We won’t discuss language anymore because I feel it’s clear there is a single language source,so now to talk about why there was a language catastrophe in Sumer/Kengir at the Tower of Babel/Bavel.
The common word for tower in ancient Sumer/Kengir is ziggurat as opposed to migdal (Heb. tower) but the word ziggurat is not in Hebrew and there is some argument as to the exact meaning of the word ziggurat .It could tower or temple but of coarse a temple would have been a tower or at least a raised structure.
These are some names and some discovered ziggurat found in ancient Mesopotamia and I am not claiming one of these was Babel but just look at the names and you see the notion of a tower to the heavans was not unusual in the Sumer/Akkadian area
1. Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth (Babylon)
2. Temple of the Wielder of the 7 Decrees of Heaven and Earth5 (Borsippa)
3. […] gigir (Nippur)
4. Temple of the Mountain Breeze (Nippur)
5. Temple of Mystery (Nippur)
6. ? (Kurigalzu)
7. Temple of the Stairway to Pure Heaven<6> (Sippar)
8. Temple of the god Dadia (Akkad)
9. ? (Dumuzi – ?)
10. Temple of the Admirable Throne/Sanctuary (Dumuzi – ?)
11. Temple of the Ziggurat, Exalted Dwelling Place (Kish)
12. Temple of the Exalted Mountain (Ehursagkalamma)
13. Temple of Exalted Splendor (Enlil – at Kish?)
14. Temple of the god Nanna (Kutha)
15. Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth<7> (Dilbat)
16. ? (Marad)
17. ? (Ur)
18. Temple which Links Heaven and Earth (Larsa)
19. Temple of the Giparu (Uruk)
20. Temple of the Ziggurat (Eridu)
21. ? (Enegi) most likely Ur or near city of Ur
22. ? (Enegi) likely city of Ur or near Ur
Like I said I’m not saying I have proof these possible ancient temples were the Tower of Babel but it gets you thinking. The word ziggurat is of Akkadian origin so there must have been an earlier word for it but it’s meaning was height pinnacle, so it was at least originally a tower. Regardless of the known word origin these structures go well back to neolithic times and their proto forms found in the Ubaid period. Also the word Sumer or Kengir meant land of nobles or civilized kings and Sumer has the Sumerian Kings list, the first known record of historical rulers. So it is likely Sumer had the first known king, and the first dynasty of kings after the flood was Kish. A king named Etana of Kish may have been the historical Nimrod . Etana is not first on the list and the full list goes from before flood but look what it says about Etana:
“the shepherd, who ascended to heaven and consolidated all the foreign countries” (This sounds a lot like the Biblical Tower of Babel story)
It also says this:
The Sumerian king list states that Kish was the first city to have kings following the deluge (that is the flood)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List
We may have our king of the “ziggurat of Bavel” (Tower of Babel)
The city of Enegi is close to the Sumer language of Emegi although that does not mean they are related of coarse.
Was Eridu the city of Babel, Eridu is likely the first city and some Bible scholars say it was the city of Kayin/Cain but this would be pre flood and Babel is post flood.
What about U ,civilization in Ur goes back to the Ubaid period so a strong candidate.The following is an excerpt from the actual Sumerian account (obviously translated to English) of the catastrophe of languages incident from ancient Sumer.
“In those days, the lands of Subur (and) Hamazi, Harmony-tongued (?) Sumer, the great land of the decrees of princeship, Uri, the land having all that is appropriate(?), The land Martu, resting in security, The whole universe, the people in unison (?) To Enlil in one tongue [spoke]. … (Then) Enki, the lord of abundance, (whose) commands are trustworthy, The lord of wisdom, who understands the land, The leader of the gods, Endowed with wisdom, the lord of Eridu Changed the speech in their mouths, [brought (?)] contention into it, Into the speech of man that (until then) had been one. (translation from The Babel of Tongues: A Sumerian Version” by Kramer, S.N., Journal of the American Oriental Society 88:108-11,1968)
We have an outside of Bible source which is Sumerian and Sumer again is called the land of nobles/princes, the ancient Semitic word Sar (ruler) maybe related to Sumer or Shynar, land of nobility. Uri, maybe the city of Ur or maybe Uruk (Erekh Heb.). Martu possibly the god Marduk (father sky god eponymous with Zeus/Jupiter/Dzeush pater) to which the tower/ziggurat was possibly erected for.
