11 As in Sanaa, the fired brick construction continues to this day: “A visitor will notice many lime kilns as well as fields of mud bricks drying in the sun.” 12 Although the present high-rise structures date back only to the sixteenth century AD, the current city was built upon the ruins of an older city destroyed around AD 300. The Old City of Sanaa is designated a UNESCO World Heritage site because it “is defined by an extraordinary density of rammed earth and burnt brick towers rising several stories.” 10 (A 2016 Reuters article features photos of modern brickmaking in Yemen, including both sun-drying and kiln-firing processes.)Įlsewhere in Yemen, the city of Shibam, dubbed “the Manhattan of the desert,” contains approximately 500 ancient fired-brick buildings up to ten stories high. Yemen also has a long tradition of kiln-fired mud brick towers which conform to the Genesis 11 description of the Tower of Babel. Encyclopedia Britannica describes Sana’a, Yemen’s capital city, as “one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.” Furthermore, “according to Yemeni legend, it was founded by Shem, one of the three sons of Noah.” 9 Genesis 10:21–31 confirms that Shem’s descendants settled Yemen. Andrew Lawler notes, “By 1200 B.C.E., the kingdom of Saba in what is now central Yemen controlled the export of frankincense,” producing “vast wealth.” 7 Biblical scholar Kenneth Kitchen dates the kingdom to “at least the eleventh century” BC, and states the “Hebrew Sheba is universally admitted to be the same name as the place-name commonly translated ‘Saba.’” 8 The kingdom of Saba endured until 275 BC, so the queen of Sheba who visited King Solomon “carrying spices and very much gold and precious stones” (1 Kings 10:2, NASB) in the tenth century BC was probably a Sabaean monarch on a trade mission.Ĭonsider Yemen’s Noahic traditions in the context of what may have been a fertile land long ago. More than three millennia ago, Yemen had a thriving civilization. In Yemen, sophisticated irrigation techniques go very far back. 5 Its location in the southeast corner of the Arabian Peninsula, bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, “lies within the climatic zone of the Indian Ocean monsoons, which yield enough rainfall to make it potentially the most fertile part of Arabia.
Yet Yemen claims to be the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of Arabs. Today war-torn Yemen is one of the most desolate, impoverished places on Earth. Is there a place in the ancient near east with a long history of fired brick “skyscrapers”-and for added measure, an ancient Noahic tradition? Indeed, there is: Yemen! The LXX translators seemed to recognize the Tower of Babel was not a Mesopotamian ziggurat when they rendered migdâl in Genesis 11:4 as πύργος ( pýrgos), meaning “a fortified structure rising to a considerable height, to repel a hostile attack.” Both the Hebrew and the Greek thus describe the Tower of Babel as like a modern skyscraper-not a ziggurat. This is echoed by the Septuagint (LXX), a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek by Jewish scholars in the third century BC. By contrast, the tower is described by the Hebrew word migdâl, which the Bible uses 49 times to refer to structures with interior access, such as defensive towers and watchtowers. Ziggurats have few (if any) internal chambers.for the first time, bricks were baked in kilns” in Mesopotamia 4 the Tower of Babel existed well before the Uruk period. In fact, “virtually nothing is known archaeologically of brick kilns in ancient Mesopotamia.” 3 It was not until “the Uruk period. In an ancient Mesopotamian myth, the god Marduk instructs that a tower be built of “molded bricks,” 2 suggesting unfamiliarity with fired brick construction. By contrast, the Bible states the Tower of Babel was built with fired bricks, which is a complex technology. Ziggurats were made of mud brick reinforced with a baked brick exterior.1 Yet there are technical problems with assuming the Tower of Babel was a ziggurat: Scholarly opinion generally associates Shinar with Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), and the Tower of Babel with a Mesopotamian ziggurat such as Babylon’s Etemenanki, which stood during the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people. And they said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven” (Genesis 11:2–4a, NASB, emphasis original). ” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly. Genesis 11 relates the story of Noah’s descendants after the ark grounded:Īnd it came about, as they journeyed east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
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