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Ziggurat9/16/2023 ![]() ![]() I had soil-baskets made of gold and silver and made Nebuchadnezzar, my firstborn son, beloved of my heart, carry alongside my workmen earth mixed with wine, oil and resin-chips. I rolled up my garment, my kingly robe, and carried on my head bricks and earth (i.e. I fashioned representations of my royal likeness bearing a soil-basket and positioned (them) variously in the foundation platform. Under the brickwork, I set heaps of shining sapsu, sweet-scented oil, aromatics and red earth. In its foundations I laid out gold, silver, gemstones from mountain and sea. Through the craft of exorcism, the wisdom of Ea and Marduk, I purified that place and made firm its foundation platform on its ancient base. I sought confirmation by consulting Samas, Adad and Marduk and, whenever my mind deliberated (and) I pondered (unsure of) the dimensions, the great gods made (the truth) known to me by the procedure of (oracular) confirmation. The master-builders drew taut the measuring cords, they determined the limits. Through the sagacity of Ea, through the intelligence of Marduk, through the wisdom of Nabû and Nissaba, by means of the vast mind that the god who created me let me possess, I deliberated with my great intellect, I commissioned the wisest experts and the surveyor established the dimensions with the twelve-cubit rule. I had the River Arahtu bear asphalt and bitumen like a mighty flood. I had them shape mud bricks without number and mould-baked bricks like countless raindrops. I fashioned mattocks, spades and brick-moulds from ivory, ebony, and musukkannu-wood, and set them in the hands of a vast workforce levied from my land. A floor plan is also shown, depicting the buttressed outer walls and the inner chambers surrounding the central cella.įoundation cylinders with inscriptions from Nabopolassar were found in the 1880s, two survive, one of which reads: Īt that time my lord Marduk told me in regard to E-temen-anki, the ziqqurrat of Babylon, which before my day was (already) very weak and badly buckled, to ground its bottom on the breast of the netherworld, to make its top vie with the heavens. Reconstruction of Etemenanki, based on SchmidĪ Neo-Babylonian royal inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II on a stele from Babylon, claimed to have been found in the 1917 excavation by Robert Koldewey, and of uncertain authenticity, reads: "Etemenanki Zikkurat Babibli I made it, the wonder of the people of the world, I raised its top to heaven, made doors for the gates, and I covered it with bitumen and bricks." The building is depicted in shallow relief, showing its high first stages with paired flights of steps, five further stepped stages and the temple that surmounted the structure. The "Tower" as discussed in ancient sources refers to the monument as it appeared in the Neo-Babylonian period. Its origin dates back to the reign of Hammurabi and continues to this day with its inevitable and definitive destruction." (Translated from the Italian). note that, "The 'Tower of Babel' was not built in a single moment, but rather was the result of a complex history of successive constructions, destruction and reconstruction. The city's central feature was the temple of Marduk ( Esagila), with which the Etemenanki ziggurat was associated.įenollós et al. It took 88 years to restore the city work was started by the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, and continued under Nabopolassar followed by his son Nebuchadnezzar II who rebuilt the ziggurat. īabylon was destroyed in 689 BCE by Sennacherib, who claims to have destroyed the Etemenanki. There is no reason to doubt that this ziqqurrat, described as ziqqurrat apsî elite, "the upper ziqqurrat of the Apsû", was. ![]() for a Middle Assyrian piece of this poem survives to prove the long-held theory that it existed already in the second millennium BC. VI 63: George 1992: 301–2) is more solid evidence.The reference to a ziqqurrat at Babylon in the Creation Epic ( Enûma Eliš George says that it was constructed sometime between the 14th and the 9th century BCE. It is unclear when Etemenanki was originally constructed. However, many scholars believe that the biblical story was at least partly inspired by Etemenanki. It now exists only in ruins, located about 90 kilometres (56 mi) south of Baghdad, Iraq.Īlthough Etemenanki has sometimes erroneously been identified with the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11 in the Bible, the archaeological record is incompatible with the biblical account of the Tower of Babel, particularly because Etemenanki was built in tribute to the god Marduk and because the existence of many languages in the region predates its construction. Etemenanki ( Sumerian: □□□□ É.TEMEN.AN.KI "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") was a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk in the ancient city of Babylon. ![]()
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