The Tower of Babel: archaeology, history and cuneiform texts
Andrew George
Archiv fuer Orientforschung: Vol.51 (2005/2006)
Abstract: Such is the fame of the myth of the Tower of Babel related in Genesis 11 that the publication of a new monograph on the building generally thought to have inspired the myth is an important event. It is necessarily an occasion for the academic disciplines that deal with the ancient Near East — archaeology, ancient history and Assyriology — to present their subject to the wider world. Stemming from the author’s excavations on the structure’s core and foundations in 1962, Schmid’s magnificent book on the ziqqurrat or temple-tower of Babylon is consequently much more than a final report of the kind conventional in Near Eastern archaeology.
Based on the evidence of texts as well as the results of excavation, it is a history of the study and representation of the building in all its aspects, from biblical myth to mediaeval fantasy to archaeological problem. The first chapter presents myth and fantasy, discussing the classical and biblical traditions of the tower, the reports of early European travellers in Mesopotamia, the imaginative depictions of mediaeval and Renaissance European painters and engravers, and the history of modern enquiry into the ruined temple towers of Assyria and Babylonia up to the first scientific excavations (for the impact of the tower on mediaeval and later artists see now Albrecht 1999).
Andrew George
Archiv fuer Orientforschung: Vol.51 (2005/2006)
Abstract: Such is the fame of the myth of the Tower of Babel related in Genesis 11 that the publication of a new monograph on the building generally thought to have inspired the myth is an important event. It is necessarily an occasion for the academic disciplines that deal with the ancient Near East — archaeology, ancient history and Assyriology — to present their subject to the wider world. Stemming from the author’s excavations on the structure’s core and foundations in 1962, Schmid’s magnificent book on the ziqqurrat or temple-tower of Babylon is consequently much more than a final report of the kind conventional in Near Eastern archaeology.
Based on the evidence of texts as well as the results of excavation, it is a history of the study and representation of the building in all its aspects, from biblical myth to mediaeval fantasy to archaeological problem. The first chapter presents myth and fantasy, discussing the classical and biblical traditions of the tower, the reports of early European travellers in Mesopotamia, the imaginative depictions of mediaeval and Renaissance European painters and engravers, and the history of modern enquiry into the ruined temple towers of Assyria and Babylonia up to the first scientific excavations (for the impact of the tower on mediaeval and later artists see now Albrecht 1999).
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