So far in this series of posts, we’ve seen how the findings of modern science support the primeval history of the Bible (Gen. 1-11), despite what both skeptics and science denialists claim. The stories of the garden of Eden, the pre-Flood world, Noah’s Flood, and Noah’s descendants all parallel what we find in the history of early human civilization. The last narrative of the primeval history is that of the tower of Babel, which claims to explain the origin of the different languages in the ancient Near East. Let’s see how well this story corresponds to the historical record.
Nimrod the Hunter
Before the actual story of the tower of Babel, the biblical author tells us about a king named Nimrod whose exploits were legendary in the ancient world:
Cush became the father of Nimrod; he was the first on earth to become a mighty warrior. He was a mighty hunter before Yahweh; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before Yahweh.” The beginning [or head] of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Akkad, all of them in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth-ir, Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city. (Gen. 10:8-12)
Although Nimrod was associated with the tower of Babel in later Jewish and Christian tradition, he’s not mentioned in the actual Babel narrative. Nonetheless, if he was a historical figure, his exploits certainly would have left some evidence behind. So is there any evidence that such a king existed?
First of all, we’re told that the beginning or head/center (depending on how Hebrew reshith is interpreted) of his kingdom was in “Shinar” (Sumer), and that the first cities he ruled were “Babel” (Babylon), “Erech” (Uruk), and Akkad. This means that Nimrod, if he existed, is most likely named on the Sumerian King List. [1] His kingdom also extended as far as Nineveh in northern Mesopotamia, which he is said to have built, among other towns. Finally, he was well-known as a hunter in the ancient world.
There is a king in the Sumerian King List who matches this description. According to the SKL, one of the first kings of Sumer after the Flood was Enmerkar, king of Uruk. The name “Enmerkar” literally means “Enmer the Hunter,” and the consonants of his name (nmr) are almost identical to the original Hebrew consonantal spelling of Nimrod (nmrd), as noted by archeologist David Rohl. [2] Enmerkar was credited as the builder of at least one town(s) as early as the Jemdet Nasr period (ca. 3100 BC), as the “ad-gi4 list” from this time speaks of “Enmerkar… who know[s] how to build towns.” [3] For this reason, his reign is dated to the Late Uruk period (ca. 3400-3200 BC).
In line with the biblical account, the period of Enmerkar’s reign was one of expansion. The Uruk expansion was first identified in the 1970s, when two sites were discovered in Syria which had significant similarities to the Uruk civilization in Sumer. Uruk-influenced sites or Uruk ‘colonies’ existed in southern Iran, northern Mesopotamia, and even as far northwest as Anatolia. [4] Several hypotheses about this expansion have been advanced, most convincingly, that the Uruk civilization was an informal empire motivated by economic imperialism. [5] Interestingly, a common motif in Late Uruk art and architecture is the ‘hunter-king’ who is at the head of political and religious authority. [6] This evokes the biblical description of Nimrod, king of Erech (Uruk), as a “mighty hunter.”
Figure 1. Adapted from Wikipedia. Map of Uruk expansion overlaid with the regions of the “head” and periphery of Nimrod’s kingdom according to the biblical account.
The only difficulty in identifying Nimrod with the Late Uruk king Enmerkar is the fact that the biblical author says he ruled “Babel” (Babylon). The city of Babylon didn’t exist until the late 3rd millennium BC, and didn’t become prominent until the time of Hammurabi (mid-2nd millennium BC). It couldn’t have been one of the chief cities of Nimrod’s kingdom. However, the name of Babylon (NUN.KI) in Akkadian cuneiform was also the name of Eridu, a very prominent city which Enmerkar is said to have built in the epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. [7] One of the religious quarters of Babylon was also called “Eridu.” The 3rd-century BC historian Berossus, in his History of Babylonia, used “Babylon” interchangeably where the Sumerian King List spoke of “Eridu,” showing that the two cities were still conflated at that late date.
The Tower of Babel (Eridu)
Now we’ve identified Nimrod the hunter-king with Enmerkar, king of Uruk, whose kingdom began with Eridu and Uruk and spread as far as Nineveh. But what about the tower of Babel story itself? Here’s what the Bible states about this event:
Now the whole land had one speech and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole land.”
Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And Yahweh said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one speech, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their speech there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So Yahweh scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the land, and they left off building the city. Therefore it was called Babel, because there Yahweh confused the speech of all the land, and from there Yahweh scattered them abroad over the face of all the land. (Gen. 11:1-9)
Note that Nimrod is nowhere mentioned in this narrative; rather, the focus is on the people of the land. Although it’s possible Nimrod was their king, it’s also possible that they were acting under a different king, no king, or over the span of multiple kings’ reigns.
As argued above, the “Babel” of the biblical account is most likely Eridu, which had the same name in cuneiform (NUN.KI) as Babylon and could be conflated with that city. Eridu was one of the first settlements in southern Mesopotamia, founded ca. 5400 BC, and was considered the first city in Sumerian mythology, which is consistent with the Bible’s claim that “Babel” was the first city built in “Shinar” (Sumer) after the Flood.
