Where was the Tower of Babel_ - Dr. Douglas Petrovich

This is kind of your old stomping grounds here, isn't it? It is. This represents my world, the world of ancient Near Eastern history and archaeology. There's so many fascinating things that you can study here, from the Neo-Assyrian Empire to the Babylonian Empire, and even the periods before and after that. Oh, this is just incredible. Here we have the bull of Khorsabad, the winged bull, which represents the glory and might of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, with the head of the king, Sargon II. My goodness. And as we come down here, we see the lions from the Gate of Ishtar in the city of Babylon during the Neo-Babylonian Empire. And this is the Mesopotamian wing. And here are some of the inscriptions from Gudea of Lagash. Oh my goodness. Some of the important statues, some of the pottery. This is an amazing map. This is where it all begins, isn't it? This is the Ancient Near East, is the area that I've devoted my life, and my research, and my writing to. And I've done archaeological digs in several places, including Tel Tayanat up here in the northern Levant, as well as Hatsor down in the Land of Israel. I've been at a dig in Israel, around Lakish. That was a major dig. A major dig, an important site. It's the second largest Canaanite city, and the site that I dug at, Hatsor, is the very largest Canaanite site. Doug, why is this map interesting to you as an archaeologist, rather than a map of anywhere else in the world? Well, the events of the Bible are unfolded in the Ancient Near East, which includes Mesopotamia, the Levant, Anatolia, modern Turkey, Egypt. So all of these lands are extremely important to understanding how and what took place in the biblical text. Doug, we've been looking at the Genesis record, and we've been looking at the major events there, the creation, and then the flood. And we've looked at a lot of the evidence associated with that. But now we get to your area. After the flood, we have Noah's family. And my understanding is that this is exactly where all of this begins. Take us back to that record, and what do you see? How did all of that play out? Well, certainly in Genesis 9, Noah and his family settled on Mount Ararat, which, of course, is not conclusively identified. And it could be a number of sites along the mountain range. Somewhere up in here. Yes, somewhere to the northeast of Mesopotamia. And they would have dispersed, undoubtedly, in all directions from there. And by the time we get to Genesis 10, and the Table of Nations, we see a thread of the… not necessarily the geography of where all of those people went, but through the genealogies, we see that those indeed became peoples who dispersed according to the instruction that was given after the flood. Because just as at the beginning with Adam, you had the instruction to multiply and fill the earth, if that same command was reiterated after the flood, and the peoples did that very thing, and spread and so forth. And that, of course, leads to Genesis 11, where you have a centralization of a number of those peoples. And certainly the intent of Genesis 11 is not to suggest that all of the peoples of the earth now recollected in one area, but simply that a large number of them got together in one area and moved toward the process of urbanization, city living. And that's the famous Tower of Babel. Absolutely. Do we know where that is? So I've done an enormous amount of research in this area. There are about seven or eight Babels, cities of Babel, in the ancient area of Mesopotamia. And so one at a time, I've studied all of those areas and found only one that meets all the criteria of the famous site of the Tower of Babel. And that is the site of Eridu, which is in southeastern Mesopotamia. And that is the site, I have no doubt in my mind, of biblical Babel. And after that event in the Tower of Babel, that's when we begin to see the great diversion and the great dispersion of people groups. If you study Mesopotamian archaeology, in the prehistorical period, and that, of course, the prehistorical period is defined by the time period before the advent of writing. In that period, there are only two movements of people. And we're not talking about movements of pottery or trade that's going on, but only two movements of people where they expand outward from Mesopotamia. And as part of my study, I looked very carefully into these two expansions, they're called, and compared and contrasted them and found that only one meets all of the requirements of the dispersion of people at the time of the Tower of Babel. And that is at the period of the late Uruk period, the Uruk expansion. And that, is that right here? So the expansion takes place from Eridu, and people are expanding outward. We have signs of the expansion to the north, to the south, to the east, to the west, all the way as far as Egypt. And of course, throughout the Levant and even into Anatolia as well. So as this expansion took place, of course, it's going to be the largest, you're going to see the largest remnant of the expansion in the area that's closest to the city of Babel, which is Eridu. And that largest city that developed was the city of Uruk itself, which is the type site for the Uruk period. And when you say evidence, that is the artifacts that we find in these archaeological digs? Exactly. There's an enormous amount and very specific kinds of material culture that attest to this expansion of people that I'm connecting to the post-Babel dispersion. Here we have some bevel rim bowls, which are diagnostic of the Uruk period. These forms of pottery are very easy to manufacture. And basically, they were molded. So there would have been molds made to be able to put clay into each of the molds, and that it would have been spread to the side. Then they would have been allowed to cure in the sun. But they could make it very rapidly. I mean, it's the same kind of technology, basically, that we have with the Ford assembly line. This was an assembly line for the making of pottery. And it coincides with urbanization. Because when you have a much larger group of people living in one area, you have to more efficiently take care of all of those people. That's why you didn't build a mold. Exactly, exactly. And we have fingerprints on many of the bevel rim bowls that show that they were made by hand. And there's other important artifacts as well, such as those two spouted jars. And those spouted jars, in larger form, these are smaller versions, but