Did the Tower of Babel really exist? Part of the answer is yes. A huge stepped tower did stand in Babylon. Its name was Etemenanki. Whether it is the tower of the Bible is a harder question.
This article separates what the ruins and texts prove from what remains theory.
The Tower of Babel Story in the Bible
The story sits in the Book of Genesis, chapter 11, verses 1 to 9. People settle in the land of Shinar. They decide to build a city and a tower.
Genesis 11:3 names the materials. The builders use baked brick instead of stone. They use bitumen instead of mortar.
Genesis 11:4 gives their goal. They want a tower that reaches the sky. They want to make a name for themselves. They also want to avoid being scattered across the earth.
In verses 7 to 9, God confuses their language and scatters them over the earth. The building of the city stops.
Verse 9 plays on words. It links the name Babel to the Hebrew verb balal, which means “to confuse.”
Tower of Babel Bible Verse: What Genesis 11 Does Not Say
Most people picture a tower that collapses in a storm. The text does not say that. Genesis never says the tower was destroyed. The idea of a collapse appears in later writings such as the Book of Jubilees.
Genesis also gives no height. It does not use metres or any other unit. Every number you have seen for the “Tower of Babel” comes from somewhere else, usually from the Babylonian tower discussed below.
Tower of Babel Location: Where Was Etemenanki?
The tower most often linked to the story is Etemenanki. It stood in the ancient city of Babylon. Today that is in Iraq, about 85 kilometres south of Baghdad.
Etemenanki was a ziggurat, a stepped temple tower. It was dedicated to Marduk, the patron god of Babylon. Its name means “foundation platform of heaven and earth.”
The French Ministry of Culture describes it, using the Esagil tablet, as a seven-stage building. A temple stood on the top level.
So the ziggurat is real. Cuneiform texts and ruins confirm it. The open question is the link to Genesis.
Is Etemenanki the Tower of Babel?
Many people believe Etemenanki inspired the biblical story. It is a common view. But it is a theory.
The Assyriologist Andrew George stresses that a mythological story cannot be confirmed by archaeology. He also says the identity of the two towers has not been proven.
That is the honest position. A real tower existed in the city whose name matches the story. Whether the writers of Genesis had it in mind cannot be shown from the ground.
Tower of Babel Height: How Tall Was It?
The famous figure is about 90 metres. It comes from a model of Etemenanki built on ancient texts. Andrew George warns that it is unclear whether this ideal measure was ever really applied in the building.
The ground gives firmer numbers. According to Olof Pedersén’s 2024 study, one side of the square base measures about 91.5 metres in archaeological measurement.
Inside, the tower had a mud-brick core of about 60 × 60 metres. Around it was a skin of baked brick about 15 metres thick.
One gap remains. The scribe of the Esagil tablet did not record the dimensions of the sixth stage. Scholars calculate that level from other data.
A Tower Built, Destroyed and Rebuilt
Etemenanki had a violent history. In 689 BC the Assyrian king Sennacherib destroyed Babylon. In his royal inscription he says he had the ziggurat’s mud bricks and baked bricks torn out and thrown into the river.
Rebuilding followed. It continued under the Assyrian king Esarhaddon. The Babylonian kings Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II completed it.
Alexander the Great planned to rebuild the tower. He died in 323 BC and the project was never finished.
Timeline
- 689 BC: Sennacherib destroys Babylon and its ziggurat.
- 7th century BC: Rebuilding of Etemenanki continues under Esarhaddon.
- Late 7th to 6th century BC: Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II complete the work.
- 323 BC: Alexander’s plan to rebuild the tower is left unfinished at his death.
- 1563: Pieter Bruegel the Elder paints the Tower of Babel now in Vienna.
- About 1568: Bruegel paints the second version, now in Rotterdam.
- 1913: Robert Koldewey and Friedrich Wetzel excavate the ruins of Etemenanki.
- 1962: Hansjörg Schmid re-excavates the mud-brick core.
- 2019: The archaeological site of Babylon joins the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Tower of Babel Painting: Bruegel’s Two Versions
When people search for the Tower of Babel painting, they usually mean Bruegel. Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted it twice.
