When the Spaniards conquered Central America, they were shocked by the "brutal" traditions of the local people. Most of all the horror, awe and disgust among the invaders were caused by the numerous human sacrifices that the Aztecs made. For a long time, Spanish sailors talked about the nightmarish "skull towers" that the Native Americans built, replenishing the ossuary after each ritual.
For a long time, the stories of the Spanish conquistadors about the "towers of skulls" were perceived by modern historians with a great deal of skepticism. The researchers believed that this was another "soldier's story" and another convenient excuse for the invaders. However, recent archaeological excavations have confirmed that these towers did exist. Further research has shed light on a gruesome mystery.
A stunning (in terms of historiography) find was made in Mexico City. Thanks to her, it was possible to confirm the existence of one of the most cruel customs of the Aztecs. Excavations at the Templo Major complex of religious buildings began back in 2015. It is there that scientists have discovered hundreds of human skulls and continue to find them. Under the ground, two of the same "towers of skulls" were also found at once, about which the pioneering conquerors told.
Each tower is a cylindrical structure with a diameter of 5 meters and a height of at least 1.7 meters. Between them is the tsompantli, a special construction on which the skulls were laid before being placed in the tower. The tsompantli is 35 meters long, 12-14 meters wide, and 4-5 meters high. Most likely, the structures found were erected between 1486 and 1502.
The Aztecs believed that skulls are the seeds of life that ensure the continued existence of all mankind. In their society, skulls were treated roughly the way modern people relate to spring flowers, scientists are convinced. Local cultures believed that the gods feed on sacrifices. The underworld would have collapsed without them. Therefore, to be on the sacrificial table (according to the beliefs of the Aztecs) is a great honor, since the person sacrificed in the afterlife took an honorable place.
At the moment, 180 intact skulls have been found, as well as more fragments from more than 2 thousand human skulls. The absolute majority - 75% - belong to men between the ages of 20 and 35. Scientists hope that the collected data will allow them to study the genetic diversity of Mexico during this period of history.
The ruins of giant stone structures in the area of the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers still remain a mystery to scientists. Information about them came back in the 16th century from Portuguese traders who visited the coastal regions of Africa in search of gold, slaves and ivory. Many believed then that it was about the biblical land of Ophir, where the gold mines of King Solomon were located.
MYSTERIOUS AFRICAN RUINS
Portuguese traders heard of huge stone "houses" from Africans arriving on the coast to exchange goods from the interior of the continent. But it was only in the 19th century that Europeans finally saw the mysterious buildings. According to some sources, the first to discover the mysterious ruins was the traveler and elephant hunter Adam Rendere, but more often their discovery is attributed to the German geologist Karl Mauch.
This scientist has repeatedly heard from Africans about gigantic stone structures in as yet unexplored areas north of the Limpopo River. No one knew when and by whom they were built, and the German scientist decided to embark on a risky journey to the mysterious ruins.
In 1867, Mauch found an ancient country and saw a complex of buildings that later became known as Great Zimbabwe (in the language of the local Shona tribe, the word “Zimbabwe” meant “stone house”). The scientist was shocked by what he saw. The structure that appeared before his eyes amazed the researcher with its size and unusual layout.
An imposing stone wall, at least 250 meters long, about 10 meters high and up to 5 meters wide at the base, surrounded the settlement, where, apparently, the residence of the ruler of this ancient country was once located.
Now this structure is called the Temple, or the Elliptical Building. It was possible to get into the walled area through three narrow passages. All buildings were erected using the dry masonry method, when stones were stacked on top of each other without mortar. 800 meters north of the walled settlement, on top of a granite hill, there were the ruins of another structure, called the Stone Fortress, or Acropolis.
Although Mauch discovered among the ruins some household items characteristic of the local culture, it did not even occur to him that the Zimbabwe architectural complex could have been built by Africans. Traditionally, local tribes built their houses and other structures using clay, wood and dried grass, so the use of stone as a building material looked clearly anomalous.