So you asked if this really happened did other cultures have a similar story?
Mexico: And as men were thereafter multiplying, they constructed a very high and strong Zacualli, which means “a very high tower” in order to protect themselves when again the second world should be destroyed. At the crucial moment their languages were changed, and as they did not understand one another, they went into different parts of the world. (Reference: Don Fernando de Alvara Ixtlilxochitl, Obras Historicas Mexico, 1891, Vol. I,
Polynesia: But the god in anger chased the builders away, broke down the building, and changed their language, so that they spoke diverse tongues. (Reference: R. W. Williamson, Religious and Cosmic Beliefs of Central Polynesia Cambridge, 1933, vol. I, p. 94
American Indian, Crow: Then Little Coyote did something bad. He suggested to Old Man that he give the people different languages so they would misunderstand each other and use their weapons in wars… Old Man did what Little Coyote said, and the people had different languages and made war on each other. (Reference: Jane Garry and Carl Rubino, Facts About the World’s Languages H.W. Wilson, 2001
There are some other accounts outside the Bible and even Sumer.I think Ur is a likely city but Uruk/Erekh is possible ,here is what Genesis talks about in Gen-10:10
וַתְּהִ֨י רֵאשִׁ֤ית מַמְלַכְתּוֹ֙ בָּבֶ֔ל וְאֶ֖רֶךְ וְאַכַּ֣ד וְכַלְנֵ֑ה
בְּאֶ֖רֶץ שִׁנְעָֽר:
And it was in the begining of his kingdom (that is Nimrod Gen-10:8-9) Bavel (Babel) Erekh (Uruk) and Akkad and Khalneih in the land of Shinar(Sumer/Kengir)
Here is NKJV:
And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.
9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.
10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.
1.Bavel/Babel, this city which we’d assume was the site of the tower is unknown and say it’s Babylon is false for the Babylonian empire was much farther north than Shinar or Sumer and was much later historically also. Also Babylon is Greek for “gate of the gods” and “bavel” is Hebrew for confusion, so Bavel and Babylon are not related. The Babylonians called themselves “Kadigira” which also means gate of gods. This city and eventual empire to far north to have been Babel.
2.Erekh (Uruk) a good candidate, the mythical home of Gilgamesh.
3.Akkad, most likely the Akkadians, the first Semitic people and likely the origin of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires and the Aramaic language, which the Assyrians adopted after conquering the Arameans.
4.Khalneih (Calneh) also referred to in the book of Amos and sometimes also called Khalanei but little is known or where it even was.
So still Ur and Uruk (Uruk may be the worlds oldest city) are the best bets for a location of the ziggurat of Babel/Bavel but we won’t an answer for sure but I think Etana of Kish is pretty good for Nimrod although it must be pointed out that the city of Kish was farther north than Ur or Uruk but Etana could have come from Kish to Ur or Uruk. People have also suggested that Kush who is Nimrod’s father was the King that built the ziggurat and when Genesis said “Kush begot Nimrod” what was really meant was “Kush brought forth rebellion” because Nimrod means “will rebel”.
It is very interesting that Kish was likely by Sumer’s own account the historical Nimrod and Nimrod was the son of Kush, and Kish was the first dynasty after the flood, so was Kish either Sumerian or Akkadian for Kush? Now let us look at ancient Sumer, Akkad and Chaldea and lock down the Bibles account in Genesis on the Tower of Babel.
Here is Genesis 10:8-9
8 Kush fathered Nimrod, who was the first powerful ruler on earth. 9 He was a mighty hunter before Adonai — this is why people say, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before Adonai.” 10 His kingdom began with Bavel, Erekh, Akkad and Kalneh, in the land of Shin‘ar.
So here the Bible states that first Kingdom post flood was in Shinar. This is consistent with all historical record. Although the secular historians date ancient Sumer earlier than the Bible does, There is no question that human civilization started here post flood. Shinar is Sumer and Sumer is an Akkadian word, the Sumerians called their Kingdom “Kengir” (the land of the Nobles). The Sumerian language, they called it Emegir. So let us look at the cities mentioned.
