Etemenanki was a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in the ancient city of Babylon. Originally 91 meters in height, it now exists only in ruins about south of Baghdad.
Construction
It is unclear when Etemenanki was originally constructed. Andrew R. George says that its builder may have reigned in the fourteenth, twelfth, eleventh or ninth century BC but argues that
The reference to a ziqqurrat at Babylon in the Creation Epic 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 E-temenanki.
Babylon had been 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 kingEsarhaddon, and continued under Nabopolassar followed by his son Nebuchadnezzar II who rebuilt the ziggurat. The city's central feature was the temple of Marduk, with which the Etemenanki ziggurat was associated.
Descriptions
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, and of uncertain authenticity, reads: "Etemenanki Zikkurat Babibli 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." The building is depicted in shallow relief, showing its high first stages with paired flights of steps, five further stepped stages and the temple that surmounted the structure. A floor plan is also shown, depicting the buttressed outer walls and the inner chambers surrounding the central cella. Foundation cylinders with inscriptions from Nabopolassar were found in the 1880s, two survive, one of which reads: In 2011 scholars discovered in the Schøyen Collection the oldest known representation of the Etemenanki. Carved on a black stone, the Tower of Babel Stele, as it is known, dates to 604–562 BCE, the time of Nebuchadnezzar II. The Etemenanki is described in a cuneiform tablet from Uruk from 229 BCE, a copy of an older text. Translated in 1876, it gives the height of the tower as seven stocks with a square base of 91 meters on each side. This mudbrick structure was confirmed by excavations conducted by Robert Koldewey after 1913. Large stairs were discovered at the south side of the building, where a triple gate connected it with the Esagila. A larger gate to the east connected the Etemenanki with the sacred procession road. Until the first translation of the Uruk tablet, details of Babylon's ziggurat were known only from Herodotus, who wrote in the mid-5th century BCE: This Tower of Jupiter Belus is believed to refer to the Akkadian god Bel, whose name has been Hellenised by Herodotus to Zeus Belus. It is likely that it corresponds to Etemenanki. Herodotus does not say that he visited Babylon or the ziggurat, however; the account contains multiple inaccuracies and is most likely second hand. Etemenanki has been suggested as a possible inspiration to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.
Final demolition
In 331 BCE, Alexander the Great captured Babylon and ordered repairs to the Etemenanki; when he returned to the ancient city in 323 BCE, he noted that no progress had been made, and ordered his army to demolish the entire building, to prepare a final rebuilding. His death, however, prevented the reconstruction. The Babylonian Chronicles and Astronomical Diaries record several attempts to rebuild the Etemenanki, which were always preceded by removing the last debris of the original ziggurat. The Ruin of Esagila Chronicle mentions that the Seleucid crown prince Antiochus I decided to rebuild it and made a sacrifice in preparation. However, while there, he stumbled on the rubble and fell. He then angrily ordered his elephant drivers to destroy the last of the remains. There are no later references to the Etemenanki from antiquity.
