Addresses of All Authors
Anne Habermehl, 25 Madison St, Cortland, New York 13045 USA
Author's Biography
Anne Habermehl has been interested in creationism and biblical apologetics since her teens. She has published on topics such as the Egyptian timeline, the search for Noah’s Ark, the location of the Tower of Babel, the placement of the Ice Age in history, Gobekli Tepe, and who the Neanderthals were. Born in Canada, she has a B.Sc. from the University of Waterloo (chemistry). Her web site is www.creationsixdays.net.
Presentation Type
Abstract Presentation
Proposal
Although the best-known feature of Babel was the tower that Noah’s rebellious descendants began to build in Shinar, the Bible says that they were constructing a “city” there as well. No details are included about the Babel city and tower. However, as this paper will show, the city that accompanied the tower was most likely composed of temples and various other religious structures, and the tower was a ziggurat (stepped pyramid).
If we look around the world, we see many ancient pagan complexes consisting of ziggurats together with temples and other buildings. It appears that after the Babel dispersion, far from learning their lesson when God intervened by confusing their language, men went on to build ziggurats and temple complexes wherever they settled. It is proposed here that these complexes were patterned after the one that they had started to build back in Babel.
Some examples of these are located in Iraq, Central America, Japan, India, Egypt, and Cambodia, but there are many more. We do not know how many there are, as it is unlikely that we have found all of them. Archaeologists are still finding some that are hidden under jungle growth, and others that are under water (the latter would have been built at the edge of the continents at the peak of the Ice Age when sea levels were low). Also, some may have been destroyed, or built of materials (such as mud brick) that have not survived the millennia.
Although built by people of different cultures, and located widely distant in place and time, these pyramid complexes bear remarkable resemblances to each other. Secular scholars have problems with explaining this. From our creationist point of view, this similarity in design would appear to indicate a common origin at Babel.
The Babel builders stated that their purpose in building the city and tower was to make a name for themselves, and to not get scattered abroad over the face of the earth. Similarly, the complexes that we see are situated in capitals of ancient kingdoms. This would seem to indicate a desire on the part of the rulers to display their power. Archaeologists have been discovering how important some of these kingdoms were, and how vast their pyramid complexes were.
These complexes everywhere are all religious in nature. The evil immoral pagan religions attached to them also have some similar aspects such as multiple gods, serpent worship, and worship of the sun, moon and stars. We may deduce that these practices originated at Babel, and it is not surprising that God got upset at what he saw. Since it took men only a relatively short time after their post-Flood rebellion to design and start building the Babel complex, we might wonder whether structures like these were being built before the Flood. If so, they constitute a remembrance of antediluvian evil practices.
It is suggested here that there has been a continuation of the Tower’s evil influence from the time of those long-ago events at Babel right down to the present day. The persistence of the ziggurat-and-temple complex design down through the millennia even into relatively recent times constitutes visual evidence that the evil of Babel is with us still. For instance, Candi Sukuh, built in the 15th century, is a ziggurat complex built only some hundreds of years ago as a throwback to the earlier ones in Java.
The Babel episode is doubted by liberal scholars as having occurred literally. One argument that they present is that there were many languages in the world before the Tower was built. They claim that the biblical narrative came from oral traditions, and was only written down around 800 BC, and therefore cannot be considered accurate. Some say that the Babel story was inspired by the ziggurats of Mesopotamia.
We would say to these naysayers that the worldwide pyramid complexes are witness to the truth of the biblical account, and constitute compelling archaeological support for the authenticity of the biblical story of Babel.
Disciplines
History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology
Keywords
Tower of Babel, City of Babel, archaeology, pagan religion, ziggurats, pyramids, pyramid complexes, apologetics
DOI
10.15385/jpicc.2023.9.1.34
Print Reference
628
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Recommended Citation
Habermehl, Anne
(2023)
"Why Ancient Worldwide Ziggurat/Pyramid Complexes Support the Biblical Babel Account,"
Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism: Vol. 9, Article 57.
DOI: 10.15385/jpicc.2023.9.1.34
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/icc_proceedings/vol9/iss1/57
Submission Type
abstract