The first dates to 1563. It hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and measures 114.4 × 155.5 centimetres.
The second dates to about 1568. It is a panel painting of 59.9 × 74.6 centimetres in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
Both are European imaginings. They show a tower, not a Babylonian ziggurat as archaeologists found it.
Tower of Babel in Islam
The Quran does not contain the story of the Tower of Babel or the confusion of languages. Similar accounts appear later, in Islamic historiography and in the stories of the prophets.
The Quran does mention a tower elsewhere. In Surah Al-Qasas 28:38, Pharaoh asks Haman to bake bricks and build a structure. Pharaoh hopes to reach the God of Moses. The person who asks for the tower is Pharaoh, not a crowd of builders.
Tower of Babel Where Is It Now?
No tower stands today. Iraq’s 2018 UNESCO nomination file describes the remains of Etemenanki as a mud-brick mass surrounded by excavation trenches.
Much of the building simply vanished. Its good baked bricks were pulled out over centuries and used in other construction.
Think of an old neighbourhood where a crumbling wall disappears one brick at a time. Someone takes the good ones for a garden wall. Etemenanki met a similar fate, only on a vast scale.
If you visit, you will see low ground, trenches and a brick mass. You will not see a skyline. The site of Babylon entered the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2019.
Details You Won’t Find in Guidebooks
- Blue glazed bricks. Nebuchadnezzar II’s inscriptions say the façade of the building on top of Etemenanki used blue glazed bricks.
- A text found in the wrong city. The Louvre holds a fragment of Nebuchadnezzar II’s inscription about building Etemenanki, numbered SB 1700. It was found at Susa, not at Babylon.
- A stele that travelled. A Tower of Babylon stele shows the ziggurat and Nebuchadnezzar II. According to Pedersén’s 2024 article, it spent 28 years in the Schøyen Collection in Oslo. It then moved to the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.
- No collapse in Genesis. The Bible text never says the tower fell. That detail came from later writings.
- The missing sixth floor. Scholars have no recorded dimensions for the sixth stage. They calculate it.
FAQ
Was the Tower of Babel real?
The Genesis story of one tower and a sudden mix-up of languages is a religious origin account, not a proven event. Etemenanki, a ziggurat in Babylon, was real. Many people think it inspired the story, but the Assyriologist Andrew George says the identification is not proven.
Where is the Tower of Babel today?
Etemenanki stood in the ancient city of Babylon in Iraq, about 85 kilometres south of Baghdad. No tower stands there now. Visitors see an excavated mud-brick mass surrounded by trenches.
How tall was the Tower of Babel?
Genesis gives no height. For Etemenanki, a model based on ancient texts suggests about 90 metres, but Andrew George says it is unclear whether this ideal measure was actually built.
Is the Tower of Babel in the Quran?
No. The Quran does not contain the Tower of Babel or the confusion of languages. Similar stories appear in later Islamic historiography and in stories of the prophets. The Quran’s tower story, in Surah Al-Qasas 28:38, involves Pharaoh and Haman.
Sources
- UNESCO, Babylon whc.unesco.org
- Wikipedia, Tower of Babel en.wikipedia.org
- Vikipedi, Babil Kulesi tr.wikipedia.org
- National Geographic, Was there a real Tower of Babel? nationalgeographic.com
- French Ministry of Culture, Architecture of the ziggurat archeologie.culture.gouv.fr
- French Ministry of Culture, Etemenanki archeologie.culture.gouv.fr
- Olof Pedersén, The Tower of Babylon Stele Found in Babylon, IRAQ / Cambridge University Press cambridge.org
- Republic of Iraq / UNESCO, Babylon Nomination Dossier whc.unesco.org
- Louvre, Document écrit, SB 1700 collections.louvre.fr
- Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı, Kasas Suresi 38–40 kuran.diyanet.gov.tr
- Kunsthistorisches Museum, The Tower of Babel khm.at
- Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, The Tower of Babel boijmans.nl
Image: Pieter Bruegel the Elder – The Tower of Babel (Vienna) – Google Art Project – edited.jpg — Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Public domain
