From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

Thus John Eldred, an English merchant-traveler, who, in the sixteenth century, made three journeys from Aleppo to Bagdad—which he calls New Babylon—speaks of seeing not only “at his goode leisure many olde ruines of the mightie citie of Babylon” but also of having “sundry times” visited “the olde tower of Babell.”[495] From his description, however, one would infer that the ruin which he took for the tower of Babel, was not the Babil of which we have been speaking but rather the imposing ruin of Akerkuf which is a few miles to the northwest of Bagdad, and which is locally called Nimrod’s Tower.[496]

The first European to give an elaborate description of Babil was Pietro della Valle.

Its situation and form [he writes] correspond with that pyramid which Strabo calls the Tower of Belus.... The height of this mountain of ruins is not in every part equal, but exceeds the highest palace of Naples. It is a misshapen mass, where there is no appearance of regularity. In some places it rises in sharp points, craggy and inaccessible; in others it is smoother and of easier ascent. There are also traces of torrents, caused by violent rains, from the summit to the base.[497]

The picture of this mound, which he had made by an artist who accompanied him, gives one a very good idea of what has been considered by many to be the Tower of Babel but which, after the noble Roman’s visit to it, was long known as Della Valle’s Ruin.[498]

But the excavations of the “Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft” under the direction of Dr. Koldewey have completely exploded all the theories that have hitherto obtained regarding the mound of Babil. Far from being the Tower of Babel, or Nimroud or Belus, as has been asserted by many writers and travelers, it is now demonstrated to be the ruin of one of the numerous palaces of Nebuchadnezzar. And it is highly probable that it is the structure to which this monarch refers in one of his inscriptions, in which he declares:

On the brick wall towards the north my heart inspired me to build a palace for the protection of Babylon.... I raised its summit ... with bricks and bitumen. I made it high as a mountain. Mighty cedar trunks I laid on it for roof. Double doors of cedar wood overlaid with copper, threshholds and hinges made of bronze did I set up in its doorways. That building I named “May Nebuchadnezzar live, may he grow old as the restorer of Esagila.”[499]

There were, however, other ruins that have at various times been identified with the Tower of Babel. Among these, as has been stated, was that of Borsippa, commonly called Birs-Nimrud, which lies some six miles southwest of Hillah. Benjamin of Tudela, who visited these parts in the twelfth century, speaks of it as “the tower built by the dispersed generation” and declares that it was struck by a heavenly fire which “split it to the very foundation”[500]—a description that is quite applicable to its present appearance.

The distinguished explorers Carsten Niebuhr, Claudius Rich, and Robert Ker Porter were also of the opinion that in Birs-Nimrud “we see the very tower of Babel, the stupendous artificial mountain erected by Nimrod in the plain of Shinar and on which in after ages Nebuchadnezzar raised the temple of Belus.”[501]

That the tower of Babel and that of Belus [writes Porter, in the work just quoted from] were one and the same, I presume there hardly exists a doubt. And that the first stupendous work was suddenly arrested before completion we learn not only from the Holy Scriptures but from several other ancient authors in direct terms ... and almost every testimony agrees in stating that the primeval tower was not only stopped in its progress but partially overturned by the Divine wrath, attended by thunder and lightning and a mighty wind, and that the rebellious men who were its builders fled in horror and confusion of face before the preternatural storm.... In this ruined and abandoned state most likely the tower remained till Babylon was refounded by Semiramis; who, in harmony with her character, would feel a proud triumph in repeopling the city with a colony from the posterity of those who had fled from it in dismay and, covering the shattered summit of the great pile with some new erection, would there place her observatory and altar to Bel.[502]

But the tradition which identifies the tower of Birs-Nimrud with that of Babel, which is often spoken of as “the oldest building in the world,” rests on no better foundation than does that which would make Babil the tower whose progress was arrested by “the confusion of tongues.” The researches of Assyriologists, which have thrown such a flood of light on many Scriptural subjects, have so far been unable to identify the Tower of Babel, or to indicate where the famous structure was located. Neither the renown of the tower of Babil nor that of Borsippa proves that either of them was the famous tower begun by the ambitious descendants of Noah in the plain of Shinar, for the populace, especially in the East, “is fickle-minded in this as in other matters and holy fanes have the periods when they are in the fashion, just like everything else.”[503]