<P> Some modern scholars have associated the Tower of Babel with known structures, notably the Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to the Mesopotamian god Marduk by Nabopolassar, the king of Babylonia circa 610 BCE . The Great Ziggurat of Babylon was 91 metres (300 ft) in height . Alexander the Great ordered it to be demolished circa 331 BCE in preparation for a reconstruction that his death forestalled . A Sumerian story with some similar elements is told in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta . </P> <P> And the 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 . 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 . So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city . </P> <P> The phrase "Tower of Babel" does not appear in the Bible; it is always "the city and the tower" (אֶת - הָעִיר וְאֶת - הַמִּגְדָּל ‎) or just "the city" (הָעִיר ‎). The original derivation of the name Babel (also the Hebrew name for Babylon) is uncertain, but it may come from bab - ilum, meaning "gate of God ." According to the Bible, the city received the name "Babel" from the Hebrew word balal, meaning to jumble or to confuse . </P> <P> The narrative of the tower of Babel (Genesis 11.1--9) is an etiology or explanation of a phenomenon . Etiologies are narratives that explain the origin of a custom, ritual, geographical feature, name, or other phenomenon . The story of the Tower of Babel explains the origins of the multiplicity of languages . God was concerned that humans had blasphemed by building the tower to avoid a second flood so God brought into existence multiple languages . Thus, humans were divided into linguistic groups, unable to understand one another . </P>

What is the tower of babel in the bible