What it is
Etemenanki — what survives, what the Esagil tablet says, Herodotus's eight stages, Alexander's abandoned rebuilding, and the difference between an identification and an inference.
Built An earlier ziggurat rebuilt by Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II; demolished by the Hellenistic period. The principal date, the recorded building c. 600 BCE, is approximate.
before the 7th century BCE
Earlier structures
A ziggurat at Babylon is referred to in earlier texts and was reportedly destroyed by Sennacherib in 689 BCE. What stood before the Neo-Babylonian rebuilding, and how far back, is not established by excavation.
c. 620–580 BCE
Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II
Both kings record rebuilding the ziggurat in their inscriptions. Nabopolassar's cylinder describes the work and the labour drawn from across the empire.
331–323 BCE
Alexander
Alexander found it ruinous and set men to clear the rubble with the intention of rebuilding. Strabo says the clearance itself would have taken a very long time; the work stopped at his death.
Hellenistic period onwards
Robbed away
The baked brick was taken for building elsewhere, systematically and over centuries. What Koldewey excavated was the foundation trench and the mudbrick core's footprint.
Who ordered it built
Each attribution carries what supports it. Ancient buildings are routinely credited to people on the authority of writers centuries later, and that is not the same claim as an inscription on the building.
- Evidence level: Documented
Commissioned by
Nabopolassar
His own building inscription recording the restoration of the ziggurat and the labour assembled for it.
- Evidence level: Documented
Completed by
Nebuchadnezzar II
His building inscriptions recording work on the ziggurat and on Esagila beside it.
What it was for
The ziggurat of the temple complex of Marduk at Babylon, standing beside Esagila, Marduk's temple proper. The name means the house of the foundation of heaven and earth.
A Mesopotamian ziggurat is a platform, not a building with rooms: a stepped solid mass carrying a shrine at the top, ascended by stairs or a ramp. What happened in the summit shrine is barely documented, and Herodotus's account of it is the fullest one there is.
How it was built
A solid mass of mudbrick with a baked-brick skin laid in bitumen — the standard Mesopotamian technique, used because good building stone is absent from the alluvial plain and mud is not.
The ascent is described by Herodotus as a stair winding round the outside with a resting place halfway. Excavated ziggurats elsewhere have straight triple stairs; whether Babylon's was different or Herodotus was describing something he had not seen is not resolvable.
Materials
- Evidence level: Documented
Mudbrick
The core, which is what the excavated footprint consists of
- Evidence level: Documented
Baked brick set in bitumen
The outer casing, entirely removed in antiquity for reuse
Measured
Every figure states what it rests on. A modern survey, an ancient text, a conversion from an ancient unit and a modern estimate are four different kinds of statement and are not interchangeable.
Base
about 91 m square
Koldewey's excavation of the foundation footprint, which agrees closely with the figure in the Esagil tablet. This is the one measurement supported by both the ground and a text.
Height
given as about 91 m in seven stages
An ancient figure, from the Esagil tablet — a Seleucid-period copy of a text describing the dimensions of the ziggurat and of Esagila. It is centuries later than the building, its units and its reliability are argued, and the equal height and base are suspiciously neat.
Stages
seven in the tablet, eight in Herodotus
Two ancient figures, and they disagree. Neither can be checked against the ground, because nothing above the foundation survives.
What it meant
Nabopolassar's inscription describes labour brought from the whole kingdom to rebuild the ziggurat, which is a statement about what the Neo-Babylonian state could command as much as about piety.
Alexander's decision to clear and rebuild it was an act of legitimation: taking on the restoration of Marduk's ziggurat placed him in the line of Babylonian kings, in the same way that his treatment of the tomb of Cyrus placed him in the line of Persian ones.
Herodotus reports that the summit shrine held a couch and a golden table and no image, and that a woman chosen by the god slept there; he adds that he does not believe it. That is the only description of the top of any ziggurat, and it is offered by its author with a disclaimer.
The building's name — the foundation of heaven and earth — states the theology: the ziggurat is the point at which the two meet.
After antiquity
Ruinous by the fourth century BCE, cleared by Alexander's men and then abandoned. Quarried for brick thereafter until nothing above ground was left.
Koldewey excavated the site between 1913 and the end of the German campaign, recovering the foundation footprint. The area is now a rectangular depression, part of it below the water table and flooded.
Condition today
Nothing stands
Nothing stands. The site is a square depression with water in it, defined by the foundation trenches. Everything said about the building's elevation comes from texts.
The excavated footprint gives the base dimensions and the outline of the stair emplacements, and confirms the Esagil tablet's figure for the base. It gives no information at all about the height or the number of stages.
The identification of the site as Etemenanki rests on its position beside Esagila, on the inscriptions found in the area, and on the correspondence with the tablet — a convergence of evidence rather than a single proof.
Scattered fragments
What has left the building, and where it is now. Where a holding is contested, the museum page says so.
- Evidence level: Documented
The Esagil tablet, a Seleucid copy giving dimensions for the ziggurat and the temple
Louvre, Paris
- Evidence level: Documented
Stamped bricks of Nebuchadnezzar II from the area
Written about in antiquity
Herodotus, Histories 1.181–183
Herodotus on the temple of Zeus Belus at Babylon: a tower of eight stages with a stair winding round the outside, a shrine at the top with a couch and a golden table and no image. The fullest description of a ziggurat from antiquity, from a writer who says he does not credit part of what he was told.
Strabo, Geography 16.1.5
Strabo records that the tomb of Belus at Babylon was destroyed by Xerxes, that Alexander intended to rebuild it, and that the clearance of the rubble alone was an enormous labour.
The Esagil tablet Seleucid copy
A description of the dimensions of Esagila and of the ziggurat, in Babylonian units. Centuries later than the building it describes, and the source of every figure for its height.
Still argued
Is this the Tower of Babel?
Genesis 11 describes a tower built of brick and bitumen at Shinar, which is Babylonia, and the association with Babylon is made within the text by the name. That a specific building is meant, and that it is this one, is a modern inference from the correspondence of material, place and name. It is a reasonable inference. It is not a documented identification, and the biblical narrative is not a source for the ziggurat's history.
How tall was it?
The Esagil tablet's figure of about ninety-one metres would make it as tall as it is wide, which is unlike every excavated ziggurat and is suspiciously symmetrical. Herodotus gives eight stages without a total. Reconstructions vary by a factor of two, and there is nothing on the ground to test them against.
How to read the evidence labels
- Evidence level: Documented
- Supported by a named primary text or by excavated material evidence.
- Evidence level: Probable
- Supported by strong inference that most specialists accept.
- Evidence level: Disputed
- Substantial specialist disagreement exists; competing readings are stated.
- Evidence level: Literary
- Belongs to poetic or mythological construction rather than to history.
- Evidence level: Mythological
- Belongs to shared religious or mythic tradition rather than to any single text.
- Evidence level: Unknown
- The available evidence is insufficient to decide.
These labels describe the status of the evidence, not our confidence in a conclusion. A claim marked Literary is not a claim we doubt; it is a claim about what kind of thing a poem is.