...BABEL, TOWER OF (b5'bel, toilEr Ov), (Heb. . baw-bel', gate of God). After the flood, we are told in Genesis (chap. xi) that men journeyed from the East until they came to the plain of Shinar, where they built the tower of Babel, in the vain hope of ascending into heaven. God, how ever, confounded their language and scattered them over the face of the earth.
(1) Confusion of Tongues. The references in this narrative to Shinar and Babel, or Babylon, in dicate that here again we may expect to find a Babylonian account of the Contusion of Tongues, just as we have found a Babylonian account of the Deluge. As we have seen, the Accadians re garded themselves as having come from the 'mountain of the east' where the ark had rested, while Shinar is the Hebrew form of the native name Sumir—or, Sungir, as it was pronounced in the allied dialect of Accad the southern half of pre Semitic Babylonia. Now Mr. George Smith dis covered some broken fragments of a cuneiform text which evidently related to the building of the Tower of Babel. It tells us how certain men had 'turned against the father of all the gods,' and how the thoughts of their leader's heart ' were evil.' At Babylon they essayed to build 'a mound' or hill-like tower, but the winds blew down their work, and Anu ' confounded great and small on the mound,' as well as their 'speech,' and ' made strange their counsel.' fhe very word that is used in the sense of 'confounding' in the narrative of Genesis is used also in the Assyrian text. The Biblical writer, by a play upon words, not uncom mon in the Old Testament, compares it with the name of Babel, though etymologically the latter word has nothing to do with it. Babel is the As syrian Babili, ' Gate of God,' and is merely a Semitic translation of the old Accadian (or rather Sumirian) name of the town, Ca-dimira, where Ca is 'gate' and dimfra ' God.' Chaldean tradition assigned the construction of the tower and the consequent confusion of languages to the time of the autumnal equinox; and it is possible that the hero-king Etarma (Titan in Greek writers), who is stated to have built a city in defiance of the will of heaven, was the wicked chief under whom the tower was raised (Sayre, "Fresh from the Ancient Monuments").
(2) Tradition. Nato also reports a tradition that, in the golden. age, men and animals made use of one common language, but too ambitiously aspiring to immortality, were, as a punishment, confounded in their speech by Jupiter. In the
details of the story of the war of the Mans against the gods may also he traced some traditionary resemblance to the narrative of the Bible. The Sibyl,' says Josephus (A ntiq. 'also makes mention of this town, and of the confusion of lan guage, when she says thus: "When all men were of one language, some of them built a high tower as if they would thereby ascend up to heaven, but the gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower, and gave everyone his peculiar language, and for this reason it was that the city was called Babylon."' (3) Sacred Narrative. The sacred narrative iGen. xi:41 assigns as the reason which prompted men to the undertaking, simply a desire to possess a building so large and high as might be a mark and rallying point in the vast plains where they had settled, in order to prevent their being scat tered abroad, and thus the tics of kindred be rudely sundered, individuals be involved in peril, and their numbers be prematurely thinned at a time when population was weak and insufficient.
Such an attempt agrees with the circumstances in which the sons of Noah were placed, and is in itself of a commendable nature. But that some ambitious and unworthy motives were blended with these feelings is clearly implied in the sacred record, which, however, is evidently conceived and set forth in a dramatic manner (ver. 6, 7) and may wear around an historical substance somewhat of a poetical dress.
(4) Identification. After the lapse of so many centuries, and the occurrence in the land of Shinar' of so many revolutions, it is not to be expected that the identification of the Tower of Babel with any actual ruin should be easy, or lead to any very certain result. (See article on "Babylonian Cities," by Hormuzd Rassam, Esq.,Jour. of Trans. of the I ictoria B5,1883, j. 221 sq.) From the Holy Scriptures it appears that when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem and leveled most of the city with the ground, 'he brought away the treasures of the temple, and the treas ures of the king's house, and put them all into the temple of Bel at Babylon.' The brazen and other vessels which Solomon had caused to be made for the service of Jehovah are said to have been broken up by order of the Babylonian monarch, and formed into the famous gates of brass which so long adorned the superb entrances into the great area of the temple of Ilelus.