Original subtitles

In the deserts of Iraq,

a team of archeologists unearths evidence

for a 2,500-year-old site of worship.

Was this the base of a

incense burner, a statue, or something like that?

Uh, both.

As they dig deeper,

their discoveries reveal insights

into one of the greatest monuments in the Bible...

We have both sides of the courtyard

for the first time ever.

It's a extremely exciting find for us.

...the legendary Tower of Babel.

Babylon,

one of the greatest cities of the ancient world.

This metropolis in modern-day Iraq

is a vast archeological site...

and a place of myth and wonder.

Anyone coming would've been

awe-inspired by Babylon's power and its might.

In the Book of Genesis,

Babylon is the setting

for the biblical Tower of Babel,

a legendary megastructure so tall, it angers God.

What lies behind this fantastical story?

How much is grounded

in the history of this ancient region?

Babylon sits in the heart of Mesopotamia,

a region in which many of the Bible's

most famous stories are set.

Now, new archeological discoveries,

buried for thousands of years,

shed light on the real events

that may have given rise to these legends.

This season, international teams of experts

dig through centuries of earth

and use cutting-edge technology

to piece together these millennia-old mysteries.

Their discoveries could help

to reveal the world of Babylon.

In central Iraq,

an ambitious project is underway

in the heart of ancient Babylon.

Much of the architecture visible here today

is modern restoration built around the original walls.

Most of the ancient city remains hidden.

Osama Hisham and his Iraqi team

are on a mission to rebuild its impressive structures.

There is only a few percent

of the ancient city of Babylon discovered.

Only a scratch on the surface.

Osama has worked at Babylon

for the past 15 years,

and his connection with the site

stretches back much further.

I grew up from childhood nearby this site.

All of this rich culture affected my way of thinking.

I am very proud working here

in one of the most important Heritage Site in the world.

This season, the team plans to reconstruct

a spectacular archway at one of the city's

most sacred buildings, the Ninmakh Temple.

They want to understand how the city was built

and what it looked like in its prime.

This building is Ninmakh Temple.

It's a temple dedicated for Mother Goddess Ninmakh.

It is one of the most important temples

in ancient Babylon.

The greatest challenge that this building is facing

is the termites and the rainwater

because the building is made from mud bricks

and wood beams for the roof.

Termites infest the wooden beams,

quickly rendering them unstable.

Substantial parts of this temple

date back 2,500 years.

They require ongoing work to stop them collapsing.

There was a leak in the rainwater

from the roof, and the water

caused a settlement in the foundation.

And this, in its turn, caused the collapse in the arch.

Babylon showcased some of the earliest known

arches in history.

The city rose to prominence in the second millennium BCE

and dominated the region for 1,500 years.

At its peak, between the 7th and 6th century BCE,

it was a thriving metropolis.

Babylon was the capital of a mighty empire,

and perhaps, the largest city of its time.

In an era when most settlements

were little more than villages,

Babylon may have been the first city in the world

to reach a population of 200,000 people.

It was filled with decorated palaces

and holy places of worship...

all surrounded by miles of protective city walls.

In the 5th century BCE, the Greek writer, Herodotus,

penned stories about this extraordinary place.

According to the Bible,

there was one megastructure greater than all others...

the Tower of Babel.

The Book of Genesis says

that at the dawn of civilization,

all humans speak one language.

Settling in Mesopotamia...

they set out to build a tower that will reach the heavens.

Afraid of what else they might achieve...

God makes the people speak in many tongues

to stop them from working together...

and scatters them across the Earth.

They never complete the tower,

or the city they planned to build around it.

How capable were the Babylonian builders

in achieving the engineering feats described in the Bible?

First, Osama's team starts by repairing

the badly damaged lower walls.

They lay the same type of sun-dried mudbricks

that ancient builders used 2,500 years ago.

We are building four rows of, uh, mud bricks each day.

Then, we will leave the wall and the mortars to be dry,

so we can build another four rows the next day.

Osama thinks the size of the walls

hints at the engineering skill of the Babylonian builders.

Tall walls need thick foundations,

these walls are up to 13 feet wide.

The Babylonians built this thick,

so they could build towering-like monuments.

Osama's specialist team

puts the Babylonians' techniques to the test...

to uncover the expert engineering used to stop

these vast and heavy structures from collapsing.

