Babylon

The reconstructed archaeological picture of Babylon shows that it was the biggest city in the ancient Mediterranean until the rise of Imperial Rome.  It is not possible to know exactly what the tower or city once looked like from the scant evidence that remains.  But—and this is a big “but”—the Greek historian Herodotus provides particularly important information since it recurs in later Christian tradition. 

Herodotus claims that the outer walls of Babylon formed a square, 120 stadia to a side.  A Greek stadion is defined as 600 feet (or alternatively 400 cubits), approximately 185 meters.  Herodotus' claim is too fantastic to be true:  at 22 kilometers per side, his claim exceeds archaeological reality by at least eight times.  Nonsense, as all archaeologists agree.

But in fact, it does not matter whether Herodotus' account was accurate or even whether Herodotus saw the city with his own eyes. The story as told—whether first hand or second hand, true or false—conveys the impression of the city then in vogue.  And since the same form and values later recur in Christian apocalyptic literature, either Herodotus laid the foundation for this tradition or his source did (and Herodotus simply reported it). To understand the latter one must first be familiar with the former.

Herodotus also states that the temple complex was square, two stadia per side. The Tower of Babel, located in the middle of this, stood upon a platform base, also square, one stadion per side. 

All these relate to one another on the basis of their stadion dimensions: the temple complex is simply double the ziggurat platform, while the entire city was 120 times this.  Evidently, the city of Babylon and Marduk’s temple were conceived together.  Moreover, this symbolism extends to the measurements of the Tower of Babel itself.  As we have seen, the tower base was a square 120 Babylonian cubits on each side, recalling numerically the outer 120 stadia of the entire city according to Herodotus. We saw this relationship between the city and the sanctuary in Ezekiel, and we will see it again in the Christian City of New Jerusalem.

Finally, several tablets recovered by archaeologists list Babylon's inner wall size as 14,400 cubits. Assuming a square form, 14,400 Babylonian cubits in total means each side was 3600 cubits (4 x 3600). Mesopotamians associated that number with totality—the primary number of the circle (360 degrees) as well as their calendar (360 days, plus five intercalary days). One need only compare the perimeter of Zoser's wall complex, or the implied circle of the Great Pyramid to sense this unity.

The 14,400 cubit wall length is important because it is the square of 120 (120 x 120 = 14,400).  So the square form of the city and the size of its walls point to the same conceptual square.  The walls are not 120 cubits square (they are 3600 cubits square).  But their sum is the same as the ideal or conceptual square of 120. The symbolic importance of the walls here fuses with its numerical significance.  The square form of Babylon and its walls always seem to return to this same iku figure.