Бабыл зиқұраты: Етеменанки және Бабель мұнарасының тарихы

Ziggurat in ancient Babylon
Etemenanki (Sumerian: "temple of the foundation of heaven and earth") was a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk in the ancient city of Babylon. It now exists only in ruins, located about south of Baghdad, Iraq. Many scholars have identified Etemenanki as a likely inspiration for the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.

It is unclear when Etemenanki was originally constructed. Andrew R. George says that it was constructed sometime between the 14th and the 9th century BCE. He argues as follows:
The reference to a ziqqurrat at Babylon in the Creation Epic (Enûma Eliš· VI 63: George 1992: 301–2) is more solid evidence, for a Middle Assyrian piece of this poem survives to prove the long held theory that it existed already in the second millennium BC. There is no reason to doubt that this ziqqurrat, described as ziqqurrat apsî elite, "the upper ziqqurrat of the Apsû", was [Etemenanki]. Babylon was destroyed in 689 BCE by Sennacherib, who claims to have destroyed the Etemenanki. It took 88 years to restore the city; work was started by the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, and continued under Nabopolassar followed by his son Nebuchadnezzar II who rebuilt the ziggurat. The city's central feature was the temple of Marduk (Esagila), with which the Etemenanki ziggurat was associated. Fenollós et al. note that, "The 'Tower of Babel' was not built in a single moment, but rather was the result of a complex history of successive constructions, destruction and reconstruction. Its origin dates back to the reign of Hammurabi and continues to this day with its inevitable and definitive destruction." (Translated from the Italian). The "Tower" as discussed in ancient sources refers to the monument as it appeared in the Neo Babylonian period.

Modern scholars dispute the claim by the ancient Babylonian source (the "Esagila" tablet) that the Etemenanki was 91 meters tall. <blockquote>[The modern] interpretation of Esagil's text raises a serious technical problem: the excessive height of the first two terraces of the ziggurat and the total height of the building defy the laws of statics and compressive strength of a material such as raw earth brick.” (Translated from the Italian). In the Lucasarts PC video game Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine, Etemenanki is a key location, eventually revealed to have been both the biblical Tower of Babel and a temple to the god Marduk.