These secrets could be the key

to constructing a tower of biblical proportions.

If such a tower did exist here,

what might it have looked like?

A clue could lie 250 miles away,

along the Tigris river, at another site called Nimrud.

American archaeologist, Michael Danti,

leads the excavation.

His work begins at 5 a.m.

to beat the blazing hot desert sun,

with highs here hitting more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Just looking out across Nimrud,

you can see why we all like to dig in Iraq so much.

It's really, for me, an archeological paradise.

Walking out every morning

to dig at an archeological site like this,

you get this incredible sense of anticipation.

You're always finding things. It's never boring.

Nimrud is home to an intriguing structure

that could shed light on the tower

in the biblical story, a ziggurat.

What you have is the core of the ziggurat.

Ziggurats were towering monuments

built in many cities across Mesopotamia.

Designed with stepped platforms,

some were constructed to allow priests to reach the top.

The earliest ziggurats predate the pyramids

of ancient Egypt.

Until recently, the ziggurat at Nimrud

stood at least 100 feet tall.

The ziggurat was flattened by extremists

of the so-called Islamic State using an earthmover.

They went up to the top of the 34-meter-high ziggurat.

It was a really impressive structure.

The militant group, ISIS,

captured parts of Northern Iraq in 2014

and leveled this historic site

as part of its war against non-Islamic heritage.

Spectacular winged guardians that once lined the gateways,

are now reduced to rubble.

When we began our work here...

we started in this area where you can see

the floor has been damaged by a frontloader.

Parts of the city were first excavated

in the 1840s,

but Michael and the Iraqi team

are uncovering more structures beneath the ground.

We're beginning to excavate the sides

to get a better understanding of that building as well.

There are large bricks

just beneath the surface.

It's a fairly good-sized piece of a brick.

The material is clay.

Uh, very clean clay that is

dug in the surrounding plain.

This is a baked brick

with a fragmentary cuneiform inscription.

Probably from the reign of Ashurnasirpal II.

The distinctive symbols

of King Ashurnasirpal's name

are inscribed on numerous bricks

emerging from the ground.

They are strong evidence that he was the king

that built this now ruined structure.

Ashurnasirpal ruled the Assyrian Empire

in the 9th century BCE,

a rival kingdom to the Babylonians.

Blocks from this ziggurat reveal the materials

used in constructing great towers in this area.

Some of these bricks are kiln-baked,

even stronger than the sun-dried ones

used for the temple in Babylon.

It takes real expertise to bake them.

If the kiln is too hot, they easily crack.

The brick that I'm holding,

while it's broken, is still extremely intact.

It's quite hard. Very heavy.

Uh, you could reuse this material now.

On completion,

the base of the original ziggurat

was more than 160 feet across.

It would've been an imposing structure

within the City of Nimrud.

Each one of these bricks really is, uh,

not a cheap thing to produce in antiquity.

And if you think about the number of bricks

that went into the ziggurat,

it's a r... it's a really impressive project.

In terms of the industry that's behind it and the technology,

the expenditure that the Assyrians

were willing to make to build the ziggurat.

What were these ancient ziggurats used for,

and how might they have influenced the story

of the Tower of Babel?

If a ziggurat gave rise

to the legend of the Tower of Babel...

clues to the story's origin

could be found in something else

the Babylonians left behind.

As well as being excellent builders,

they also kept detailed written records

in a writing system called cuneiform.

Lara Bampfield is one of the few people

in the world who can read and write it.

Cuneiform is one of the oldest writing styles in the world.

It actually predates Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Cuneiform was developed

more than 5,000 years ago.

It was carved into stone

or written using a wedge-shaped stylus

pressed into wet clay.

Tablets with this ancient script

have been found across Babylon.

Some provide valuable details

about the city's long-lost monuments...

like this slab called a stele.

The surface is badly damaged.

Lara's trained eye picks out a drawing

barely visible on the left side.

You can see a six-stepped ziggurat

with a temple on the top.

These aren't steps that we as people would climb.

These are very high, they're higher than a human,

and they're multi-level and they change height

as you get closer to the top.

The ziggurat rises up

in a pyramid of seven stepped levels.

Ziggurats with multiple platforms

were common across ancient Mesopotamia.