ON THE LAND OF GOLD MINES
So, Mauch decided that Great Zimbabwe was built not by Africans, but by whites who visited these parts in ancient times. According to him, the legendary King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba could have been involved in the construction of the complex of stone buildings, and this place itself was the biblical Ophir, the land of gold mines.
The scientist finally believed in his assumption when he discovered that the beam of one of the doorways was made of cedar. It could have been brought only from Lebanon, and it was King Solomon who widely used cedar in the construction of his palaces.
Ultimately, Karl Mauch came to the conclusion that it was the Queen of Sheba who was the mistress of Zimbabwe. Such a sensational conclusion of the scientist led to rather disastrous consequences. Numerous adventurers began to flock to the ancient ruins, who dreamed of finding the treasury of the Queen of Sheba, because an ancient gold mine once existed next to the complex. It is not known whether anyone managed to find the treasures, but the damage to the ancient structures was colossal, and this further greatly complicated the research of archaeologists.
Mauch's findings were challenged in 1905 by British archaeologist David Randall-McIver. He conducted independent excavations in Greater Zimbabwe and stated that the buildings were not so ancient and were erected in the period from the 11th to the 15th century.
It turned out that Big Zimbabwe could well have been built by indigenous Africans. It was quite difficult to get to the ancient ruins, so the next expedition appeared in these parts only in 1929. It was led by the British feminist archaeologist Gertrude Caton-Thompson, and her group included only women.
By that time, the treasure hunters had already inflicted such damage on the complex that Cato-Thompson was forced to start work by searching for intact structures. The brave researcher decided to use an airplane for her search. She managed to agree on a winged machine, she personally took off with the pilot into the air and discovered another stone structure far from the settlement.
After excavation, Caton-Thompson fully confirmed Ran-dall-MacIver's conclusions about the timing of the construction of Greater Zimbabwe. In addition, she firmly stated that the complex was undoubtedly built by black Africans.
AFRICAN STONEHENGE?
Scientists have been studying Great Zimbabwe for almost a century and a half, however, despite such a long period, Great Zimbabwe has managed to keep many more secrets. It is still unknown who its builders defended themselves against with the help of such powerful defensive structures. Not everything is clear with the time of the beginning of their construction.
For example, under the wall of the Elliptical Building, fragments of drainage wood have been found that date back to between 591 (plus or minus 120 years) and 702 CE. NS. (plus or minus 92 years). The wall may have been built on a much older foundation.
During excavations, scientists discovered several figurines of birds from steatite (soapstone), it was suggested that the ancient inhabitants of Greater Zimbabwe worshiped bird-like gods. It is possible that the most mysterious structure of Greater Zimbabwe - a conical tower near the wall of the Elliptical Building - is somehow connected with this cult. Its height reaches 10 meters, and the circumference of the base is 17 meters.
It was erected using the dry masonry method and is similar in shape to the granaries of local peasants, but the tower has no entrance, no windows or stairs. Until now, the purpose of this structure is an insoluble mystery for archaeologists.
However, there is a very curious hypothesis by Richard Wade of the Nkwe Ridge Observatory, according to which the Temple (Elliptical Building) was once used similarly to the famous Stonehenge. Stone walls, a mysterious tower, various monoliths - all this was used to observe the Sun, Moon, planets and stars. Is it so? The answer can only be provided by further research.
THE CAPITAL OF A POWERFUL EMPIRE
At the moment, there are few scientists who doubt that Great Zimbabwe was built by Africans. According to archaeologists, in the XIV century this African kingdom experienced its heyday and could be compared with London in area.
Its population was about 18 thousand people. Greater Zimbabwe was the capital of a vast empire that stretched for thousands of kilometers and united dozens, if not hundreds, of tribes.
Although there were mines on the territory of the kingdom and gold was mined, the main wealth of the inhabitants was cattle. The mined gold and ivory were delivered from Zimbabwe to the east coast of Africa, where ports existed at that time, with their help, trade with Arabia, India and the Far East was supported. The fact that Zimbabwe had connections with the outside world is evidenced by archaeological finds of Arab and Persian origins.