in larger form, the spouted jars are also diagnostic, actually, for the middle Uruk period and during the later Uruk period, for the larger ones, which were beer jars. They would tilt the spout and droop it down to prevent air from coming in and causing the beer to go bad. And then we have these important administrative tablets, these clay tablets, that really were the precursor to writing. And the later Uruk period actually was the very moment before we have written language beginning. So this is the time when we really begin to see human beings either begin to write or to develop the language to produce symbols for writing. Absolutely. And it all began with clay tablets that were used to represent accounting for numbers of sheep, numbers of goats, and other things. And from this, writing itself developed. Doug, how does all of this, these artifacts that we see here, how do they fit into your view then of the Tower of Babel? Does it connect here? It does, because all of these diagnostic forms of pottery and material culture, they're found throughout the Near East, because the people from the site of Eridu expanded to the east, to the south, to the north, and especially we know of to the west, all the way into Israel and Egypt. And we find the same kinds of bevel rim bowls there. We find four-lug jars. We find Remkin bricks. We find the same monumental architecture, such as the tripartite buildings. And we find spouted jars, all throughout these areas. And that is essentially a remnant of this movement of people outward. And this expansion known as the Uruk expansion, which I'm connecting with the Tower of Babel, I'm saying that the Bible describes an event that's not just the confusion of language, but it's the dispersing of people far from that city. And the city of Eridu was abandoned immediately after the later Uruk period, and not occupied again for hundreds and hundreds of years. So all of this material culture gives us a window into the events that are connected with the Tower of Babel. And it's from these artifacts that you can see that expansion. That's right. So this bevel rim bowl that you seem very excited about, are you saying then that helps you connect all of these people and their movement? Absolutely. In fact, the bevel rim bowl is one of the most diagnostic forms of pottery and material culture for this entire expansion that shows that this people group moved out from Eridu. Does that also help you understand that that must have been a rapid movement, because you don't see change in those bowls? Yes, it shows us that at an immediate moment in time, people literally packed their bags and left the area of southern Mesopotamia, and they show up in other places throughout the ancient Near East. And what's different about this expansion, in contrast to the earlier Ubaid expansion, the other of two expansions that took place during the pre-historical period, the Uruk expansion is characterized by a very different way of interacting and way of settling. And let me give you a couple examples. First of all, we have a lot of sites that were established on virgin soil. Also, wherever they settled with people, either there was an attack of the community, the people in the community already there, and they would literally wipe them out and take over. Or, if they lived among them, they would live in what we call the world's first segregated living. They would live in the same vicinity as the original occupants, but next door, not intermingling and living in the same houses on the same streets. So, we have evidence then of different people groups now for the first time. Absolutely. And the world's first segregated life. So, that would be the evidence, or the symptom, I guess, of what you would expect of those people that were dispersed from the Tower of Babel now with a different language and immediately a different people group. Right. And that's why we have segregated living, because they weren't able to blend with one another, converse with one another. So, it makes sense that they would live in separate areas around the town. And the same dynamic happens within big cities all around the world where you have multiple people groups. A people group comes in, they can't speak the local language, and they develop a community within that city that's a very ethnically singular group of people. Doug, the issue of language is very interesting. And that's part of archaeology, isn't it? Because you see the evidences of language. What do you see in that evidence? Well, it's absolutely important because once language is found in the archaeological record, we now have communication from the people of that day that are telling us something about themselves. And writing is the expression of that communication. And the clay tablets that we've looked at here are an important aspect of that because they're from a transitional point where written language had not been developed yet, and they were on the verge of it. And we see on their tablets that they make, there are strokes and there are pictures that we call pictographs. And then after the period of the late Rukh expansion, we see language develop in different places, probably first in Mesopotamia with the strokes that were used on these clay tablets now becoming part of the cuneiform script. And in other places such as Egypt, we see hieroglyphics. That's the result of pictographs that also were part of the original clay tablet writing mechanism. Doug, what I hear you saying is that it's as if languages just pop up, they begin to appear. Is that how you see it? And does that support then the Genesis paradigm? Absolutely, it supports the Genesis paradigm because we see the written expression of language just pop up out of nowhere. And then different languages being represented through cuneiform script or through hieroglyphic script or other means. So language is something that it will break down over time. It goes from complex to simple, and we see that reflected in the archaeological record in the form of tablets and other forms of text. Well, that's very interesting because we've been looking at physical design and how the design of very exquisite physical things had to be in place all at once, and then it decays from there. You're saying that that is the same thing we see in language. It's the same dynamic with language as well. Grammar of language is very specific to the certain given language. We have various expressions of grammar that are in languages that are not found in other languages. So the