When this was found,

it was exceedingly exciting.

On the left-hand side, there is a cuneiform inscription

which reads, "E temon anqi zii ker ra at ka dinga ra,"

and this translates as, "Etemenanki,

the ziggurat of Babylon."

And we can actually translate this name

and it reads as, "The house, the foundation

of Heaven and Earth."

What's really interesting is the word "ziggurat" itself,

which means "rising building."

It is the only contemporary surviving copy

of the Ziggurat of Babylon.

More cuneiform is inscribed

at the bottom of the slab.

This translates to, "The base of the Etemenanki,"

and the base of the, "E ur may imen anki."

"I filled in to make a high terrace,"

"Etemenanki,"

and, "E ur may imen Anki,"

"I built their structures with bitumen

"and baked brick throughout.

I completed them,

making them gleam bright as the sun."

What's really nice about this piece

is that it explains some of the materials

that were used to build the ziggurat.

So, we can see that it was made of baked brick and bitumen.

But it also explains that there might have been

something coating these mud bricks

that would have given it a gleam in the sun.

Now, this could've been kind of a whitewash.

So, when anyone looked up towards the sky

with the sun glaring on it,

it would've almost been blinding to the people looking up.

The text describes the Etemenanki Ziggurat

in remarkable detail.

It's an invaluable source

that helps reveal the engineering secrets

of the ancient ziggurat builders.

The Mesopotamians stacked

mudbricks to build their ziggurats...

using waterproof bitumen as mortar.

They laid layers of reeds horizontally

at regular intervals

to strengthen the walls so they could build high.

Early ziggurats stemmed from simple raised platforms.

They elevated temples to symbolize closeness

to the gods,

making them visible for miles around,

and protecting them from floods.

Over time, they evolved into complex,

multi-tiered structures.

Some reached more than 300 feet tall,

using several million mudbricks.

It is really interesting to see

how much work was put in by the locals

to make such a monumental and tall structure.

In Babylon,

whilst Osama restores the Ninmakh Temple...

archaeologist, Ahmed Aziz Selman,

investigates the rest of the more than

3-square-mile site.

People like to visit Babylon

to see architectures, to see long history,

to see what was mentioned about it

in the Old Testament and Holy Quran.

Although the stele confirms

that Babylon did have a ziggurat,

it doesn't reveal its exact location.

Ahmed hunts for clues in the landscape.

The best way to survey the city

for evidence of the fabled tower

is from the air.

You have to start from the,

from the corner by there.

The drone view from above

reveals the heart of the ancient city.

Almost half a mile to the south,

there are still signs of the city's vast monuments.

Many remain buried beneath mounds of earth.

One strange feature within the walls of Babylon

looks unlike anything else,

a huge square ruin.

What we see here on the monitor

is a square shape.

What we see right now is only the core of the Babylon tower.

These foundations are a similar square shape

to those found in Nimrud...

a sign that this may also be a ziggurat.

But these ruins in Babylon are much larger.

This is all that's left of the Etemenanki Ziggurat...

depicted on the ancient stele.

The Bible says that the Tower of Babel

soared all the way to the heavens.

Illustrations often depict a spiraling circular design,

but there is no description

of its shape in the biblical text.

The archeological evidence at Babylon...

points to a square-based, multi-layered structure.

It soared above the city.

Could this ziggurat be the real tower

that features in the Bible's famous story?

Ahmed pieces together

the surviving evidence

to reveal the height of this original ziggurat.

We have a real measurement

derived from the tablets

and, uh, taken from the archeological studies.

So, 91.5 meters,

that's the dimension

of the basement of Babylon Tower.

The height was equal to the basement measurement.

The dimensions appear to match those

on the Etemenanki stele.

In its prime, this tower was more than 300 feet tall

and it had a greater footprint

than the Empire State Building.

Many experts think the writers

of the Biblical story were inspired

by the construction of this gleaming ziggurat.

Across the site from the ziggurat mound,

Osama's team continues work on the Ninmakh Temple.

The temple walls are built with similar materials

to the towering ziggurat,

like mud bricks, reed mats, and mortar.

We are using the reed mats between the mud bricks rows,

simulating the ancient way of building.

You can see the remaining of the bitumen,

but very much decayed through the time.

