Ancient interplanetary travelers, ancient gods and a 21st century step pyramid. The city is believed to have been founded around 3,800′ BC, during the so-called Ubaid period. The first recorded king of Ur was Mesannepada, who is listed as having ruled for 80 years The Great Ziggurat Of Ur, An Ancient Temple Honoring The Anunnaki ANCIENT HISTORY The Great Ziggurat Of Ur, An Ancient Temple Honoring The Anunnaki By Ivan The Ziggurat de Ur is an ancient ziggurat located next to the ruins of the ancient Sumerian city of Ur, in present-day Iraq. It was built as a place of worship of the god Nanna (“moon,” in Sumerian), during the Ubaid period, and rebuilt in the 21st century BCE by King Ur-Nammu. It was destroyed by the Elamites and later ordered to be rebuilt by the king Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. The remains of this ancient stepped Pyramid were excavated in the 1920’s and 1030’s by Sir Leonard Woolley, but it was discovered by William Kennett Loftus in 1850. Besides the ancient Ziggurat of Dur Untash, the Ziggurat of Ur is one of the best preserved ancient structures of the period. In fact, the Ziggurat of Ur is one of three well-preserved structures of the Neo-Sumerian city of Ur. The temple was erected by King Ur-Nammu who dedicated the great ziggurat of Ur in honor of Nanna/Sîn, in approximately the 21st century BCE, during the third dynasty of Ur. Nanna was considered the God of the moon—referred to as the ‘Bright one’—in ancient Mesopotamian mythology and the son of Enlil and Ninlil. Enlil was the Lord of the Air and Earth, and the guardian of the table of Destiny. The massive temple—a step pyramid—is believed to have measured around 64 meters in length, 45 meters in width and more than 30 meters in height, although the height of the temple remains a subject of debate as only its foundations survived. According to scholars, the Ziggurat of UR was completed in the 21st century BCE, by King Shugi, who proclaimed himself a God in order to win the allegiance of cities. He eventually ruled for 48 years and saw Ur grow to become the capital of the state, eventually controlling most parts of ancient Mesopotamia. The Ziggurat of Ur was surrounded by a wall stretching 8 meters in height and was partially restored in the late 1970s. continued with pictures https://www.ancient-code.com/the-great-ziggurat-of-ur-an-ancient-temple-honoring-the-anunnaki/
Nimrod revealed The Bible states… Cush was the father of Nimrod, who grew to be a mighty warrior on the Earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; that is why it is said, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD.” The centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Calneh in Shinar(Genesis 10:8-10). https://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/nimrod.html
Doubtful. The 'Tower' is most likely an allegorical reference, as is 'the Land of Shinar', and not an actual building. https://answersingenesis.org/tower-of-babel/where-in-the-world-is-the-tower-of-babel/ Distinguishing Between Babel and Babylon As noted above, some sources place Shinar in the north of Mesopotamia, and not in the south along with the majority view. But if Babel and Babylon really are the same place, as most people believe today, the question is how Shinar could possibly be in the north at all. Indeed, how could Babel be any place other than at Babylon? An examination of the names “Babel” and “Babylon” is in order. The meaning of the name, “Babel,” is defined right in the Genesis passage as “confound” (Genesis 11:9 KJV), which, in turn, is defined in Webster’s dictionary as “confuse” (Webster 1973, p. 383). This author believes that a clear and straightforward reading of this verse and application of the principles of solid hermeneutics do not leave room for any other meaning (for more on literal biblical interpretation, see, for example, Habermehl 1995, pp. 5–1. Indeed, the English translations of the Septuagint Scriptures do not use the word “Babel” at all, but simply translate the name of the place where the Tower was built as “Confusion” (NETS and Brenton LXX, Genesis 11:9). For a history of the name of the city of Babylon, we quote Oates (1979, p. 60): The name Babylon—Akkadian Bab-ilim . . . ‘gate of god’—was long thought to be merely a translation of an earlier Sumerian name Ka-dingirra. But the city’s name is first found in the Akkadian form Bab-ilim, now believed to be a secondary spelling developed by popular etymology from an earlier name Babil, the meaning of which is unknown (Gelb 1955). Much later, the plural form Bab-ilani, ‘gate of the gods,’ is found. The modern name, Oates tells us, is the Greek form of Bab-ilani, hence Babylon. Interestingly, the modern ruins of Babylon are called Babil today (Leick 2002, p. 245). From all this we draw the conclusion that “Babylon” has a completely different linguistic origin than “Babel,” and a different meaning (gate of the gods) as well. This points out the error of those who say that “Babel” is translated “Babylon” (for example, Smith 1948, p. 71; Yates 1962, p. 16). The two names, “Babel” and “Babylon,” do appear identical in Hebrew in the biblical Masoretic manuscript, as BBL (for the actual Hebrew letters for this, which read from right to left, see Brown, Driver and Briggs 1907; Strong 1894, #894). This is because ancient written Hebrew of the Old Testament contained only consonants (although vowels were pronounced when Hebrew was read aloud); a written system of indicating vowels only appeared later on, in the Christian era. (For a history and discussion of this somewhat controversial subject, see Mitchell 2005.) When different words contained the same consonants, these words were