very fact that we have aspects of language that are diverse between languages. Some languages have certain moods that others don't. Some have certain tenses that others don't. Some have forms of describing things that are different than other languages. So you do not have a universal plan that's followed among all of the languages. You see great diversity in the forms of grammar from language to language, even in ancient languages. Basically, this incredible dynamic of language, which becomes expressed in different ways with different scripts around the entire ancient Near East, and a great diversity within these languages and their grammatical forms, all of that reflects a very sudden ability to communicate writing. So all of this fits perfectly with what we would see as the biblical account of how languages took place. It's really the only way of explaining this. So the integrity of biblical history ultimately is justified by the expression of these languages. Doug, I know that you have spent a lot of time looking at that issue of the Tower of Babel and trying to understand actually where it really did occur. What have you found? Well, what I've found, essentially, is a gold mine within the historical and archaeological record. And basically, the site of Eridu was called Babel in ancient times in a number of sources. And it's one of seven or eight cities that were called Babel. And it's the only one that meets all of the historical requirements for the Tower of Babel. It was around at the right time. We have diagnostic pottery and other forms of material culture from the later Ruk period that are found at Eridu. And we have very fascinating two forms of monumental architecture. One, we have a temple that existed in 18 different phases, and at every phase, it grew in its size and its complexity. And that final phase of the temple, it was abandoned immediately, right at the time of the late Ruk expansion. And catacorner to the temple was an absolutely enormous platform. And that platform was so large, it dwarfed this large temple that existed. You think that could be the foundation of the Tower of Babel? Absolutely. In fact, what archaeology demonstrates is that the foundations of that temple display the kinds of diagnostic material culture from the later Ruk period. And they found that the original bricks that were added onto it were from that period. But it was never completed. It wasn't until hundreds of years later, during the Third Dynasty of Ur, that the kings of the dynasty decided that this eyesore in their neighboring city of Eridu was no longer to sit uncompleted. So they completed this structure, which is exactly what we see in other areas around Mesopotamia and beyond, known as a ziggurat. And the ziggurat essentially is the equivalent of a tower. So I would suggest to you that that uncompleted tower that wasn't completed until hundreds of years later at Eridu, on that massive platform, that is the Tower of Babel. Now, most of us think today of a tower the kinds of things we see in big cities, big straight walls. Is that what they were building? Well, essentially it's a variation of a pyramid. And there were four sides to it and several stairways that would go up to the top. But these ziggurats weren't restricted even to Mesopotamia. We find forms of these ziggurats all around the globe. And I would suggest to you that this later Ruk expansion, where this technology began, where this form of monumental architecture began, was something that spread with the people. Because even though they spoke different languages, they went where they went with their own culture, their own technological background and understanding, and their own abilities to build and construct that they all shared together there at Babel, which again, I'm calling the city of Eridu. Well, obviously we have evidence here of civilization and people beginning to gather together in communities, even cities. Do we have any other evidence of that? Yeah, we have other evidence in the Bible of this move toward urbanization. And probably the best example is the identity of the man in the Bible known as Nimrod. I've done a lot of research on Nimrod, studied the passage very carefully, and studied the archaeology of the time periods that it could be related to very carefully. And I'm very much convinced that Nimrod, biblical Nimrod, is Sargon of Akkad. The cities that it says that Nimrod captured, and of course Babylon is part of that, and Kalhu and Nineveh, important cities in the Assyrian Empire, the later Assyrian Empire. So what we see about Nimrod, that's true in the biography of Sargon. So the record we have in Genesis concerning Nimrod, and all that he conquered, matches the artifacts that we see for Sargon. Yeah, it matches the artifacts, it matches the history, and it matches the epigraphical record that tells us from the very Akkadian people themselves, what was his path of achieving glory, conquering cities, and becoming the first empire builder. So is there a next phase in these artifacts that moves us beyond Sargon? Absolutely, we can move forward to the time of Abraham, because we know that Abraham lived at the site of Ur, which was also in southern Mesopotamia, at the end of the third millennium BC. That brings us to the end of Genesis chapter 11. Exactly. And we have those artifacts here? We do. In fact, you see some pottery, some cuneiform tablets all dating to the period of the third dynasty of Ur. And basically, the third dynasty of Ur was the successor to the Akkadian dynasty. And they became the kings of the four corners of the earth. And succeeded in taking over the territories that the Akkadians held. And, of course, Abraham came from this city and would have, in the 21st century, moved into Canaan. And the site of Ur, interestingly enough, was destroyed toward the end of the 21st century BC, within one century after Abraham left it. And there is a lamentation known as the Lamentation of Ur that was written in the Akkadian records about the destruction of the city. So Abraham would have been using pottery similar to what we see here? Absolutely. These would have been the forms that he knew about, and that he would have used, and he would have seen in his day. It's amazing, just as we're sitting here thinking about Abraham, and that this represents the culture and the civilization that he lived in. It's a great tie to that record in Genesis 4. It is fascinating, and it gives you a feeling of putting your hands around the events that go on in the biblical text.