It is believed that Greater Zimbabwe was the center of mining: numerous mine workings were discovered at various distances from the complex of stone structures. According to some scholars, the African empire existed until 1750, and then fell into decay.
It is worth noting that for Africans, Greater Zimbabwe is a real shrine. In honor of this archaeological site, Southern Rhodesia, on the territory of which it is located, was renamed Zimbabwe in 1980.
Andrey SIDORENKO
Scholars are increasingly turning to the Bible as a reliable historical source, and this is bearing fruit in the form of sensational discoveries. Thus, one of the legends of the Old Testament about the construction of the Tower of Babel gained the glory of a true event.
In the second chapter of "Noach" of the book of Genesis, it is narrated that after the Flood, mankind found in the places of the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the land of Shinar. People spoke the same language and were one people. Here they got the bold idea to build a tower that would touch the heavens. God became enraged with human insolence and endowed the builders with different languages so that they would no longer understand each other and would not finish the construction of the tower.
In 1899, German archaeologist Robert Koldewey arrived in the vicinity of Baghdad, where the area was teeming with strange hills. Their tops were flat, and the slopes suddenly broke off, as if a giant sword had cut them. No one before Kolvedey was interested in these hills, and the local Bedouins used them as convenient places to rest.
From the very first days of excavations on Koldewey, dozens, hundreds of evidences of the existence of an ancient great civilization were discovered here. Hour after hour, workers raised from the ground statues of winged lions, magnificent bas-reliefs, cuneiform tablets, fragments of glazed brick. The city gates, studded with copper, were soon found. But what kind of city opened up to the eyes of people? Each find did not speak, but screamed that it was ... the legendary Babylon!
Kolvedey was fully convinced of his guesses when the workers freed the mud brick walls from the ground. Two 12-meter walls were spaced 12 meters apart, followed by a third wall 8 meters high. The scientist found that initially the space between the first two walls was filled with soil, which turned them into an impregnable rampart, and the third, inner wall had observation towers every 50 meters. 360 towers in total! The walls were 18 kilometers long. Everything is as it was told about Babylon in legends and legends.
In short, it was the largest fortified city of all fortified cities ever built. Even medieval city-states were much smaller, and Babylon existed over 4 thousand years ago! However, the main sensation was still waiting in the wings. It was the foundation, which was 90 meters wide. The foundation of the Tower of Babel.
Robert Kolvedey devoted fifteen years to the study of Babylon and the Tower of Babel. In parallel with the excavation, he got acquainted with all possible written sources testifying to the tower, and each time the next find exactly coincided with the descriptions left by the ancient storytellers.
In addition, the Babylonian tablets directly provided a lot of valuable information. Some of them contained literally architectural calculations and images of the tower. In the end, the scientist was able to describe the legendary structure as if he had seen it with his own eyes.
So, the Tower of Babel rose 90 meters in height and consisted of seven terraces, set on a rectangular 33-meter base. The terraces were twisted in a spiral, and the uppermost of them was a 15-meter temple of the god Morduk. A monumental staircase ran from the ground to this temple. In total, 85 million bricks were used to build the tower!
Separately, it should be said about the upper terrace. The outside was covered with blue glazed brick and gold inlay. In sunny weather, the walls began to shine with mystical fire, visible from many kilometers around. Inside the temple was a gold table and bed. Here the god Morduk himself was supposed to rest. Every evening the most beautiful girl of Babylon would come up here to please the great god until morning.
The first floor of the tower was also distinguished by its splendor. Among other decorations, there was a statue of the god Morduk, cast in pure gold. She weighed 24 tons. The so-called procession road led to the entrance. It was built of powerful square slabs, which in turn rested on a layer of asphalt and brick flooring. The edges of the slabs were covered with precious inlay. By the way, Kolvedey excavated this road in almost all its glory.
True, the story of the Tower of Babel established by Kolvedey and his followers is somewhat different from the legend from the Old Testament. It turns out that the tower was destroyed and rebuilt several times. For example, to one of the destruction in 689 BC. the Assyrian king Sinacherib put his hand. It was restored by Novokhudonosor II. The Jews, whom he moved to Babylon, saw this very process.
