The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Tower of Babel

The Political Tug-of-War in Genesis 11

Ancient Near Eastern literature contains many narratives that attempt to explain the origins and fundamental aspects of human experience (known as an etiology), such as why languages differ, how political structures emerged, and what separates the present age from the distant past. These texts, representing a wide array of connected but still varying traditions, often share structural elements and thematic concerns, suggesting a common cultural framework for understanding human origins and subsequent development. The stories frequently feature acts of divine intervention that mark a transition from an idealized early state to the current age, often portrayed through significant, larger-than-life events that are meant to signify to hearers and readers that something very new is about to or has already emerged, and if the divine order approves or disapproves.

The biblical account of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 participates in this broader ancient Near Eastern literary tradition. The narrative’s central and well-known elements include a unified humanity speaking one language, an ambitious and overreaching construction project, followed by divine intervention to scatter the people and confuse their speech. These details find very specific parallels in an earlier Mesopotamian text known as Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta and also a series of Akkadian omen texts known as Summa Alu. This literary relationship suggests that the biblical authors were aware of and working within established narrative patterns while adapting them to their own theological and cultural context. Understanding these connections illuminates not only the specific meaning of the Babel account but also the shared concerns and explanatory frameworks that shaped ancient understandings of human experience.

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The whole earth had a common language and a common vocabulary. When the people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.) Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.” But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building. And the Lord said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them. Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why its name was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the entire world, and from there the Lord scattered them across the face of the entire earth. (Genesis 11:1-9)

If a city is repeatedly crying out, that city will be dispersed. If a city moves underneath and makes a grumbling sound like an army camp, that city will soon be utterly dispersed. If a city is regularly quiet, that city will go on normally. If a city's springs are destroyed, that city will go to ruin. If a city's top rises into the sky, that city will be abandoned. If a city rises into the sky like a mountain peak, that city will be turned to rubble. If cities rise into the sky like clouds, they will experience misfortune. If the tops of cities' temples persistently rise to the sky, the foundation of the land will not be secure; the throne will change; the land will not be happy. (Summa Alu)¹

The structure described in Genesis 11 as a ‘tower’ would have been immediately recognizable to ancient audiences as a ziggurat, a stepped temple complex that served as the architectural centerpiece of Mesopotamian cities.² The narrative’s specific details point to this identification: the use of baked bricks and bitumen as construction materials, the location in Shinar (southern Mesopotamia), and most significantly, the description of a structure ‘with its top in the heavens.’ This last phrase represents more than poetic hyperbole; it reflects the standard way ziggurats were described in Mesopotamian literature, where these temple towers served as meeting points between heaven and earth, connecting the divine and human realms.

The Akkadian tradition preserves this specific phraseology almost exclusively for ziggurats, demonstrating that the Genesis account draws on established architectural and religious vocabulary. This connection extends beyond mere linguistic borrowing to encompass shared cultural anxieties about excessive human ambition. The 16th century BCE Mesopotamian omen series Summa Alu contains warnings that directly parallel the Babel narrative’s outcome: cities or structures that rise too high into the sky face abandonment, destruction, or upheaval. These omens give very specific warnings that if a city ‘lifts its head to heaven,’ it will be abandoned; if it rises ‘like a mountain peak,’ it will become ruins; if temple tops ‘persistently rise to the sky,’ the throne will change and the land's foundations will prove insecure.

The Babel narrative operates within a well-established Mesopotamian framework for understanding what happens when humans attempt to usurp their place in the cosmos and cross over boundaries they were not intended to cross. The scattering and linguistic confusion described in Genesis mirror the calamities predicted in the omen texts for cities that overreach their bounds. This shared tradition reflects deeper concerns about the proper relationship between human ambition and divine prerogative, with the ziggurat serving as both a symbol of human achievement and a potential catalyst for divine intervention when that achievement threatens the cosmic order.

At such a time, may the lands of Subur and Hamazi, the many-tongued, and Sumer, the great mountain of the me of magnificence, and Akkad, the land possessing all that is befitting, and the Martu land, resting in security—the whole universe, the well-guarded people—may they all address Enlil together in a single language! For at that time, for the ambitious lords, for the ambitious princes, for the ambitious kings, Enki, the lord of abundance and of steadfast decisions, the wise and knowing lord of the Land, the expert of the gods, chosen for wisdom, the lord of Eridug, shall change the speech in their mouths, as many as he had placed there, and so the speech of mankind is truly one.’” (Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta)³

Another notable parallel to the Babel narrative appears in a 19th century BCE Sumerian epic given the name Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. In this epic, humanity’s original linguistic unity is explicitly described and all lands are envisioned addressing the god Enlil ‘in a single language.’ The text then describes how Enki, the god of wisdom, ‘shall change the speech in their mouths,’ transforming this unified language into many. This divine intervention in regard to human language directly parallels the action of Genesis 11 and both narratives present linguistic diversity not as a natural development but as the result of deliberate divine action responding to human activity.⁴

In Enmerkar, the confusion of languages appears within a broader narrative about establishing trade relationships and political dominance between Uruk and the distant city of Aratta.⁵ The transformation serves the interests of the protagonist, facilitating his political program and the eventual flow of materials from Aratta to Sumer. In this narrative, we see overtly that the actions of the divine are in the context of a larger political drama. Sumerian narratives like this one explored how rulers could secure divine approval for their political programs, connecting earthly power structures to cosmic order.⁶ The element of changing language becomes a literary tool for explaining and legitimizing political fragmentation and the dominance of certain cities over others. This political subtext transforms what might appear as simple origin stories or historiography into more subtle commentary on power, authority, and divine approval of political arrangements.

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The Hebrew Bible, often itself read merely as historiography, or perhaps a simpler form of etiology, also represents an adaptation of this tradition and carries its own political perspective, particularly in its positioning against Babylon. While the narrative in Genesis 11 is more condensed and not as overt in its political framing, there is little doubt that its intent is still the same.⁷ By naming the city ‘Babel’ and making it the site of humanity’s linguistic fragmentation, the Genesis narrative transforms what Mesopotamian tradition might have seen as divinely sanctioned political order into an example of human hubris and divine disapproval. The very name becomes a wordplay as Babylon’s own etymology likely meant ‘gate of the god,’ but Genesis reinterprets it through the Hebrew verb meaning ‘to confuse.’⁸ This linguistic maneuver represents more than clever wordplay; it constitutes a political statement that challenges Babylonian claims to divine authority and cosmic centrality. The narrative thus participates in the same tradition of using origin stories to comment on political relationships, but inverts the values to critique rather than celebrate imperial power.

1. https://intertextual.bible/text/summa-alu-1-genesis-11.4

2. Walton, John H. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (p. 42) InterVarsity Press, 2000

3. https://intertextual.bible/text/enmerkar-and-the-lord-of-aratta-genesis-11.3

4. McLaughlin, John L. The Ancient Near East: An Essential Guide (p. 14) Abingdon Press, 2012

5. Hallo, William W. Origins: The Ancient Near Eastern Background of Some Modern Western Institutions (p. 72) E.J. Brill, 1996

6. Anagnostou-Laoutides, Evangelia In the Garden of the Gods: Models of Kingship from the Sumerians to the Seleucids (p. 12) Routledge, 2017

7. Vanderhooft, David S and Abraham Winitzer Literature as Politics, Politics as Literature: Essays on the Ancient Near East in Honor of Peter Machinist (pp. 97–116). Eisenbrauns, 2013

8. Rogerson, J. W., and Philip R. Davies The Old Testament World (p. 122) T&T Clark International, 2005