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'Etemenanki' (Sumerian É.TEMEN.AN.KI "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") was the name of a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in the city of Babylon of the 6th century BC Neo-Babylonian dynasty. Originally seven stories in height, little remains of it now save ruins. The biblical story of the Tower of Babel was likely influenced by Etemenanki during the Babylonian captivity of the Hebrews.

Contents

Construction

Descriptions

Final Demolition

Links

Notes

External links

Construction

It is unclear exactly when Etemenanki was first built, but it was probably in existence before the reign of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC middle chronology). It is thought that the Babylonian creation poem ''Enûma Elish'' was written during or shortly after Hammurabi's reign; since the poem mentions Esagila, the Temple of Marduk, being created immediately after the creation of the world, and implies the existence of the Etemenanki, both structures are presumed to have existed for long enough by the time the poem was written, for the authors of the poem to have been unaware of when they were actually built.
The city of Babylon had been destroyed in 689 BC by Sennacherib, who claims to have destroyed the Etemenanki. The city was restored by Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar II. It took 88 years to rebuild the city; its central feature was the temple of Marduk (Esagila), to which the Etemenanki ziggurat was associated. The ziggurat was rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar II. The seven stories of the ziggurat reached a height of 91 meters, according to a tablet from Uruk (see below), and contained a temple shrine at the top.

Descriptions

A Neo-Babylonian royal inscription of Nebuchadrezzar II on a stele from Babylon, claimed to have been found in the 1917 excavation of Robert Koldewey, and of uncertain authenticity, reads: "Etemenanki^[1] Zikkurat Babibli [Ziggurat of Babylon] 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 Etemananki 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. A floor plan is also shown, depicting the buttressed outer walls and the inner chambers surrounding the central ''cella''.
The Etemenanki is described in a cuneiform tablet from Uruk from 229 BC, a copy of an older text (now in the Louvre in Paris). It gives the height of the tower as seven stocks (91 meters) with a square base of 91 meters on each side. This mud brick structure was confirmed by excavations conducted by Robert Koldewey after 1913. Large stairs were discovered at the south side of the building, where a triple gate connected it with the Esagila. A larger gate to the east connected the Etemenanki with the sacred procession road (now reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin).

Final Demolition

In 331 BC, Alexander the Great captured Babylon and ordered repairs to the Etemenanki; when he returned to the ancient city in 323 BC, he noted that no progress had been made, and ordered his army to demolish the entire building, to prepare a final rebuilding.^[2] His death, however, prevented the reconstruction.^[3] The Babylonian Chronicles and Astronomical Diaries record several attempts to rebuild the Etemenanki, which were always preceded by removing the last debris of the original ziggurat. The Ruin of Esagila Chroniclementions that the Seleucid crown prince Antiochus I decided to finally rebuild it, sacrificed, stumbled and fell, and angrily ordered his elephant drivers to destroy the last remains. There are no later references to the Etemenanki.

Links

★ A.R. George, "E-sangil and E-temen-anki, the Archetypal Cult-centre?" in: J. Renger, ''Babylon: Focus mesopotamischer Geschichte, Wiege früher Gelehrsamkeit, Mythos in der Moderne'' (1999 Saarbrücken)

★ Hansjörg Schmid, ''Der Tempelturm Etemenanki in Babylon'' (1995 Mainz)

Notes

1. The house, the foundation of heaven and earth". The stele was broken in Antiquity in three pieces, two of which are reunited in the Schøyen collection, MS 2063
2. Diodorus Siculus, 2.9.9; Strabo, ''Geography'', 16.1.5.
3. R.J. van der Spek, "Darius III, Alexander the Great and Babylonian scholarship" in: Achaemenid History XIII (Leiden 2003), 289-346.

External links

★ Etemenanki (The tower of Babel) by Jona Lendering