” UNESCO, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/278/.
✅Beaulieu, Paul-Alain. A History of Babylon, 2200 BC – AD 75. Wiley-Blackwell, 2017.
✅Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Babylonia". Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Jul. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/place/Babylonia. Accessed 27 July 2024.
✅Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Eridu". Encyclopedia Britannica, 18 Jul. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/place/Eridu. Accessed 30 July 2024.
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