The New Student's Reference Work/Babel, Tower of

Ba′bel, Tower of. According to the story in Genesis xi, the descendants of Noah journeyed from the east till they came to the plain of Shinar (Chaldæa), the Hebrew form of the native name Sumir, and there began to build a tower of burned bricks and pitch, whose top should reach the sky. But God confounded the language of the builders so that they could not understand each other, and the tower was called Babel or Confusion. A similar story has been found among the Babylonians, and the Greek story of the giants who attempted to scale the sky but were overthrown by Zeus has some likeness to it. The site of the tower was somewhere in Babylonia. It is usually supposed to be represented by the great pile of Birs Nimrud, which stood eight miles from the city of Babylon, was dedicated to Nebo, and was called the Temple of the Seven Lights. It had stood unfinished, till Nebuchadnezzar undertook to finish it, and its ruins still rise 153 feet above the plain. Another possible site is the ruin called Amram, within the city

itself. This mound is 1,100 yards long and 800 yards broad.