The fame of the annihilator was also won by the Persian king Xerxes. Although his people could not bring the tower down to its foundations, they monstrously disfigured it. Alexander the Great, who then arrived in Babylon, was in awe of the colossal ruins. He interrupted his march to India and ordered his soldiers to clear the tower of debris. The soldiers worked for two whole months.
It is not known when the Tower of Babel was first erected and when it finally fell. The origin of the civilization of the Babylonians, who could afford such great achievements in architecture, also remains a mystery. Indeed, in addition to the tower, Babylon also owned the Gardens of Semiramis, one of the seven wonders of the world.
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Another mystery of history, to which modern scholars still cannot find an answer, is associated with the death of the biblical Babylon and the famous Tower of Babel in Borsippus. This tower, half burnt down and melted to a glassy state by the monstrous temperature, has survived to this day as a symbol of God's wrath.
It is a clear confirmation of the veracity of the biblical texts about the terrible fury of the heavenly fire that struck the Earth in the middle of the second millennium BC.
According to biblical legend, Babylon was built by Nimrod, who is usually identified with the giant hunter Orion. This is a very important circumstance in astral legend, which determines one of the five places of previous appearances of the "retribution comet" in the night sky, which will be described in the appropriate place.
Nimrod was the son of Hush and a descendant of Ham, one of the three sons of Noach: “Hush also begat Nimrod: this one began to be strong on earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; therefore it is said: a mighty hunter, like Nimrod, is before the Lord. His kingdom in the beginning was: Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Halne, in the land of Senaar. " / Gen. 10: 8-10 /
The biblical myth tells that after Noah's flood people attempted to build the city of Babylon (from Sumerian. Bab-ily - "the gate of God.") And the Tower of Babel "as high as heaven."
And here it is appropriate to say that in mythological texts the name “gates of God”, “heavenly gates”, as well as “gates of hell” are used to designate places of cosmic explosions, in the epicenter of which all living things perished from heavenly fire.
Enraged by the unheard-of human audacity, Gd “mixed their tongues” and scattered the builders of the Tower of Babel throughout the earth, as a result of which people stopped understanding each other: “And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men were building. And the Lord said, Behold, there is one people, and they all have one language; and this is what they began to do, and they will not lag behind what they decided to do. Let us go down and confuse their language there, so that one does not understand the speech of the other. And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore, his name was given: Babylon; for there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord scattered them over the whole earth "/ Gen. 11: 5-9 /.
Therefore, another meaning of the word Babylon is reproduced from the Hebrew word balal - "confusion".
TURRIS BABEL Athanasius Kircher, 1679
This deliberate biblical misrepresentation of the name of the city, based on the similarity of the sound of the words, in fact reflects the historical reality. The results of archaeological excavations indicate that the time of the death of Babylon was the time of the great migration of tribes and peoples, the mixing of their languages and customs, the development and seizure of new territories.
Not far from the city of Babylon are the ruins of Borsippa with the preserved ruins of a burnt ancient temple and a huge temple tower, which is considered to be the legendary Tower of Babel mentioned in the Bible.
True, some archaeologists dispute this name, on the grounds that within the city of Babylon there was its own temple tower, and no less solid in size.
As determined by archaeologists, the tower from Borsippa previously consisted of seven tiers-steps, standing on a massive square base.
They used to be painted in seven colors: black, white, purple red, blue, bright red, silver and gold. Even now, the remains of the tower are impressive. Its melted skeleton, standing on a hill, rises 46 meters above the base of the tower.
The walls of the tower, built of baked bricks, as well as the huge religious premises inside, were badly damaged by fire.
From the heat of an inconceivable temperature, the upper, most part of the tower literally evaporated, and the remaining, smaller part of the tower melted into a single glassy mass, both from the inside and from the outside.
Here is how Erich Zeren writes about it: "There is no explanation for where this heat came from, which not only heated, but also melted hundreds of burnt bricks, scorching the entire skeleton of the tower, all its clay walls."
