The Tower of Babel - Disrupting Humankind | Secrets of the Bible | Full Episode 3

the Tower of Babel one of the Bible's most incredible stories the Babylonians build this massive Tower a temple it reaches the heavens it is to be humankind's greatest achievement it can sort of roughly reconstruct what it looked like it's something that we've been massive but God stops Babel's tower being built God decides he will Smite us before we can really get up to what we're going to do God creates language to disrupt humankind they would all speak different languages and be unable to comprehend each other for many scholars the Tower of Babel is just a

tall story seems to me that this is a story which is not actually about a tower at all it is not written in order to tell us actual history but it is written in order to explain why things are like they are but one man has spent years searching for evidence of the tower's existence you're dealing with legendary material is that based on any sort of historical facts or is it myth he claims to know where this legendary structure is today in the battle scarred deserts of modern Iraq in the terms of the Genesis stories

we're looking at the ancient Mesopotamia he believes he can prove that work on this Tower was suddenly stopped the amazing thing is that when they were building it it was never finished it was abandoned to the drifting Sands so that's exactly like the Tara Babel story and if he's right it could explain the rise of one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever seen humans move from one place to another they migrate and they change the Society of which they move into but can he prove that the Tower of Babel is more than just

a myth [Music] foreign [Music] Egypt birthplace to one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever seen ancient Egypt was an advanced and prosperous Nation a Land of Pharaohs and Kings pyramids and hieroglyphics throughout the centuries this civilization has fascinated people of all ages including in the 1950s a young boy from Manchester England David roll [Music] I was writing out the names of the Pharaohs from the first dynasty to the last Dynasty when I was seven years old I was writing out in Egyptian and giving the lengths of their reins in columns and stuff like

that so I was a bit strange in that respect and that's why I think that I insisted that my mom take me to Egypt at the age of nine foreign [Music] trip to Egypt turns a fascination with this ancient culture into an obsession he travels down the Nile aboard a royal boat and as Dawn breaks the boat Moors near Abu symbol two massive temples carved into a mountain and young David roll is allowed to enter this spectacular site alone so there's me this little kid nine years old walking towards the holy of holies mile away

is lit by the sun rising across the river and the shadow of this little kid is stretching towards the holy of holies in the center of the Temple [Music] that's an introduction to Egypt but as he grows up roll leaves behind ancient history he becomes first a musician then a successful music producer working with some of the biggest bands in the 1970s and 80s but roll's heart lies with ancient history at the age of 35 he quits the music business and begins academic studies on ancient history I ended up going to University College London being

taught by some of the greatest professors in egyptology in ancient history fantastic time wonderful experience for me but the most important thing is I learned the tools of the trade so that I could apply that knowledge and that experience and that methodology to my ideas role thrives in this academic environment [Music] he enjoys nothing more than cracking Mysteries I love solving problems I look at anomalies and trying to find answers to those anomalies there are many Puritan Egyptian history where there's a lot of confusion about the dating of Kings role develops a theory that revises

the chronology of ancient Egyptian dynasties by hundreds of years his theories catch the eye of a publisher [Music] roll's fresh assessment of ancient history is rewarded with an international best-selling book translated into multiple languages I understood how to do things and how to research properly with my ideas brought about this this thing which is David roll the historian the writer the TV presenter it all came out of that thank you roll quickly earns a reputation around the world for his bold perspectives on ancient history and his Relentless desire for solving historical puzzles takes him even

further back in time [Music] to the opening chapters of the Bible the Book of Genesis the obvious thing to do was to go back in time to the Book of Genesis and look at the earlier material but that's scary because when you're in that era you're not dealing with traditional history you're dealing with Legend [Music] but roll isn't put off on the contrary he is excited by the challenge many of the stories in Genesis are set an ancient Mesopotamia a fertile land between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers today this region includes modern-day Iraq Syria and

turkey but in antiquity Mesopotamia is the cradle of civilization dating back Beyond 3500 BC according to the Bible it's the setting for the stories of the Garden of Eden Cain and Abel and Noah's flood but it's also the setting for one-story roll believes he can crack the legendary Tower of Babel Babel the first great city on earth at its heart an incredible Tower is under construction the biblical account that we find in the Book of Genesis suggests that the rulers began to erect a tower which would reach up to the heavens the Bible says it

is one of the few times that humankind is United they act as one and they all speak with one voice it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with the aspirations that that people have when they set out to build a city and a tower cooperation propels people towards the heavens it is then that God becomes aware of their actions comes down from the Heavens to see what they are building the one God didn't approve of all this and he did not want them to come up and peer about in heaven and interfere with what the