distinguished from each other by the reader from the context, and their vowels were pronounced accordingly. This is why Babel was written as “BBL”; and since Babylon’s original name was “Babil,” it was also written BBL. Our various English translations from the Masoretic manuscript actually do distinguish between Babel and Babylon by translating BBL as “Babel” in Genesis 10:10 and 11:9, and thereafter (260 times) as Babylon. However, we need to understand that it is a linguistic coincidence that the same letters BBL are used to write both Babel and Babylon in Hebrew. There remains the question of why BBL (Babel) is the form that appears in the Hebrew narrative of our Bible for the noun “confusion,” since the ancient Hebrew verb for “confused” was balal (Benner 2006); we might have expected “Babel” to appear in the Hebrew Scripture as BLL. The answer here would appear to be that “Babel” is not a Hebrew word. In the same way that “Shinar” is a Semitic word related to Hebrew, we would say that “Babel” is also a word from one of the Semitic languages of the Shinar region. As an example of how similar the words can be in another Semitic language, the Aramaic word for “confusion” is balbel (Yates 1962, p. 16). “Babel” was most likely what the place of the Tower was called by the Semitic people who lived in Shinar at the time that the final editing of the Old Testament took place;6 although their language was similar to Hebrew, it would be a mistake to expect that their form of this place name would take the exact Hebrew spelling, since they did not speak Hebrew in that part of the world. (This also explains why the Hebrew verb balal is used for “confounding” in Genesis 11:9, because the biblical narrative itself was written in Hebrew.) Because scholars and theologians in recent times have somehow lost sight of this difference between “Babel” and “Babylon,” and believe that the two are one and the same (presumably because both appear in the ancient Hebrew as BBL), they therefore find it necessary to explain how “confusion” and “gate of the god” can both be correct meanings of the same word. The most widely accepted explanation is that there is a play on words in this passage, and many sources can be quoted that say this (for example, Ross 1985, p. 44; Yates 1962, p. 16). But there are other ideas. For instance, Harrison (1963, p. 89) informs us that Babylon is “the Greek form of the Hebrew word ‘babel,’ which was closely allied to, and probably derived from, the Akkadian ‘babilu’ or ‘gate of God,’” leaving out the “confusion” aspect altogether. Howard (2009) has recently attempted to come up with a new way of solving this Babel/Babylon linguistic puzzle by claiming that “Babel” meant “the door of God,” so that Babel was the door through which God came down to earth to judge men; in this, Howard confuses the issue even more. In another rather novel view, Jordan (2007, pp. 99–100) quotes Hirsch (1989, p. 212f) to say that babel, related to balal (confound) is not meant at all, but that we should read yabal (wither). Since Jordan has already established (to his satisfaction) that it was primarily a religious division that took place at Babel (2007, p. 91), he concludes that over time false religions will lose the power to grip men’s souls and men will wither; the withering will then eventually lead to scattering. This last interpretation of “babel” shows how far it is possible to wander from the straightforward reading of the scriptural text. Our conclusion here, however, is that Babel and Babylon are different places, and are not necessarily located anywhere near each other. Since we know that the ruins of ancient Babylon, called Babil today, lie just north of the city of modern al Hillah (Hilla), capital of the Babil Governorate of southern Iraq, about 80 km (50 miles) south of modern Baghdad (Iraq 2003), this leaves us with the question where Babel in Shinar was. Because of the widely held belief that Babel must have been in south Mesopotamia, we will first take a look at this territory. Also, the 'land of Shinar' re Nimrod doesn't appear to be the same 'Shinar' of Amraphael. Philo has a commentary of interest on Genesis as allegorical.
Bit of-topic, but found this little tidbit interesting. In our passage, one senses both astonishment at the advanced technological level of Babylonian culture and a keen sense that technology poses grave dangers when it is not accompanied by reverence for God. http://www.harvardichthus.org/2013/04/genesis-series-gen-111-118-babel/ Seems they were aware that technology is no panacea for anything. Henry George makes the same observations about political economy and the assorted ideologies built on attempts at building workable systems based on pure 'rationalism', i.e. impossible. Assorted opinions on the meanings of verses: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1db6/b35ad6f4355a330f385565e9e71161faaaa3.pdf This paper has this interesting footnote ... 8 The Bible uses this word for both Ethiopia and the Kassite power. What the connection is remains a matter of debate. In this connection, the similarities between Ethiopic and Akkadian are interesting for speculation. https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/dcc/genesis-11.html
Shinar was not a real place, and the Tower of Babel was not a real tower. It's an allegorical reference. Get over it.
Southern Mesopotamia. Shinar means the “land of two rivers” in Hebrew (shene nahar) BTW there are still towers all over the ME... In relatively flat areas they were watch towers and/or signal towers.
A lot of Bible versions substitute Babylon for Shinar and Babel. https://www.biblegateway.com/quicks...abylon&begin=1&end=1&limit=250&searchtype=all