It is interesting to cite the testimony of Wilhelm König, who tried to comprehend the cause of the incredible heat that literally melted the stepped ziggurat tower in Borsippa: “Ordinary building bricks can melt only in a very strong fire.
ROMANESQUE PAINTER, French The Building of the Tower of Babel Fresco - Abbey Church, Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe
And here is how Mark Twain described the tower from Borsippa traveling through Mesopotamia in 1867:
"... it had eight tiers, two of which stand to this day - a giant brickwork, shattered in the middle from an earthquake, scorched and half melted by the lightning of an angry Gd."
I must say that until now no researcher has been able to satisfactorily explain this monstrous melting under the influence of an inconceivable temperature, due to which the upper part of the masonry turned into steam, and the remnants of the melted tower seemed to split from top to bottom.
Attempts to explain this reflow by a high-power lightning strike cannot be considered convincing, which is clearly seen from the information on linear lightning given below.
According to modern concepts, linear lightning is a giant spark that occurs between clouds, or between a cloud and the surface of the earth. Their average size is estimated at several kilometers, but sometimes lightning up to fifty and even one hundred and fifty kilometers are encountered. The average discharge current is from 20 to 100 kiloamperes, but sometimes it reaches 500 kiloamperes.
The average temperature of the lightning channel is 25000-30000 degrees Kelvin.
It is quite obvious that not a single, even super-powerful lightning could fuse the Tower of Babel into a single monolith. And even more so to destroy the temple adjacent to it, as well as the city of Babylon located fifteen kilometers from it, the circumference of which, according to archaeologists' data, was 18 kilometers, and the thickness of the walls is estimated at 25 meters.
Pieter Bruegel - TOWER OF BABYLON 1563
According to Herodotus, the city of Babylon was an almost regular quadrangle, and was located on both sides of the Euphrates River. Each side of this quadrangle was approximately 22 kilometers, and the walls were 50 cubits thick (one cubit - about 52 cm), and six chariots in a row could be driven along them at the same time.
And the height of the walls, and it is almost impossible to believe, reached 100 meters. The walls of the city had 100 copper gates, and 250 towers stood on the walls themselves. The whole city was surrounded by a wide and deep moat.
In the middle of the second millennium BC, Babylon was the cultural, spiritual and political center of Chaldea, and one of the richest and most powerful cities in the entire Ancient World. This was the time of the heyday and greatness of Babylon. The city had the largest reserve of gold in the world, and nothing seemed to shake its power.
Contemporaries called it “the beauty of Chaldea”, “the granary of Chaldea”, “pride of Chaldea”, “glory of the kingdoms”, “golden city”. Biblical texts report that "Babylon was a golden cup in the hand of the Lord."
So what destroyed Babylon and melted the Tower of Babel to a glassy state?
There is no doubt that this monstrous temperature, which is comparable only to the heat of a nuclear explosion, arose as a result of a gigantic electric-discharge explosion of a falling celestial body, a column of fire which covered the temple tower, and the released energy of the discharge, in the form of a colossal power of the blast wave, fell on the city of Babylon, in turning it into heaps of rubble in a matter of minutes.
The destruction of the city was so terrible that the compilers of biblical texts find it difficult to select epithets to denote its terrible destruction.
Babylon, which was "a golden cup in the hand of the Lord," suddenly, in the course of one day, "became a terror among the nations", "a desolate desert", "a heap of ruins", "a house of desolation" and "a dwelling of jackals."
