Tower of Babel

The **Tower of Babel** (Hebrew: מגדל בבל‎ Migdal Bavel Arabic: برج بابل‎ Burj Babil) is a story from the Bible, which gives its name to *That Hideous Strength*. According to the Book of Genesis, it was an enormous tower built in the plain of Shinar, so tall it offended God.

The book quotes Sir David Lyndsay in 1555, *Ane Dialog betuix Experience and ane Courteour*, also known as *The Monarche*. The couplet in question, "*The shadow of that hyddeous strength, sax myle and more it is of length*", refers to the Tower of Babel. At the end of the book, Merlin pronounces the curse of Babel upon the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments

The Tower is also a model for the Dark Tower.

## Basis

According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where they resolved to build a city with a tower "with its top in the heavens...lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the Earth." God came down to see what they did and said: "They are one people and have one language, and nothing will be withholden from them which they purpose to do." So God said, "Come, let us go down and confound their speech." And so God scattered them upon the face of the Earth, and confused their languages, and they left off building the city, which was called Babel "because God there confounded the language of all the Earth."(Genesis 11:5-8). The story in question can be found in Genesis chapter 11 (KJV):

> "*[T]he whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top* may reach *unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.*
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> "*And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. And the LORD said, Behold, the people* is *one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.*
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> "*So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.*
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> "*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 scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.*"
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The Tower of Babel has often been associated with known structures, notably the Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to the pagan god Marduk by Nabopolassar (c. 610 BC). The Great Ziggurat of Babylon base was square (not round), 91 metres (300 ft) in height, but demolished by Alexander the Great before his death in an attempt to rebuild it.

The story can be seen as a symbol of humanity's arrogance towards God. It also refers to humanity's contempt towards the natural world which God made in the Space Trilogy, which is a running theme.

## See also

* Adam and Eve
* Bible
* Eldil
* Fall
* Great Risk
* The Bent One
* Un-man
* Urendi Maleldil