Bavel, this is likely Babylon in the land of the Chaldeans
Erekh may be the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk and Akkad was the capital of the later Akkadian Empire.
Kalneh, this may be Nippur or Niffer in modern Iraq or the Assyrian city of Kullanu.
This here is from Wikipedia
Ancient Babylon was located very close to the city of Kish, with the ruins of Kish (modern Tell al-Uhaymir) situated approximately 12 kilometers (about 7 to 8 miles) east of Babylon. Situated in modern-day Iraq, Kish was a major Early Dynastic city-state, and its proximity allowed it to hold significant political influence over the region, including early Babylon.
So the city of Kish was very close to where the known ruins of where ancient Babylon was. The name Kish meant in Akkadian “universal or totality” and this brings validity to my theory that Etana of Kish was the king who erected the ziggurat at Babel that caused the language catastrophe. The word Bavel or Babel is Hebrew for confused, so mayber not an actual place name, so Kish could have been the cities name. Kish is actually Akkadian , the Kengir or Sumerians called it Kiski 𒆧𒆠. This was likely the site of the Tower of Babel, only 8 miles from the palace of the much much later King Nevukhadnetzer (Nebuchanezzar) also known in Akkadian as Nabû-kudurri-uṣur which meant “watch over my heir” .So this is what is known about ancient Kish which I think could relate to the Hebrew Kush from Genesis, the name Kush כוש ( other than meaning spindle in more modern Hebrew ) there is no known meaning of the name Kush, so it could be the Akkadian Kish.
Secular history has nothing conclusive on where the Sumerians (or from now on we will call them the Kingir) came from. There are some historians who do say they came from the Caucasus region (near Noah’s Ark landing) but they are not respected by secular history. Secular historians though will deny anf theory validating the Bible though. Below are some historians who support the Kengir being from the Caucasus region near the Ark landing.
- “Sumerians had connections with the Caucasus”. Scientific Russia. Archived from the original on 2021-04-15.
- Kassian, A. (2014). “Lexical Matches between Sumerian and Hurro-Urartian: Possible Historical Scenarios”. Cuneiform Digital Library Journal. 2014 (4).
- The Diversity of the Chechen culture: from historical roots to the present. UNESCO. 2009. p. 14. ISBN 978-5-904549-01-5.
- Wilhelm, Gernot (2008). “Hurrian”. In Woodard, Roger D. (ed.). The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 81–104.
The main thing that is not in dispute is that the Ubaid culture was the most ancient manifestation of Kengir and the city of Ur where Abraham was from dates to this period , although Abraham was well after the Ubaid period. Ubaid is or was a culture and not a nation. The Sumerian language was called Emegir and was written with Cuneiform script , a early pictographic writing system. Although the Akkadian would replace Emegir as the Lingua-Franca of the Middle East , Emegir was still used as a liturgical language until about 200 bce. After the Assyrians conquered the Arameans , Aramaic with a phonetic script replaced Akkadian as the main Middle Eastern language. Emegir the language of Sumer is not recognized as part of any known language family, unlike other Middle Eastern languages Emegir is not Semitic and nor is it Proto-Indo-European either. To me this is evidence that a great language fracture happened there in Kengir/Sumer/Shinar.
Here is some stuff from an article from the “Armstrong Institute Archaeology”
Sumer was the first civilization to be
established in the plains of Mesopotamia. Akkad came later. Why is
Sumerian the isolate? Where did the Akkadians come from? Why was it
the Akkadian language that took wide hold on the region and developed
into a multitude of subsequent languages—while virtually everything
else was adopted from the Sumerians? If these were entirely different
peoples, why did they worship the same deities? Why did they have such
closely related city-states? And again, why did they speak such
utterly unrelated languages? (A similar thing could also be said for
the neighboring ancient Elamites—see the above map—theirs is another
peculiar “language isolate.”)
This deals with the issue of why Emegir (Emegir means native tongue) is an isolate despite being a major player in ancient civilization itself. Could the language fracture have happened in Kengir.
(This is a quote from actual Kengir Cuneiform tablets in the Emegir language)
“Chant to him … the incantation of Nudimmud: “… the whole universe,
the well-guarded people—may they all address Enlil together in a
single language! … for the ambitious lords, for the ambitious princes,
for the ambitious kings—Enki, the lord of abundance … shall change the
speech in their mouths, as many as he had placed there, and so the
speech of mankind is truly one.”
