Page 284 - Foundations

and Bible historians have proposed as the site of the Tower of Babel. Birs Nimrud translates into
English as “the mound of Nimrod.” There was not much more than a large mound at this location in
the days of King Nebuchadnezzar II, the Babylonian king who conquered Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar
lived approximately 1,700 years after the original Tower of Babel was built. Nebuchadnezzar,
perceiving this to be a site of great antiquity and religious importance, built over the ancient mound,
encapsulating it within a new structure that arose around and above it. Wikipedia provides the
following information on Birs Nimrud.

Many legal administrative and astronomical texts on cuneiform tablets have originated at Borsippa
and have turned up on the black market. Archives began to be published in the 1980s. An inscription
of Nebuchadrezzar II, the "Borsippa inscription," tells how he restored the temple of Nabu, "the
temple of the seven spheres," with "bricks of noble lapis lazuli." that must have been covered with
a rich blue glaze, surely a memorable sight. The Austrian archeologists have determined that
Nebuchadnezzar's ziggurat encased the ruins of a smaller tower from the second millennium BCE.
When it was completed it reached a height of 70 meters, in seven terraces; even in ruin it still stands
a striking 52 meters over the perfectly flat plain...

An inscribed foundation stone has been recovered, which details Nebuchadnezzar's plan to have the
Borsippa ziggurat built on the same design as that at Babylon, of which only the foundation survives.
Nebuchadnezzar declared that Nabu's tower would reach the skies...
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birs_Nimrud, emphasis added]

Drawing of the Ruins of Birs Nimrud from the 1800s

In Nebuchadnezzar’s day, this temple mound/tower was known as “the temple of the seven spheres.”
The ancients recognized seven spheres, or planets, in the heavens. These are the five planets visible
to the unaided eye, along with the sun and the moon. That the tower was dedicated to the seven
spheres, or heavenly bodies, reveals the ancient relationship between tower building and
astronomy/astrology among the Babylonians.