gods and angels are doing God believes humankind is not to be trusted he suspects that we're up to no good and of course that Frailty of human nature and our propensity to do bad or to do evil has already been established throughout the course of the the early chapters of Genesis it seems that God rather suspects that this will be the case with a Tower of Babel God acts swiftly he confuses their languages he decided that he would cast upon them the curse of Babel that they would then all speak different languages and be unable

to comprehend each other [Music] the people of Babel are scattered throughout the world [Music] Harmony is destroyed [Music] and Babel's Tower abandoned this is a great Act of preemptive war in a way God decides he will Smite us before we can really get up to what we're going to do [Music] roll wonders if evidence can be found that This Magnificent structure ever existed with the story of Babel the one thing about that is that it refers to a building a structure so that's something that archeology can find unlike other elements of the Genesis story which

are to do with Adam and Eve and the murdering of Abel by Cain that's not going to turn up in archeology but something like a tower a tower Temple you're going to find that role has found Fame cracking ancient Egyptian puzzles can he now crack one of the Bible's oldest Mysteries the true location of the Tower of Babel [Music] but roll knows finding clear evidence of these events is when you go back to the Book of Genesis of course you're moving way back in time earlier than the historical period in a sense because it's actually

prehistory in fact most Bible scholars would urge role to give up his quest they say he'll never find evidence in the Book of Genesis its stories are just that stories a common approach to the story of the Tower of Babel and to a lot of the narratives within Genesis 1 to 11 is to understand them as a story which explains why the world is the way it is in this particular narrative why do people speak so many different languages well I mean it's because of the story of the Tower of Babel because God muddled up

by languages [Music] but roll disagrees with the skepticism of biblical Scholars I think you treat the biblical text like you would any ancient text know that it's fictionalized in the sense there's lots of drama in there that isn't really real facts that sort of thing you find in all ancient texts so why do we treat the Bible differently to any other ancient text so undeterred role begins his search for the Tower of Babel he scours the biblical text for any clues when was it built where and by whom [Music] no one knows the precise dates

of the Genesis Stories the convention is that they happened in the third and fourth millennium BC between 2000 and 4000 BC elsewhere in the known world it's the dawn of ancient Egypt but it's also the Cradle of the very first city civilization on Earth ancient Mesopotamia this land will be home to Sumerian Assyrian and Babylonian Empires if the Tower of Babel is anywhere it will be somewhere in this fertile land roll has a rough idea of the area and time in which to search for the Tower of Babel but to home in on the precise

spot and time he needs more data the chapter on Babel in the Bible has nothing useful so roll looks for clues in the chapter before known as the table of Nations it lists the descendants of Noah's Three Sons the Bible says that humankind descended from these three and each Nations ancestor is said to be linked to them so the story just says that these people are born we don't get any details and in this chapter roll is amazed to find a mention of Babel the creation of the city is credited to an individual a character

called Nimrod as a descendant of Noah it's likely he would have lived sometime in the third millennium BC we come across an important character in The Book of Genesis this is King nimrod Nimrod comes a generation or so after the flood now he is not associated in the Bible with the Tower of Babel what it says is that Nimrod was a mighty Hunter before the Lord Nimrod is called in the Bible the first great Potter on Earth that basically means he was a great king roll intrigued Nimrod is credited with the foundation of Babel but

not with the building of the Tower could Nimrod have been the towers architect too [Music] role searches for more information on this character but the Bible offers little more Nimrod was the son of kush and he described as a great Hunter and a Mighty Hero and that is pretty much everything that we know about him according to the text he's dismissed in a couple of lines never hear from him again after that but who was this Nimrod then Jerusalem the Holy Land no one knows exactly when the story of the Tower of Babel was first

written down most experts would say sometime in the first millennium BC between 500 and 1000 BC [Music] but roll discovers that many centuries later the story is recorded once again around 94 A.D a Jewish historian writes Antiquities of the Jews the Antiquities of the Jews written by Josephus a Jewish historian he basically tries to tell Romans why the Jews are like they are roll finds the Josephus relies on other ancient sources to compile his history like the Bible Josephus does not say where Babel was but he does connect Nimrod directly to the building of Babel's

Tower foreign does say that Nimrod was the king who built the Tower of Babel so we have this connection between Nimrod and Babel and what Josephus tells us is he built the Tower of Babel as a sort of Refuge in case God sent another flood to destroy mankind so the people could go to the top of the tower and be saved from the flood at last roll has a connection between a character in The Bible and the Tower of Babel maybe Nimrod really did build the Tower of Babel but only if he was a real

flesh and blood king of Mesopotamia [Music] in the heart of Oxford hidden amongst the Towering spiers and numerous colleges lies the ashmolean museum inside a department of Antiquities that houses many Treasures from ancient history including many from the southern region of Mesopotamia called Sumeria roll zeros in on a clay prism about 20 centimeters high dated to around 1800 BC each side transcribed in cuneiform script the ancient text of Mesopotamia it is called the Sumerian king list a roll call of every king who ruled Sumeria the first civilization of ancient Mesopotamia if you're going back to

