Is the Book of Mormon great tower the Mesopotamian ziggurat? Michael Coogan says that the ziggurat was essentially an elaborate platform for the temple that stood on top, while William F. Albright defined it as temple-tower; mountain-summit. The first known Sumerian temple appeared at Eridu (famed as an antediluvian city) in the Ubaid period, and the raised platform on which it stands is there from the outset. However, as stated, the ziggurat is a more sophisticated, staged-terrace temple-platform with staircases, which begins appearing first in the 3nd millennium B.C., until fully developed in Ur III. Elizabeth Stone thinks that the famed ziggurat of Babylon, Etemenanki ( -te-me-en-an-ki The Temple of the Foundation-Platform of Heaven & Earth ) was the late inspiration for the Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11:4-9,1while Ephraim Speiser cited VI:60-62, on the construction of the much earlier Esagila temple-tower, The first year they molded its bricks. And when the second year arrived, they raised the head of Esagila toward Apsu. Speiser explained that Apsu is, among other things, a poetic term for the boundless expanse of the sky, and that this very Sumerian phrase is the apparent inspiration of the biblical description of a tower with its top in the sky (Gen 11:4 migdal wero ). Both E2.SAG.ILA and E2.TEMEN.AN.KI were sanctuaries of the Temple of Marduk in Babylon.

However, it is not at all clear that the Jaredite description and experience needed a fullfledged ziggurat (again, true ziggurats don t appear until Ur III) for its inspiration. Thus, whether considering the very small early Ubaid shrine at Eridu (Tell Abu Shahrain), or the White Temple at Uruk (Warka), the first Mesopotamian temples were being built already in the 5th millennium B.C. It is anybody s guess as to when and why the construction of a particular city and temple-platform brought on the displeasure of God, leading to the confusion of tongues. Indeed, it is less the height (the word great is not in the Hebrew text) of the temple-tower or temple-platform and more the impudent presumption of the humans which motivates Yahweh to confound them (Gen 11:4-6). The Book of Mormon is less explanatory and speaks only of the great tower and the consequences of the wrath of the Lord (Ether 1:3,5,33; cf. Omni 22, Mosiah 28:17, Helaman 6:28) something to which the Jaredites, although not a direct party to the confounding, are certainly well-aware of events which they carefully seek to avoid. See Appendix 1, below, for the chronology and archaeology of temple & ziggurat development in Mesopotamia (and associated artifacts and styles).

The Hebrew word for KJV great tower in Genesis 11:4 is migdal (the word great is not present, but inferred from use of the root gdl), which can have a variety of meanings not necessarily a tower including watch-tower; fortress; temple, which was certainly true of the temple-tower or temple-fortress of Baal-Berith/ El-Berith at Shechem/ Samaria (in Manasseh, Judges 9:30-49).157 Other such defensive fortress-towers are known at Penuel (Judges 8:17), and Tebez (Judges 9:50-52), and probably at Migdal-Eder (Gen 35:21), Migdol (Ezek 29:10, 30:6), Migdal-El (Joshua 19:38), and Migdal-Gad (Joshua 15:37). That these latter were fortresses is clear, whether they were also migdal-temples is unknown, but tremendous height was not the main factor.

Moreover, the Tower of Babel pericope in Genesis 11:1-9 is a coherent chiastic unit focused on the Lord coming down to see the city and tower in verse 5. As Yehuda Radday notes, [e]mphasis is not laid, as is usually assumed, on the tower, which is forgotten after verse 5, but on the dispersion of mankind upon the whole earth, the key word opening and closing this short passage.