Saturday, January 23, 2010

Does Unopened Wine Stored At Room

Tower of Babel, between myth and reality. (I)

By Maximilian Lormier.

The construction of the tower of Babel is one of the most significant episodes in Genesis. There, God confused the language of men and scattered to the four corners of the earth. The story of the Tower of Babel is still debate among historians, archaeologists and theologians. The brainchild of the Jewish population deported to Babylon the Great from a huge building that really existed, what was the true image of the Tower of Babel?


The story of a real tower.

Tower of Babel, as named in the Genesis, was in fact a landmark building of the Mesopotamian civilization, ie a ziggurat. In Babylon, the ziggurat was dedicated to the worship of the god Marduk . Built in stages, the building was made of adobe (sun dried) covered a wall of bricks are more resistant to the vagaries of time. The ziggurat has its origins in Mesopotamia during the period of the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur (Ur III more commonly known) between the reign of King Ur-Nammu to 2112 BC. AD and the destruction of this empire around 2004. Religious buildings, the ziggurat marked pride and the power of a city and its god Polias.


Babylon is a city that is mentioned for the first time in the writings of the shelves mid-third millennium but who actually becomes a dominant power until the reign of the mighty conqueror and legislator Hammurabi (1792-1750). Thus became the god Marduk, the highest in the hierarchy of the pantheon Mesopotamian city since his dominating all of Mesopotamia. The shrine's god Babylon probably dates from this period because archeology has revealed that the sovereign was the investigator of several huge projects like construction of ziggurats, which we find traces in certain cities, in particular Kish, belonging to his great empire. It was not until the reign later, but so equally rich, from King Nebuchadnezzar II (circa 630-562 BC. AD) for the ziggurat in the city reaches its pedigree and it passes posterity by the biblical writings.


Archaeology of the ziggurat of Babylon.

When the first excavations were conducted by a German mission, that of Robert Koldewey on the presumed site of Babylon in the early twentieth century, archaeologists hoped to discover great riches buried and particularly the Hanging Gardens one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Tower of Babel described in the Bible. The excavation did not allow to discover the mythical gardens or any building that had looked like the tower of Babel, but assured of wonderful discoveries, such as the Ishtar Gate and the monstrous walls of the city that had enchanted Herodotus.


However, research from the tower of Babel did not remain fruitless. The excavators extricated the footprints in the soil of a large square shaped building that turned out to be, through research, the great ziggurat of the god Marduk. This imposing structure there were only a few brick foundations in the basement, but the ground track is still quite remarkable that one can, with satellite photos, to see very clearly. The tower was destroyed, the sources tell us, by Alexander the Great, who made Babylon the capital of his vast empire, wished to rebuild. The calculations now made from topographical surveys, field measurements and information taken from the shelves and other inscriptions, tend to define the ziggurat as having been a building of 90 square meters on a side, consisting 7-storey terraces built, bringing the building at a height between 66 and 90m. Cyclopean dimensions of the ziggurat made it visible for miles from the city and had to delight and impress visitors and foreigners who traveled to Babylon.


When myth and reality intersect.

The great ziggurat of Babylon was called the Etemenanki, literally " home, the foundation of heaven and earth . It is now considered part of the very famous biblical Tower of Babel. As its name suggests, Etemenanki was a link between the divine and human. This gateway to the scale of a god, used to facilitate the descent of Marduk with men and vice versa. The climax of this supreme god was around the reigns of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II, and attained such a degree of worship that religion, in those days, had some tendencies monotheists. If this arrangement religion does not finally took root, he left few traces conceptual found later in the cult of Mithra Asia Minor and Rome, or in the Zoroastrian religion . Jews deported to Babylon after the fall of Jerusalem in 597 and the destruction of the temple of Yahweh, were so heavily inspired by the worship of this god Hebrew theology and the writing of the Bible have been strongly marked.

(To be continued)

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