The Tower of Babel

Professor H. Frankfort (Cylinder Seals) demonstrated how both the art of making the Mesopotamian cylinder seals and the subjects depicted on them spread throughout the ancient world.

He reproduces the design on a seal found in Crete and dated to the 13th century B.C. The seal design clearly depicts a rocket ship moving in the skies and propelled by flames escaping from its rear. (Fig. 69)

The winged horses, the entwined animals, the winged celestial globe, and the deity with horns protruding from his headdress are all known Mesopotamian themes. It can certainly be assumed that the fiery rocket shown on the Cretan seal was also an object familiar throughout the ancient Near East.

A rocket with “wings” or fins—reachable by a “ladder”—can be seen on a tablet excavated at Gezer, a town in ancient Canaan, west of Jerusalem.

The double imprint of the same seal also shows a rocket resting on the ground next to a palm tree. The celestial nature or destination of the objects is attested by symbols of the Sun, Moon, and zodiacal constellations that adorn the seal. (Fig. 70)

The Mesopotamian texts that refer to the inner enclosures of temples, or to the heavenly journeys of the gods, or even to instances where mortals ascended to the heavens, employ the Sumerian term mu or its Semitic derivatives shu-mu (“that which is a mu’?, sham, or shem.

Because the term also connoted “that by which one is remembered,” the word has come to be taken as meaning “name.” But the universal application of “name” to early texts that spoke of an object used in flying has obscured the true meaning of the ancient records.

Thus G. A. Barton (The Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad) established the unchallenged translation of Gudea’s temple inscription—that “Its MU shall hug the lands from horizon to horizon”—as “Its name shall fill the lands.” A hymn to Ishkur, extolling his “ray-emitting MU” that could attain the heights of Heaven, was likewise rendered: “Thy name is radiant, it reaches Heaven’s zenith.” Sensing, however, that mu or shem may mean an object and not “name,” some scholars have treated the term as a suffix or grammatical phenomenon not requiring translation and have thereby avoided the issue altogether.

It is not too difficult to trace the etymology of the term, and the route by which the “sky chamber” assumed the meaning of “name.” Sculptures have been found that show a god inside a rocket-shaped chamber, as in this object of extreme antiquity (now in the possession of the University Museum, Philadelphia) where the celestial nature of the chamber is attested by the twelve globes decorating it. (Fig. 71) Illustration: Chamber Decorated by Twelve Globes

Many seals similarly depict a god (and sometimes two) within such oval “divine chambers”; in most instances, these gods within their sacred ovals were depicted as objects of veneration.

Wishing to worship their gods throughout the lands, and not only at the official “house” of each deity, the ancient peoples developed the custom of setting up imitations of the god within his divine “sky chamber.” Stone pillars shaped to simulate the oval vehicle were erected at selected sites, and the image of the god was carved into the stone to indicate that he was within the object. It was only a matter of time before kings and rulers—associating these pillars (called stelae) with the ability to ascend to the Heavenly Abode—began to carve their own images upon the stelae as a way of associating themselves with the Eternal Abode. If they could not escape a physical oblivion, it was important that at least their “name” be forever commemorated. (Fig. 72) Illustration: Stelae as Eternal Abode

That the purpose of the commemorative stone pillars was to simulate a fiery skyship can further be gleaned from the term by which such stone stelae were known in antiquity. The Sumerians called them NA.RU (“stones that rise”). The Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians called them naru (“objects that give off light”). The Amurru called them nuras (“fiery objects”—in Hebrew, ner still means a pillar that emits light, and thus today’s “candle”). In the Indo-European tongues of the Hurrians and the Hittites, the stelae were called hu-u-ashi (“fire bird of stone”). Biblical references indicate familiarity with two types of commemorative monument, a yad and a shem. The prophet Isaiah conveyed to the suffering people of Judaea the Lord’s promise of a better and safer future:

And I will give them, In my House and within my walls, A yad and a shem.

Literally translated, this would amount to the Lord’s promise to provide his people with a “hand” and a “name.” Fortunately, however, from ancient monuments called yad’s that still stand in the Holy Land, we learn that they were distinguished by tops shaped like pyramidions. The shem, on the other hand, was a memorial with an oval top. Both, it seems evident, began as simulations of the “sky chamber,” the gods’ vehicle for ascending to the Eternal Abode. In ancient Egypt, in fact, the devout made pilgrimages to a special temple at Heliopolis to view and worship the ben-ben—-a pyramidion-shaped object in which the gods had arrived on Earth in times immemorial. Egyptian pharaohs, on their deaths, were subjected to a ceremony of “opening of the mouth,” in which they were supposed to be transported by a similiar yad or a shem to the divine Abode of Eternal Life. (Fig. 73)

Illustration: Opening of Mouth Ceremony

The persistence of biblical translators to employ “name” wherever they encounter shem has ignored a farsighted study published more than a century ago by G. M. Redslob (in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft) in which he correctly pointed out that the term shem and the term shamaim (“heaven”) stem from the root word shamah, meaning “that which is highward.”

When the Old Testament reports that King David “made a shem” to mark his victory over the Aramaeans, Redslob said, he did not “make a name” but set up a monument pointing skyward.

The realization that mu or shem in many Mesopotamian texts should be read not as “name”’ but as “sky vehicle” opens the way to the understanding of the true meaning of many ancient tales, including the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.

The Book of Genesis, in its eleventh chapter, reports on the attempt by humans to raise up a shem. The biblical account is given in concise (and precise) language that bespeaks historical fact.

Yet generations of scholars and translators have sought to impart to the tale only an allegorical meaning because—as they understood it—it was a tale concerning Mankind’s desire to “make a name” for itself.

Such an approach voided the tale of its factual meaning; our conclusion regarding the true meaning of shem makes the tale as meaningful as it must have been to the people of antiquity themselves.

The biblical tale of the Tower of Babel deals with events that followed the repopulation of Earth after the Deluge, when some of the people “journeyed from the east, and they found a plain in the land of Sumer, and they settled there.”

The people, already knowledgeable concerning the art of brickmaking and high-rise construction for an urban civilization, said:

“Let us build us a city, and a tower whose top shall reach the heavens; and let us make us a shem, lest we be scattered upon the face of the Earth.”

But this human scheme was not to God’s liking.

And the Lord came down, to see the city and the tower which the Children of Adam had erected.

And he said: “Behold, all are as one people with one language, and this is just the beginning of their undertakings; Now, anything which they shall scheme to do shall no longer be impossible for them.”

And the Lord said—to some colleagues whom the Old Testament does not name:

“Come, let us go down, and there confound their language; So that they may not understand each other’s speech.”

And the Lord scattered them from there upon the face of the whole Earth, and they ceased to build the city.

Therefore was its name called Babel, for there did the Lord mingle the Earth’s tongue.