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Tower of Babel

By: Mike C. & JUAN M.

This web page is about the Tower of Babel. Nimrod an Amorite who was part of a group that took over Mesopotamia. He was responsible of building the city of Babel. He swore to build a tower too high for the waters to reach. He persuaded men not to worship god. He was a good hunter, ruler, and builder. The tower of Babel was a Mesopotamian temple that is also called a ziggaurat. It was supposed to show humanity in rebellion against God.

Babylon is a Hebrew word that comes from the word Babel which derived from the Akkadians. The word Babel or Babliu means the gate of god. The purpose of building this tower was to provide a place where people could be religious at one particular spot, not scattered. The Tower of Babel had terraced gardens. It was 7 (seven) stories tall with a small shrine on the top. The Tower of Babel was in the country of Babel. The seven (7) story tall tower looks like a pyramid. The Amorites god is Marduk. The people of Babel believed Marduck had supreme position over the other gods. Marduk

According to genesis from the bible the people of earth were building a colossal temple-tower which would hopefully reach heaven. Lift it’s worshippers to heaven (closer to their gods). The Tower of Babel is extremely important to the epic of the bible. The Tower of Babel marks the origins of the nations of the earth. The builders were against the command of god to create this tower. According to Genesis, Noah’s family settled in southern Mesopotamia after the great Flood. When they started to build a temple that would reach heaven, God told them he did not want the city and temple to be built. God made the builders of the temple speak different languages so that they could not understand each other and so the workers stopped working on the temple. This story is used by the ancient Hebrews to explain why people speak different languages today.

The date the tower was built is still questionable. It could have been as early as 3000 BC. It was located in Babylon which was one of the most important cities of the ancient world. If you wanted to find the location today, it is marked by the wide area of ruins east of the Euphrates River which is 56 miles south of Baghdad, Iraq. Researchers believe the tower used to look like the ancient pyramids of Egypt. Cubic blocks of masonry decreasing in size are piled one on top the other forming separate stories. The Tower of Babel was built after the great flood. Archaeologists have a long desire to locate the Tower of Babel but have been unsuccessful. There may be reason for why the ruins have not been found in the Bible.

Resources:

http://joseph_berrigan.tripod.com/ancientbabylon/id17.html

http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/gods/explore/exp_set.html

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MESO/AMORITES.HTM