Does this sound like the Babel language calamity??
This is another translation to English of the Cuneiform tablet.
“Once … the whole universe, the people in unison, spoke to Enlil in one
tongue. … Then Enki, the lord of abundance … changed the speech in
their mouths, brought contention into it, into the speech of man that
had been one”
Sounds like Babel !
Here is another article from from (languageonthemove.com) called
We, heirs of the multilingual Sumerians.
“A key indicator of language contact lies in the fact that the language
name “Sumerian” is not actually a Sumerian but an Akkadian word. The
Sumerian word for their language was “Eme-gir,” which literally means
“native language” (Cunningham, 2013).”
I guess the thing here is “Emegir” means “native language” . Did the Kengir not have knowledge of another language when they named their language? How are languages named ? English, Arabic, Italian, Mandarin etc… The Sumerians did not call their language Kengiri or Kengirite or Kengirian, no, but, Emegir “native language”. Does this mean the Kengir did not know another peoples but themselves?
Here again from the same article.
“First, there are texts that include loanwords from one language into
the other or texts that are so heavily mixed that they cannot even be
assigned to one language or another. An example comes from the
Manishtushu Obelisk, which dates from between 2,277 and 2,250 BCE. The
obelisk is basically a title deed to four estates. This is a short
excerpt, with Sumerian words in roman font and Akkadian words in
italic (quoted from (Crisostomo, 2020, p. 410):
šu‐niĝin 10 ĝuruš be‐lu gana gu kug‐babbar gana ša‐at e‐ki‐im ù
zi‐ma‐na‐ak (“Total: 10 workers, lord of the fields, recipients of the
payment of the field of Ekim and Zimanak.”)
As can be seen the text makes use of both languages in about equal
parts – translanguaging avant la lettre!
Today, this kind of language mixing is relatively rare in writing,
particularly formal writing such as legal texts. The Sumerians clearly
had no such qualms about keeping written languages neatly separate.
Anyone who went to the trouble of chiseling a record like this into
stone surely put up the best kind of language they could think of. So,
mixing languages must have felt right and sufficiently “weighty” for
such an important title deed.”
The point here is this style in language mixing is rare in language. I have gone through more PDF style documents on a hypothetic origin of Emegir with everything from Uralic to Turkic and Altaic to Dravidian. None of these theories have ever held water, Emegir is still a language isolate. Here is though and intertesting quote from an article on Emegir having a special poetic type dialect. It does not appear to be a different language.
“Emesal – that is, E M E S A L, literally “thin tongue” – is a dialect or sociolect of the Sumerian Language that is restricted to direct speech of goddesses and women in certain types of literary texts, in particular lamentations, divine love songs, a dialogue, proverbs, a “lullaby,” and a few more”
Now lets look at gods and godhead names and again we see a fracture, I will look here at the primary “Storm god , god leader type”.
Semitic: Marduk as the Akkadian or Babylonian and is Mrodakh מְרֹדַךְ in Hebrew. The Sumerian or Emegir equivilent is amar-Utu not so similar.
Yamnayian or Proto-Indo-European: Dzeus Patter (father sky god)
Greek: Zeus and in Latin Dzeus Patter becomes Jupiter. These all sound similar.
So again Kengir gods like amar-Utu or Enlil do not sound alike at all in comparison with other near eastern gods.
So speaking of gods and ancient Kengir here are some thoughts on the Anunnaki.
So who were the Anunnaki? The name itself means seed of princes or offspring of An (the sky god)
The Anunnaki (Sumerian: 𒀭𒀀𒉣𒈾, also transcribed as Anunaki, Annunaki, Anunna, Ananaki and other variations) are a group of deities of the ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians. In the earliest Sumerian writings about them, which come from the Post-Akkadian period, the Anunnaki are deities in the pantheon, descendants of An (the god of the heavens) and Ki (the goddess of earth), and their primary function was to decree the fates of humanity.
The oldest of the Anunnaki was Enlil, the god of air and chief god of the Sumerian pantheon. The Sumerians believed that, until Enlil was born, heaven and earth were inseparable. Then, Enlil split heaven and earth in two and carried away the earth while his father An carried away the sky.