Eridu was also the site of a major temple to the Sumerian god Enki called E-Abzu (“House of the Aquifer”). The first stratum of this temple (XVII) dates to ca. 5300 BC, shortly after the founding of the city, and the last stratum (I) dates to the Late Uruk period. [8] Interestingly, based on Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, the Late Uruk king Enmerkar (whom we have identified with Nimrod) was associated with the building of this temple. After the last period of construction, however, further building suddenly stopped. According to the excavators,
One of the most extraordinary aspects of the terrace-structure associated with Temple I, was the immensel [sic] long time during which it must have remained standing and even in use. For, at least a thousand years after it was built, it had been re-paved with broken bricks, bearing the stamp of a Larsa king. [8]
This puzzling cessation of construction at E-Abzu after the Late Uruk period is a remarkable confirmation of the biblical account of the tower of Babel, which states that the people “left off building the city” after they were scattered by Yahweh!
Language Confusion
The story of the tower of Babel also purports to explain how the different languages in the ancient Near East came about. Interestingly, the Sumerian epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta makes a similar but opposite statement. In this epic, Enmerkar seeks to obtain rare stones from the land of Aratta in order to build up the E-Abzu temple in Eridu. He tells his messenger to chant the following incantation to the lord of Aratta:
“…may the lands of Cubur and Hamazi, the many-tongued, and Sumer, the great mountain of the decree 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 [the chief god] together in a single language! …Enki… the lord of Eridu, shall change the speech in their mouth, as many as he had placed there, and so the speech of mankind is truly one.” [7]
Here we see that Enmerkar’s attempt to build the temple of E-Abzu needed all the people of the land to have the same speech, to agree as one in their praise of the gods Enki and Enlil. Changing their speech, as Yahweh did in the biblical account, would foil this attempt.
However, there was already more than one language in the ancient Near East at this time, as the above quote makes clear. In what sense was “the whole land” of “one speech,” and how did God “confuse their speech” (Gen. 11:1, 7)? The word “speech” (Heb: saphah; LXX: glossa) used here is not the same as the word used to describe the distinct “languages” (Heb: lashon; LXX: cheilos) of the nations (Gen. 10:32). Sapheh typically isn’t used to refer to the language spoken, but to the content of the speech – e.g., righteous or evil, praising or blaspheming. [9] This doesn’t mean that the people all had the same spoken language and it was divided, but that they had unity of purpose in praising the pagan god Enki and building his temple, and God made it so they could no longer agree. This interpretation was held by ancient Jewish and Christian commentators as well. [10]
Conclusion
Like the rest of the primeval history, the story of Nimrod and the tower of Babel is supported by the sciences, specifically archeology. The existence of Nimrod is confirmed by the evidence for the Late Uruk king Enmerkar – both were known as hunters, town-builders, ruled over a Mesopotamian kingdom from Uruk and Eridu, and had almost identical names. The tower of “Babel” (Eridu) can be identified with the temple of Enki, E-Anzu, which was built continually from ca. 5300 to 3200 BC until construction suddenly stopped. The confusion of speech in Genesis 11 is indirectly corroborated by the Sumerian epic, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. Each of these facts would have been difficult or impossible for an Israelite in the 1st millennium BC to know, so this is evidence for the divine inspiration of the biblical account!
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[2] David M. Rohl, From Eden to Exile (Lebanon, TN: Greenleaf Press, 2003), 74.
[3] Dina Katz, “Ups and Downs in the Career of Enmerkar, King of Uruk,” in Fortune and misfortune in the Ancient Near East, ed. Olga Drewnowska and Małgorzata Sandowicz (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2017), 201-2.
[4] Guillermo Algaze, The Uruk World System (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 11-97.
[5] Guillermo Algaze, The Uruk World System, 110-127.
[6] Guillermo Algaze, The Uruk World System, 14-15, 41; Michael Roaf, Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (Oxford: Andromeda Oxford Ltd., 1996), 71; Guillermo Algaze, “The Prehistory of Imperialism,” in Uruk Mesopotamia and Its Neighbors, ed. Mitchell S. Rothman (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2001), 34; Hans J. Nissen, “Cultural and Political Networks in the Ancient Near East During the Fourth and Third Millennia B.C.,” in Uruk Mesopotamia and its Neighbors, 156-7; Henri Frankfurt, The Cambridge Ancient History 1:2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 80.
[7] For the meanings of NUN.KI see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/𒉣𒆠#Akkadian; David Rohl, From Eden to Exile, 65; for the epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, see https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr1823.htm.
[8] Fuad Safar et al., Eridu (Baghdad, Iraq: Ministry of Culture and Information, 1981), 78-87; the first archeological evidence of baked bricks was also found at Eridu, dating to the Uruk period, which accords with the biblical account (Gen. 11:3), see Kadim H. Hnaihen, “The Appearance of Bricks in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Athens Journal of History 6, no. 1 (2020): 80.
[9] Chris Gousmett, “The confusion of languages,” Evangelical Quarterly 89, no. 1 (2018): 42-46.
[10] Philo, Conf. Ling. 15ff; Jerusalem Targum [Gen. 11:1]; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 17.17; Gregory Nazianzen, Orations 41.16.
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