Table of Contents
Babylon is linked from more pages of this site than almost any other city. It is the city of Nimrod and the tower, the place where the Jewish elite lived in exile, the home of the Chaldean star lore and of a flood story older than Genesis, and the great city that falls in Revelation.
I read it on three levels at the same time. There is the real city on the Euphrates. There is Babylon as the symbol of every proud empire. And there is the Babylon I meet in my Atlantis research, whose fall in Jeremiah and Revelation reads a lot like the fall of Atlantis.
Gate of the Gods
The name already says a lot. On Babylon’s connection with Atlantis I explain that the Akkadian name was Babilim, which is believed to mean “Gate of the Gods”, from bab (gate) and ilu (gods). The same page covers the Hebrew name, the Greek reports and the ziggurat Etemenanki.
Nimrod and the tower
Genesis ties Babylon to Nimrod and to the Tower of Babel. I follow that story on The Tower of Babel and The origin of Nimrod. The Tower page also has a view from Credo Mutwa on what people lost when they got language:
people were given language they found to their horror that they had lost much of their mental Powers
Credo Mutwa, Credo Mutwa's Human Origin Story, at 6:19
See Credo Mutwa’s Human Origin Story.
Genesis 11
The tower story itself is short. On Genesis 11 – Tower of Babel I give the full text, which starts with one language for the whole earth and ends with the name:
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD Elohim YHWH scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:9
On the same page I follow Paul A. Wallis, who reads Babel as a “power gate” and not as a story of punishment.
Before the Flood
Babylonian tradition reaches back before the Flood. Mariana Giovino writes:
According to Babylonian tradition, seven apkallu (or sages) lived before the Flood.
Mariana Giovino, The Assyrian Sacred Tree (2007), p. 140
The first of those sages is Oannes, the fish-man who came out of the sea. Zénaïde A. Ragozin gives the huge numbers of the Babylonian king list:
the pretty sum total of 691,200 years, supposed to have elapsed from the first appearance of Oannes to the Deluge.
Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 196
See Oannes from Mesopotamian, Apkallu, Mariana Giovino, The Assyrian Sacred Tree and Zénaïde A. Ragozin’s The Story of Chaldea.
The Chaldean flood
Babylon kept its own memory of the Flood. The Chaldean priest Berosus wrote it down for the Greeks. In his version the god Cronos, who is Ea, warns Xisuthros of a coming flood and tells him to build a vessel. See The Chaldean Deluge and The Deluge of the Chaldeans, where François Lenormant compares it with the Bible:
follows with great exactness the same course as that, or, rather, as those of Genesis; and the analogies are, on both sides, striking.
François Lenormant
The tablets themselves were found in London. On The Chaldean Account of the Deluge I give the 1873 paper by George Smith:
A short time back I discovered among the Assyrian tablets in the British Museum, an account of the flood; which, under the advice of our President, I now bring before the Society.
George Smith
And the king lists go back much further than any history book. On 86 Chaldean Kings – 34,080 years I follow Paschal Beverly Randolph, who in Pre-Adamite Man cites a first dynasty of 86 Chaldean kings who reigned for 34,080 years.
Gods, festivals and the calendar
Babylon had its own gods, feasts and way to count time.
- Nebo/Nabu: the god of wisdom and writing, named with Bel in Isaiah 46:1.
- Akitu Festival in Mesopotamia: the new year feast, held twice a year and often for 12 days.
- Babylonian Calendar: a lunisolar calendar of 12 lunar months with an extra month added.
- Anunnaki gods list: the wider pantheon behind the Babylonian gods.
Ragozin also found a Babylonian root for the Sabbath:
the Babylonians kept five Sabbath days every month, which made more than one a week
Zénaïde A. Ragozin, The Story of Chaldea (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1886), p. 256
Ishtar
The great goddess of the city was Ishtar, Inanna to the Sumerians. On Ishtar I describe her as a goddess of love, beauty, war and fertility. On Ishtar, Inanna, Astarte, and Aphrodite I follow how her worship spread west, through Phoenician Astarte to Greek Aphrodite.
Star lore and the oldest map
Babylon watched the sky. In The Star Lore of Babylon, Manly P. Hall talks about Babylonian astrology and its long records. In Irving Finkel on the Babylonian world map, the British Museum curator shows a clay map of the known world.
This is the oldest map of the world!
Irving Finkel, Finkel and the Babylonian map of the world, at 1:48
The Exile
Babylon also shaped the Bible itself. The Babylonian Exile ran from about 586 to 539 BCE. On Yahweh deliberately woven throughout the Hebrew Scriptures I follow the scholars who think the name Yahweh was edited into the texts in that period. See also Who Is Yahweh?.
The fall of Babylon
Jeremiah ends his book with a stone thrown into the Euphrates:
Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her: and they shall be weary.
Jeremiah 51:64, KJV
Judgment in one hour
Revelation picks up the same theme. People stand far away from the city in fear and mourn that its judgment came in one hour:
Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgment come.
Revelation 18:10
A city that sinks and falls in one hour sounds to me like Atlantis. I work that out on Thus shall Babylon sink and Destruction of Babylon.
The Whore of Babylon and Babalon
In Revelation 17 Babylon is also a woman on a scarlet beast. See The “Whore of Babylon”, with the view of Bashar, and Babalon, Scarlet Woman, the Great Mother, where Aleister Crowley turns the figure into a divine feminine archetype.
Related pages
- Babylon: Gate of the Gods
- The Tower of Babel
- Genesis 11 – Tower of Babel
- Ishtar
- The Chaldean Deluge
- Nimrod
- Sumer: The First Known Civilization
- Sodom and Gomorrah
For every page I tagged with Babylon, see the Babylon tag archive.