the earliest period of Sumerian history it's logical to look at the king's list that we have for the Sumerian period and we have a document which lists all the Sumerian Kings [Music] so we can look for this King Nimrod of the Bible we should be able to locate him in that Kings list but roll news he must treat the information with caution the Sumerian kingless describes a reality that never quite existed of various dynasties sort of handing power to each other peacefully almost from historical reality from other texts we know that that never quite worked

out that way role examines the king list carefully [Music] he finds no mention of King nimrod but he does discover the name of another king who like Nimrod ruled in the third millennium BC we do have one extremely interesting character he comes one generation After the flood in the Sumerian tradition [Music] he's called enmer car the king list says that enmakar ruled from around 2700 BC for hundreds of years and it says he founded a city called Uruk not Babel roll then discovers there are more ancient texts detailing the life of King en Makar is

a character from Babylonian myth and Legend whom we know from a number of stories attached to him he is described as one of the Kings who ruled in Mesopotamia for Roe and Macar is a king in the right place at the right time but with the wrong name is there a connection between Nimrod and nmakar it's a puzzle and one role is itching to solve he wonders if it's just possible that enmakar and nimrod are one in the same [Music] roll begins to deconstruct the name of n Makar now this car element at the end

k-a-r is actually a Sumerian word for hunter so we have enmere the Hunter so he's very much like the the mighty Hunter nimra roll is intrigued two names one from the Bible one from Sumeria both Kings both Hunters both rulers between 3000 and 2500 BC could end mother Hunter be the builder of the Tower of Babel the Torah the Hebrew Bible such Scrolls written in ancient Hebrew are used inside every synagogue around the world and roll believes Hebrew writing may help him solve the mystery of the Tower of Babel ancient Hebrew text is unusual as

only the consonants are written down ancient Hebrew like modern Hebrew is a script which doesn't normally use vowels sometimes this generates ambiguity of interpretation but normally it's quite clear understanding how names were written out in ancient times roll notices a potential historical mix-up what an ancient Hebrew scribe wrote the names of enmer the Hunter and nimrod there could have been a connection roll runs through his theory in preparation of announcing it to the wider world so if you delete the vowels from enmere you end it with NMR the mighty Hunter Roland does the same with

the name nimrod [Music] effect match almost one letter the stopping roll from connecting Nimrod and enmer the Hunter Nimrod has one extra consonant the only difference is we don't have the D at the end of nimrod it seems a trivial detail but a consonant can change a word's meaning role is forced to investigate further [Applause] in the original Hebrew the Bible is full of puns in the case of nimrod the extra D turns the name into a verb to Rebel the name Nimrod could be understood as a verb form meaning we shall Rebel or we

will Rebel and therefore any ancient Israelite listener who hears a story about a character called Nimrod will expect some form of rebellion in that story role believes that this means that Nimrod might not have been a real name but just a play on words and therefore Nimrod and enmer the Hunter were one and the same we know that Nimrod was the person who rebelled against God for destroying humankind in the flood and built the Tower so what the Scribe has done is he's taken the name enmere NMR and added the D to become nimrod we

shall Rebel so you get Nimrod the mighty hunter in the Bible and you get enmer the hunter in the Sumerian text I think they're the same people ever since he was a young boy David roll has dedicated his life to understanding the ancient world he believes he has now at last located a mythical figure who built the Tower of Babel all he has to do now is find the tower itself [Music] Babylon an ancient city of Wonder and Beauty it first appears around 2000 BC at its peak between 1500 and 500 BC it is home

to one of the great Wonders of the Ancient World the Hanging Gardens and Babylon is a sprawling ancient Metropolis it is depicted as this great big massive International City it's a sort of equivalent of say London or New York it is the international center of the world for most ancient historians Babylon is a promising setting for the Tower of Babel Babylon sounds like Babel and as Raul investigates the ruins of Babylon he discovers that it's also home to an impressive structure a gigantic ancient Tower Temple or ziggurat at Babylon there is a remains of what

essentially was the tallest structure that we know that ever existed uh in terms of ziggurats in the ancient world [Music] experts believe that this type of structure is a perfect match for Babel's Tower we have descriptions of this Tower it's been described To Us by the mesitanians in their texts and so from that we can sort of roughly reconstruct what it looked like seven stages a height close to 91 meters many academics also believe that this Babylonian Tower was adapted by the writers of Genesis for their own ends in the 6th Century BC Jewish scribes