This is how the biblical prophecies about the destruction of Babylon look like: “Here comes a fierce day, with anger and burning fury, to make the earth a wilderness and destroy its sinners from it. The celestial stars and luminaries do not give light from themselves; the sun is darkened at its rising, and the moon does not shine with its light. I will punish the world for evil, and the wicked for their iniquity, and I will put an end to the arrogance of the proud, and I will abolish the arrogance of the oppressors; … For this I will shake the sky, and the earth will move from its place from the fury of the Lord of hosts, on the day of His burning anger…. And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the pride of the Chaldeans, will be overthrown by Gd, like Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never settle, and there will be no inhabitants in it for generations. " / Is. 13: 9-11,13,19-20 /
It must be said that the power of an electric-discharge explosion of a large meteorite can amount to hundreds of thousands of megatons in TNT equivalent, which significantly exceeds the power of modern thermonuclear charges, therefore, the death of Babylon, enclosed by cyclopean walls, with its giant ziggurats, as evidenced by the biblical texts, lasted less than one hour.
The city was literally swept off the face of the earth by a colossal blast wave, turning into huge mountains of charred rubble and debris.
The ruins of ancient Babylon are located on the banks of the Euphrates, about a hundred kilometers from the modern capital of Iraq, Baghdad, and after the explosion, they were giant mountains of garbage and are located near the later Arab settlement of Gillah.
The Arabs called these rubble hills Amran ibn Ali, Babil, Jumjuma and Qasr.
The location of ancient Babylon was initially known to archaeologists, and some of them, including the successful Layard and Oppert, even made trial excavations on its ruins, but realizing the huge amount of excavation work and the amount of money needed for this, they did not dare to organize serious archaeological research.
And only at the very end of the nineteenth century, in the spring of 1899, the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey, having received a fabulous amount of half a million gold marks for the production of work at that time, ventured to start excavations, of course not assuming that he would need eighteen years to get to the ruins of the capital ancient Chaldea.
To carry out a volume of excavation work that had never been done before, he had to write out a field railway from Germany, and lay a railway track to the excavation site. I must say that the railway was the first, and, it seems, the only time, used in archaeological work of this scale.
The thickness of the layer of earth, mixed with desert sand, ash and ash, over the ruins of Babylon exceeded ten meters, but hard work in the hellish conditions of the desert was rewarded with discoveries that brought Robert Koldewey deserved world fame.
On the basis of the excavations of the expedition of Robert Koldevei, it became possible to reproduce the reconstruction of Ancient Babylon, in the ruins of which, during the excavation of the gate of the goddess Ishtar, images of the syncretic animal "Sirrush" were found, consisting of parts of four syncretic animals: a fantastic four-legged animal, which could not be identified, an eagle, a snake and a scorpion, which allows us to consider it the prototype of the Great Sphinx.
Biblical texts call Babylon the city of sin and depravity, but in fact it was a real city of the gods. Archaeologists have excavated on its territory dozens of temples of the supreme god Marduk and hundreds of sanctuaries of other deities. For example, according to cuneiform texts, the city had "53 temples, 55 sanctuaries of the supreme god Marduk, 300 earthly and 600 heavenly deities, 180 Ishtar altars, 180 Nergal and Adadi altars, and 12 other altars."
But this did not save him from the fury of cosmic fire and flood.
Remains of the original Tower of Babel excavated by Robert Koldewey
I must say that none of the researchers and archaeologists wants to pay attention to the fact that the ruins of Babylon, destroyed by an electric discharge explosion, were also flooded by the waters of Noah's flood.
Babylon, which the workers of Koldevei dug up, was a city built on the ruins of numerous, even more ancient buildings, but many years of attempts to get to these cultural layers were unsuccessful, groundwater constantly flooded the mines.
The catastrophe that destroyed Babylon undermined all the foundations of the Babylonian kingdom and caused its decline.
Historical documents have absolutely accurately recorded the date that is considered the beginning of the New Babylonian kingdom - 1596 BC. in modern chronology.
And this once again testifies to the fact that the death of the Old Babylonian kingdom was the result of a cosmic catastrophe in 1596 BC, about which modern historians are not yet aware.
The Tower of Babel illustration for the Bible by Gustave Dore
Scholars are increasingly turning to the Bible as a reliable historical source, and this is bearing fruit in the form of sensational discoveries. Thus, one of the legends of the Old Testament about the construction of the Tower of Babel gained the glory of a true event.