How did the Babylonians use

these simple elements to build such magnificent monuments?

Osama and his conservation team

are determined to make the Ninmakh Temple

reconstruction historically accurate.

They use firsthand accounts from cuneiform tablets,

including the Etemenanki stele,

to decode the ancient builders' techniques.

The tablets that are found in the temple

told us about the structure of the temple,

which is built mainly from mud bricks.

The recipe came for these mud bricks...

from analyses of the original bricks

that used to build the temple of Ninmakh,

and we are doing it on the same process.

The height of a structure

depends on the strength of its building materials.

Too soft, and it will crumble under pressure.

Ancient builders had to find a way

to make the mud strong and elastic.

It starts from making the mud mixture.

This mixture contained water, soil, and straw.

Then, the mixture will be left for one week or two.

The tools that we are using are only basic tools...

to make the mixture and to cut the bricks

through a wooden molds.

It takes almost a month

to complete each batch of bricks.

These bricks are dried...

in the heat of the weather.

We put the brick in the shade

and not under the direct sun

because the heat of the sun will dry them faster

and cause them to crack.

The team has made thousands

of bricks this way over the past year.

These sun-dried mud bricks are the same style

originally used to build the Etemenanki Ziggurat.

Osama's team finds that the ingredients used

by the ancient Babylonians

creates incredibly strong building blocks.

Sun-dried bricks formed the core of a ziggurat,

while kiln-baked bricks lined the facade

to protect it against the extremes of weather.

This is a simple process

to produce these mud bricks,

but they are, uh, bearing a very, very huge weight.

Some of the bricks even bear a weight of 1,500 kilograms.

The Babylonian bricks

are capable of holding immense pressure.

This is a vital feature for building big.

If the bricks were weak,

the colossal weight of a building,

like the Tower of Babel,

could cause the base to crumble.

So, how tall could mudbrick ziggurats reach?

To the north in Nimrud... Michael and the team's

excavations are yielding fascinating finds.

They unearth rectangular rooms next to the ziggurat mound.

We found this stele against the wall.

It's a extremely exciting find for us.

These are fairly rare sorts of objects,

standing stones or stele.

And we're slowly piecing together the entire scene

and what this might have meant.

The beautiful carved relief is damaged,

but Michael can make out the shapes of two figures.

On the right-hand side of the stele,

you see a barefoot figure,

and, very importantly, they're standing on a pedestal.

We can tell from the garment...

that this is a male.

We're reasonably certain that we have a deity here

on this podium or platform.

They are raised above the profane,

the realm of human beings,

and this is a kind of an... a microcosm,

the idea behind a ziggurat,

where you're elevating up temples

or you're elevating up gods.

The figure on the left

is standing on a lower level.

They're not as important

as the deity, clearly,

and this is a very typical scene for Mesopotamia.

It's the presentation of an individual

before a deity or god.

Michael thinks this wasn't just any individual.

Images like this,

where a god is handing symbols of kingship

and is in the presence of a human,

help to convey this individual's special status.

For Mesopotamian rulers,

this was a very important scene

for legitimizing their power.

They were essentially God's agents on Earth.

Unlike the Egyptians and some other cultures

in the ancient Near East,

they believed that the king was God's servant on Earth.

These clues lead Michael to believe

this scene depicts the ruler who built the city

and commissioned the ziggurat, King Ashurnasirpal.

The king wanted to claim an association with the gods

to cement his right to rule.

He was so powerful, he was capable of building

larger monumental buildings than his predecessors.

It provides some really interesting clues

as to how this building was used in antiquity.

This stele reveals the king

behind Nimrud's Ziggurat.

Is there any evidence for a similar mastermind

behind the ziggurat in Babylon?

In the workshop, Lara takes a closer look

at the inscriptions on the Etemenanki stele.

The Bible simply says that

people in southern Mesopotamia

constructed the legendary Tower of Babel.

Lara thinks this stone reveals

who commissioned Babylon's soaring ziggurat.

We can see a figure standing tall.

We can tell it's a male, due to the beard.

He is wearing a long robe and a conical hat.

The combination can tell us that this is a royal figure.

More than 100 kings ruled Babylon

during the empire's nearly 2,000-year lifespan.

So, which ruler is depicted alongside

the Etemenanki Ziggurat?

