Etemenanki

He argues as follows: The reference to a ziggurrat 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.

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.

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.

A Neo-Babylonian royal inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II on a stele from Babylon, claimed to have been found in the 1917 excavation by Robert Koldewey,[5] and of uncertain authenticity, reads: "Etemenanki[6] Zikkurat Babibli [Ziggurat of Babylon] I made it, the wonder of the people of the world, I raised its top to heaven, made doors for the gates, and I covered it with bitumen and bricks."

Foundation cylinders with inscriptions from Nabopolassar were found in the 1880s, two survive, one of which reads:[3] At that time my lord Marduk told me in regard to E-temen-anki, the ziqqurrat of Babylon, which before my day was (already) very weak and badly buckled, to ground its bottom on the breast of the netherworld, to make its top vie with the heavens.

I fashioned mattocks, spades and brick-moulds from ivory, ebony, and musukkannu-wood, and set them in the hands of a vast workforce levied from my land.

Through the sagacity of Ea, through the intelligence of Marduk, through the wisdom of Nabû and Nissaba, by means of the vast mind that the god who created me let me possess, I deliberated with my great intellect, I commissioned the wisest experts and the surveyor established the dimensions with the twelve-cubit rule.

I burdened him with a soil-basket of gold and silver and bestowed him on my lord Marduk as a gift.I constructed the building, the replica of E-sarra, in joy and jubilation and raised its top as high as a mountain.

Until the first translation of the "Esagila" tablet, details of Babylon's ziggurat were known only from the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote in the mid-5th century BCE:[10] The center of each division of the town was occupied by a fortress.

In the one stood the palace of the kings, surrounded by a wall of great strength and size: in the other was the sacred precinct of Jupiter [Zeus] Belus, a square enclosure two furlongs [402 m] each way, with gates of solid brass; which was also remaining in my time.

The Ruin of Esagila Chronicle mentions that the Seleucid crown prince Antiochus I decided to rebuild it and made a sacrifice in preparation.

Fenollós et al. propose that, assuming the structure did indeed use a six-level terrace design as depicted in the Tower of Babel stele, the ziggurat was probably closer to 54 meters tall.

[14] 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.