In the second chapter of "Noach" of the book of Genesis, it is narrated that after the Flood, mankind found in the places of the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the land of Shinar. People spoke the same language and were one people. Here they got the bold idea to build a tower that would touch the heavens. God became enraged with human insolence and endowed the builders with different languages so that they would no longer understand each other and would not finish the construction of the tower.
In 1899, German archaeologist Robert Koldewey arrived in the vicinity of Baghdad, where the area was teeming with strange hills. Their tops were flat, and the slopes suddenly broke off, as if a giant sword had cut them. No one before Kolvedey was interested in these hills, and the local Bedouins used them as convenient places to rest.
From the very first days of excavations on Koldewey, dozens, hundreds of evidences of the existence of an ancient great civilization were discovered here. Hour after hour, workers raised from the ground statues of winged lions, magnificent bas-reliefs, cuneiform tablets, fragments of glazed brick. The city gates, studded with copper, were soon found. But what kind of city opened up to the eyes of people? Each find did not speak, but screamed that it was ... the legendary Babylon!
Kolvedey was fully convinced of his guesses when the workers freed the mud brick walls from the ground. Two 12-meter walls were spaced 12 meters apart, followed by a third wall 8 meters high. The scientist found that initially the space between the first two walls was filled with soil, which turned them into an impregnable rampart, and the third, inner wall had observation towers every 50 meters. 360 towers in total! The walls were 18 kilometers long. Everything is as it was told about Babylon in legends and legends.
In short, it was the largest fortified city of all fortified cities ever built. Even medieval city-states were much smaller, and Babylon existed over 4 thousand years ago! However, the main sensation was still waiting in the wings. It was the foundation, which was 90 meters wide. The foundation of the Tower of Babel.
Robert Kolvedey devoted fifteen years to the study of Babylon and the Tower of Babel. In parallel with the excavation, he got acquainted with all possible written sources testifying to the tower, and each time the next find exactly coincided with the descriptions left by the ancient storytellers.
In addition, the Babylonian tablets directly provided a lot of valuable information. Some of them contained literally architectural calculations and images of the tower. In the end, the scientist was able to describe the legendary structure as if he had seen it with his own eyes.
So, the Tower of Babel rose 90 meters in height and consisted of seven terraces, set on a rectangular 33-meter base. The terraces were twisted in a spiral, and the uppermost of them was a 15-meter temple of the god Morduk. A monumental staircase ran from the ground to this temple. In total, 85 million bricks were used to build the tower!
Separately, it should be said about the upper terrace. The outside was covered with blue glazed brick and gold inlay. In sunny weather, the walls began to shine with mystical fire, visible from many kilometers around. Inside the temple was a gold table and bed. Here the god Morduk himself was supposed to rest. Every evening the most beautiful girl of Babylon would come up here to please the great god until morning.
The first floor of the tower was also distinguished by its splendor. Among other decorations, there was a statue of the god Morduk, cast in pure gold. She weighed 24 tons. The so-called procession road led to the entrance. It was built of powerful square slabs, which in turn rested on a layer of asphalt and brick flooring. The edges of the slabs were covered with precious inlay. By the way, Kolvedey excavated this road in almost all its glory.
True, the story of the Tower of Babel established by Kolvedey and his followers is somewhat different from the legend from the Old Testament. It turns out that the tower was destroyed and rebuilt several times. For example, to one of the destruction in 689 BC. the Assyrian king Sinacherib put his hand. It was restored by Novokhudonosor II. The Jews, whom he moved to Babylon, saw this very process.
The fame of the annihilator was also won by the Persian king Xerxes. Although his people could not bring the tower down to its foundations, they monstrously disfigured it. Alexander the Great, who then arrived in Babylon, was in awe of the colossal ruins. He interrupted his march to India and ordered his soldiers to clear the tower of debris. The soldiers worked for two whole months.
It is not known when the Tower of Babel was first erected and when it finally fell. The origin of the civilization of the Babylonians, who could afford such great achievements in architecture, also remains a mystery. Indeed, in addition to the tower, Babylon also owned the Gardens of Semiramis, one of the seven wonders of the world.