Lara writes out a section of the cuneiform text.

From the cuneiform here,

we can see several signs.

We can see "ag nig do" and "uru."

These can be transliterated as, "Nabu kaduri ussa,"

which can be translated as, "Nabu, watch over my heir."

This is King Nebuchadnezzar II, King of Babylon.

His name appears

over and over again in the Bible.

Nebuchadnezzar II was the greatest king

of the late Babylonian Empire,

who conquered thousands of miles of land.

Legend has it he built

the famous hanging gardens of Babylon

to make his Persian wife feel more at home.

But he also had a cruel streak.

The Bible claims that when he had a troubling dream

and his wise men failed to guess and interpret it,

he ordered them all to be executed.

He built a golden statue of himself, 90 feet tall,

that all Babylonians had to worship.

Those who refused, got thrown into a fiery furnace.

Nebuchadnezzar's largest monument at Babylon

was the Etemenanki Ziggurat.

The stele says he repaired and enlarged

a smaller structure here...

to make something even more spectacular.

There are many reasons to why Nebuchadnezzar

might have wanted to rebuild the ziggurat.

This is an emblem of his power and authority.

It took almost his whole reign to rebuild it.

So, it was definitely a status symbol.

The king's ambition for building

seems to mirror the account in the Bible story.

Like the biblical builders,

Nebuchadnezzar intended to leave his mark.

What further purpose

did ziggurats serve in Mesopotamia?

At the ancient city of Nimrud...

Michael and his team work tirelessly

to clear the areas around the ziggurat.

The rubble from the demolished tower

hides the city monuments that surround it.

We're really hoping that by re-excavating

and opening up new areas,

we're going to shed light on ancient religious practices.

There's a large area that's never been explored before.

Michael and his colleague, Brad Hafford,

excavate the structure

next to the walls of the ziggurat.

The team digs deeper.

Was this the base of a incense burner,

a statue, or something like that?

Uh, both.

Yeah, it could be either.

There is some preserved wall above the baked brick,

so we'll have to watch carefully for that,

but it's pretty badly eroded on this, uh, east side I think.

Incense was often burned

by worshipers in temples.

At Nimrud, they worshipped the patron deity of the city,

Ninurta, god of war and agriculture.

As the archeologists remove the crumbling bricks and sand,

walls come into view.

We think that that's the main doorway

and if that's the case, then we have both sides

of the courtyard for the first time ever.

It takes hard work to move many tons of earth.

Finally, the team exposes the walls of a great temple.

What we found is the front part of the Ninurta Temple.

Michael's new discovery

paints a vivid picture of life at the Nimrud Ziggurat.

Ancient priests used this temple

to worship the god, Ninurta.

The cult statue would've been

against the side of the ziggurat.

Most of the activity in the temple

took place at this lower level,

with the ziggurat towering above the temple in the background.

As well as religious activity

taking place at its base,

the ziggurat itself had a holy significance.

This complex at Nimrud could shed light

on the one that would've been found in Babylon.

The Etemenanki Ziggurat at Babylon

rose high above the temple complex.

At the top of the stairs,

there sat a temple...

dedicated to the city's patron deity, Marduk.

Only priests were permitted to climb to the top,

bringing them closer to the gods.

This attempt to reach the heavens

may have inspired the story of God's anger in the Bible.

Marduk was the god of justice,

compassion, healing, and magic.

He became the most prestigious god of Mesopotamia.

The archeological evidence

shows that Nebuchadnezzar's great ziggurat

not only had religious significance,

it was also a symbol of power.

A worthy inspiration for the Babel legend.

But the Bible's account is set at the dawn of human history,

long before Nebuchadnezzar was born.

Is there a reason for this strange chronology?

Writing expert, Lara Bampfield,

decodes another cuneiform tablet

with a story from the ancient city of Uruk.

Despite being written around 1,500 years before

the Tower of Babel story...

there are some striking similarities.

So, the line on this tablet

talks about how Enmerkar is trying to build a ziggurat,

but there is this confusion of tongues.

This line, in particular, talks about the harmony of tongues

and how they want to create one tongue.

This line reads...

"The whole universe in unison to Enlil in one tongue."

Although this is a Sumerian myth,

we can see parallels to the biblical scriptures

talking about multi-tongues and the confusion of tongues.