were held captive in Babylon and the city ziggurat inspired the story about the origins of language [Music] but roll refuses to buy into the accepted view of Academia he doesn't think the Tower of Babel could have been in Babylon role believes and Mecca built the Tower of Babel and he was king at least a thousand years before Babylon Babylon is a much later City so a thousand years later so when you're looking for the first Tower Temple on Earth the first ziggurat you're not looking at Babylon it's too late so for roll the question was

if the Tower of Babel was not in Babylon where was it roll wonders if biblical scribes actually confused Babel with a similar sounding Babylon it is had names in the three languages so it gets very confusing you might have a name like Babylon in Greek then we have the Semitic languages which are from the northern Mesopotamian region which is the the biblical language babilu which is Acadian and then we have this third layer which is called Sumerian which is a completely different language Babylon would also have a Sumerian name known Ki in Sumerian Nan Ki

describes a mighty City place names tend to be written in Sumerian and often they are somehow a characteristic of the city known as mighty and key just means place so the most foremost place in Babylonia is Babylon and that's why it is that but Raul finds there was another Mighty City also called nanki [Music] so we have these two places with the same name nanki in the North and non key in the south [Music] the nanki in the south of Mesopotamia was thousands of years older than Babylon and it was known by another name eridu

maybe the Tower of Babel was not in Babylon but in eridu foreign everything he can about the ancient city of eredu like the biblical city of Babel it was famous as the first city the Sumerian text tellers that the earliest city on Earth was eridu it's the place where kingship was descended from heaven for the first time so it's much much older than the modern Babylon [Music] it seems to be an important place where people began to settle fairly early on prior to that you just have people living in villages or farming or Shepherds or

whatever but here we have City civilizations beginning eridu that's where it's all happening for all eredu is the best setting for the Tower of Babel [Music] but why then wasn't it known as the Tower of eredu roll things the biblical scribes got confused between the two nun keys by the time they came to write down the story of Babel two thousand years later a newer Mighty City Babylon was now in existence what I think happened was that the Bible writer the composer of Genesis thought that the nonky that was being referred to in the text

that he was reading to compose his story was the Babylon monkey and not the older nonkey which is further south on the edge of the Persian Gulf which is why it became the Tower of Babel and not the Tower of nanki roll is convinced all the evidence points to eridu as the true setting for the Tower of Babel now all he needs is to find evidence for the tower itself [Music] during the 20th century Mesopotamia is the focus of numerous archaeological digs their aim to discover everything they can about the ancient ruins in this region

during this era an Iraqi archaeologist discovers the remains of a ziggurat or Tower Temple and roll finds it existed during the reign of King en Makar it's definitely massive it's it's among the largest temples we know of this time period there seems to be probably several temples or several places within this area including the structure that they've uncovered roll hopes that this Temple might be the remains of the Tower of Babel the problem the Bible clearly states that the Tower of Babel was abandoned after God confused the languages but there was no evidence of abandonment

in this Temple if you try to match that specific structure to the actual Tower of Babel one of the problems is again how long this structure was occupied my sense is that this Temple was gradually abandoned over time look like a complete structure not an incomplete structure roll is frustrated The Temple at eridu is a perfect fit for the Tower of Babel except for the fact that the structure was not abandoned roll looks again at the reports he notices in the excavation reports there is something else behind Temple One a platform to roll it looks

like the first layer or a base of a much larger Temple that's essentially what a ziggurat is it's a platform Temple which is built higher and higher with a staircase going up to the house of the God on the top of the artificial Mountain so it's their first big Tau temple in the region and the amazing thing is that when they were building it it was never finished it was abandoned to the drifting Sands [Music] so that's exactly like the Tara Babel story because that Temple was never finished as well roll is convinced that the

platform at eridu could be the remains of the legendary Tower of Babel it's a sort of a very satisfactory feeling inside when you see things fitting together like this this idea of making a pattern of the evidence where it's not just one thing that matters it's how that relates to the next thing and how they interact with each other and it's the pattern when you get a pattern of things working then you start to realize you've got something going here roles strongly suspects that the structure at eridu is the Tower of Babel but he can't

be sure unless he can also account for the climax of The Bible story [Music] the confusion of languages and the scattering of the people [Music] the Statue of Liberty the first sight for millions of immigrants moving to America during the 20th century the arrival of these migrants helped turn America into the superpower it is today and behind the statue the Manhattan skyline decorated with hundreds of skyscrapers modern day versions of heaven-bound towers [Music] roll discovers that migration and immigration was as commonplace thousands of years ago as it is today humans move from one place to

another they migrate they change the society for which they move into that area people going to the Americas for instance crossing the Atlantic and bringing new ideas to America the same sort of thing was happening in the ancient world and roll wonders if the Tower of Babel's confusion of languages could have been caused by immigration we get to this question of the idea of the dispersion of the Nations following the abandonment of the Tower of Babel when we get the confusion of tongues the idea of multiple languages coming into the region different ethnic peoples arriving