an_unshakeable_faith.. - Holy Bible Institute

In Nebuchadnezzar’s day the tower was named for the god Marduk or Merodach, who ismentioned in the Bible (Jeremiah 50:2). The shrine at the top had a 40-foot-high gold image ofMarduk.According to an architectural tablet found at Babylon, the ziggurat in Nebuchadnezzar’s day was295 feet square at the base and about 300 feet high.The ancient religious towers were not bland structures; they were colorful and pleasing to thesenses. Each stage was a different color, answering to the colors associated with the planets. Theshrines at the apex were typically built of bright blue-glazed bricks topped with a golden dome.The Elamite tower at Choghazanbil near Susa was made of glazed brick and enameled tiles insilver, gold, black, green, blue and azure colors, further decorated with white obsidian stones andmarble.The terraces of each stage were sometimes covered with soil and planted with trees, so that thestructure had the appearance of a forested mountain.The construction of the tower in Genesis 11 fits the description from archaeology of the ancientziggurats. It was made with burnt brick and slime, which refers to kiln-fired bricks and bitumenor tar as opposed to sun-dried mud bricks and mud mortar. Kiln-fired bricks have been datedarchaeologically to the third millennium B.C., which is the time period of Genesis 11.“This very precisely reflects Sumerian building practices in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley where the firstcivilizations were, where there is virtually no stone, but clay was some forty feet thick. ... Bitumen is the usualmortar used with kiln-fired bricks. By contrast, the later building technology of Israel/Palestine used a mudmortar. Bitumen of any kind was very expensive in Israel though it was standard in the earlier Mesopotamianperiod” (“The Tower of Babel and Ancient Near Eastern Ziggurats,” Dec. 22, 2007).The bitumen was also used to waterproof the base of the tower.“The bricklaying technique described in the Bible at the building of the Tower of Babel [Genesis 11:3-4]corresponds with the findings of the archaeologists. As the investigations confirmed, actually only asphaltedbricks were used in the construction, especially in the foundations. That was clearly necessary for the securityof the structure in accordance with building regulations. In the neighbourhood of the river the regular rise inthe level of the water and the constant dampness of the ground had to be borne in mind. Foundations andstonework were therefore made waterproof and damp-proof with ‘slime’, i.e., asphalt” (Werner Keller, TheBible as History).The Babylonian bitumen was described by Bishop Prideaux as “a glutinous slime arising out ofthe earth in that country, which binds in building much stronger and firmer than lime, and soongrows much harder than the bricks or stones themselves, which they cement together.”131