The Sumerians were a neighboring civilization

to the Babylonians

who also wrote in cuneiform.

The biblical story that talks about multi-tongues

was written in about the 6th century...

whereas this Sumerian myth was written in the 21st century BCE.

A clue to understanding

why this same story appears in different accounts

could be the writing system itself.

Cuneiform flourished in ancient Babylon.

Babylon would've been a trading hub.

A melting pot of different languages and cultures.

Cuneiform was first invented to help

as an administrative tool

to track, trade barley or wheat or animals.

During the time of Nebuchadnezzar,

Babylon would have been an epicenter of writing.

Archeologists have found evidence

that in Babylonian schools, pupils learned to write

by repetitively carving

cuneiform lines on clay tablets.

Babylonians used this early writing to record laws,

send letters, and even record the movements of the stars.

Scribes wrote down, copied, and collected myths

from Mesopotamia

and preserved them for future generations,

carved in clay.

Cuneiform became a really useful tool.

The shared writing system of cuneiform

may have led to the transmission

of ancient Mesopotamian stories,

through written accounts and copied texts.

Myths and legends about languages

may be a reflection of this multilingual region.

So, how might the writers of the Bible have come across

the Sumerian tale of Enmerkar and the confusion of tongues?

And why was Babylon the setting

for their great tower?

The Bible's Tower of Babel story

is set at the dawn of civilization,

long before the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar

and his immense ziggurat.

But this ruler played a vital role

in the lives of the authors of the Old Testament.

Lara thinks historical accounts could reveal why.

We've heard of Nebuchadnezzar as a military king,

and we have accounts of this,

both in cuneiform inscriptions,

but also from the Bible, where he's actually written

as quite ruthless and quite harsh.

In the 6th century BCE,

Nebuchadnezzar II and his Babylonian army

laid siege to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was set ablaze...

its temple and homes reduced to ruins,

leaving the city in ashes.

The Judeans were forced to leave their homes

and taken to Babylon.

But even in exile, they protected their culture,

inventing a new form of Hebrew alphabet...

and writing down much of the Hebrew Bible.

The accounts in the Bible

were written by people Nebuchadnezzar oppressed,

so it's not a surprise to hear that they portrayed him

as this horrible person that came in

and obliterated everything in his path.

The Judeans living in exile at Babylon

would have seen the Etemenanki Ziggurat

and heard the stories told there.

Some experts surmise that the Judeans

wrote the Tower of Babel account in Babylon,

beneath the shadow of its ziggurat...

drawing on this city and its tyrant king

to teach a wider moral lesson about the start of humanity.

Whether he was actually as harsh, as ruthless...

as any other king was

when he went on a military campaign is unsure,

but the accounts we do have definitely portray him this way.

At the ancient city of Babylon...

Osama and the conservation team

replace the last few bricks

in a length of the ancient city walls.

The tower may be gone,

but the mission to rebuild and understand

Babylon's monuments goes on.

Conservation of the monuments in Babylon

will make them last longer for the next generations to enjoy

and learn more about this famous city.

The team's work here reveals

that Babylon's monuments really were as impressive

as the ancient legends suggest.

They may not have matched the Biblical proportions,

but their sheer size and ambition

guaranteed their iconic status

in legends like the Tower of Babel.

The kings of Mesopotamia

built larger and larger temples

and ziggurats over time.

They wanted to build the biggest and the best.

They wanted to inspire

the people that they ruled over,

but also to foreigners who visited their cities.

The Tower of Babel story

in the Book of Genesis

is not only a compelling origin myth...

it seems to reflect the ingenious engineering

of a real towering monument in ancient Babylon...

the Etemenanki Ziggurat.

The story may reveal the ancient world

in which it was written...

the development of early writing,

uniting multiple languages.

The legends that were preserved in clay

and re-told over millennia...

and the rulers that left their mark in the lands here.

Babylon itself would've been

such an impressive city to all who came to visit it.

I don't think we can understand today

how large and on a scale of pure power and show

the King would've made the city seem to visitors.

This season's discoveries

shed light on the world

in which this epic Bible story was set.

It's a land of firsts:

the cradle of civilization, the first kings,

the first cities, the first writing.

It's an incredible wealth of artifacts

to excavate in Iraq.