Page 287 - Foundations

took God’s people captive (those whom he did not slay.) There is certainly something spiritually
significant indicated here, for spiritual Babylon is Satan’s kingdom, and it has frequently ravaged
God’s chosen people whether they be the Hebrews, or the church of Christ. Today, the church
spiritually resembles Jerusalem in ruins. The walls of the city are broken down, giving Satan and his
servants free entrance among the people of God. The treasures of the people of God have been looted,
taken to Babylon to be placed in the temple of idols. Indeed, that which most people perceive as
Christianity today is a house of idolatry that has an abominable admixture of the holy and the profane.

Whether Birs Nimrud, or Etemenanki are the actual site of the Tower of Babel, I believe it is
reasonable to conclude that the original tower’s design is reflected in these structures. Both of them
were stepped towers whose design, dimensions, and appearance have been described by ancient
historians. Following are the dimensions of Etemenanki taken from a tablet that described the
ziggurat.

1st step 300ft by 300ft 110ft high
2nd step 260ft by 260ft 60ft high
3rd step 200ft by 200ft 20ft high
4th step 170ft by 170ft 20ft high
5th step 140ft by 140ft 20ft high
6th step ? 20ft high?
7th step 70ft by 80ft 50ft high
(The scribe omitted the dimensions of the sixth step but its height was probably twenty feet.)

The temple situated on the very top of the ziggurat would have risen 300 feet above the plain.
Etemenanki, like Birs Nimrud, was reconstructed in the days of King Nebuchadnezzar and his father
Nabopolassar. It is believed that the tower that existed at this site was previously built in the 2 nd
millennium B.C., placing it in near proximity to the construction of the tower of Babel. This date
estimate is based upon a poem fragment from an Assyrian Creation Epic (Enuma Elis) that mentions
a “ziqqurrat apsî elite,” which translates as “the upper ziqqurrat of the Apsû.” This description is
believed to be a reference to Etemenanki.

In 689 B.C. the Assyrian King Sennacherib invaded the land and is reported to have destroyed
Etemenanki. The Babylonian Kings Nabopolassor and his son Nebuchadnezzar II spent 88 years
rebuilding the city of Babylon. Following the pattern of the original inhabitants of Babel, the
Babylonian kings continued to be tower builders. An inscription remains in Nebuchadnezzar’s own
words describing his reconstruction of Etemenanki and Birs Nimrud at Borsippa. The first paragraph
below refers to Etemenanki, and the second paragraph to Birs Nimrud.

The tower, the eternal house, which I founded and built. I have completed its magnificence with
silver, gold, other metals, stone, enameled bricks, fir and pine. The first which is the house of the
earth’s base, the most ancient monument of Babylon; I built and finished it. I have highly exalted its
head with bricks covered with copper.

We say for the other, that is, this edifice, the house of the seven lights of the earth the most ancient
monument of Borsippa. A former king built it, (they reckon 42 ages) but he did not complete its head.