The oldest known writings about these deities goes back to about 2100 bce, so about the time of Noah. The well known Assyrian goddess Ishtar came from Inanna which was from the Anunnaki. Also Nanna was from the Anunnaki also know by the name Suen which was the Mesopotamian moon god that Islam rose from and why the crescent moon is an Islamic symbol. I address this in another article I did on Islam and it’s true roots.
Virtually every major deity in the Sumerian pantheon was regarded as the patron of a specific city and was expected to protect that city’s interests. The deity was believed to permanently reside within that city’s temple One text mentions as many as fifty Anunnaki associated with the city of Eridu. In Inanna’s Descent into the Netherworld, there are only seven Anunnaki, who reside within the Underworld and serve as judges. Inanna stands trial before them for her attempt to take over the Underworld; they deem her guilty of hubris and condemn her to death.[33]
Major deities in Sumerian mythology were associated with specific celestial bodies. Inanna was believed to be the planet Venus. Utu was believed to be the sun. Nanna was the moon. An was identified with all the stars of the equatorial sky, Enlil with those of the northern sky, and Enki with those of the southern sky. The path of Enlil’s celestial orbit was a continuous, symmetrical circle around the north celestial pole, but those of An and Enki were believed to intersect at various points.
Later on in Akkadian tradition the Anunnaki were ascribed to the underworld.
However, other texts seem to place the Anunnaki as gods of the underworld. This is the case in the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which the Anunnaki are described as judges of the dead. The idea is echoed by the Sumerian myth Descent of Inanna to the Underworld, in which the goddess Inanna crosses into the realm of the dead, seeking to overthrow her sister, the queen of the dead. The Anunnaki step forward to judge her for her audacity.
To date, archaeologists have not uncovered any indication that the Anunnaki were worshiped collectively. Rather, each of the gods had an individual cult, and different cities had temples dedicated to individual deities as a city patron.
Who do I think the Anunnaki were?
Here is Genesis 6.2
ב וַיִּרְא֤וּ בְנֵי־הָֽאֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־בְּנ֣וֹת הָֽאָדָ֔ם כִּ֥י טֹבֹ֖ת הֵ֑נָּה וַיִּקְח֤וּ לָהֶם֙ נָשִׁ֔ים מִכֹּ֖ל אֲשֶׁ֥ר בָּחָֽרו
And the children of God saw the daughters of humankind and that they were good to look upon, and they took for them wives from all to which they chose.
And a bit later in Genesis we know that from these perverse marriages came giants, super men!
Here is Genesis 6.4
הַנְּפִלִ֞ים הָי֣וּ בָאָ֘רֶץ֘ בַּיָּמִ֣ים הָהֵם֒ וְגַ֣ם אַֽחֲרֵי־כֵ֗ן אֲשֶׁ֨ר יָבֹ֜אוּ בְּנֵ֤י הָֽאֱלֹהִים֙ אֶל־בְּנ֣וֹת הָֽאָדָ֔ם וְיָֽלְד֖וּ לָהֶ֑ם הֵ֧מָּה הַגִּבֹּרִ֛ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר מֵֽעוֹלָ֖ם אַנְשֵׁ֥י הַשֵּֽׁם:
Fallen ones were on the earth in those days and also after that: When the children of God came to the daughters of human men and born to them ,men of great might the ancient men, the ones of renown.
The giant who were part man and angel were killed in the flood but here are two things. The seed or DNA of the nefilim (giants or fallen ones) survived the flood likely through Noah’s wife or one of Noah’s children’s wives. We know giants were encountered in Canaan during the conquest after the Exodus .So even the account of David killing the giant with the sling shot. Let us get back to Anunnaki .It is a common belief the the pagan pantheon came from the great men, the men of great reputation or giants.
Were the Anunnaki the first manifestation of the worship of the giants of pre flood times An ,the father of the Anunnaki was the first version of the father sky god which other pagan cultures adapted. Such as the proto Iranian “Dzeush pater” (father sky god) which the Greeks called Zeus and the Romans Jupiter and the Akkadians Marduk. From these came lesser created gods from the uncreated higher pantheon. All pagan cultures seemed to have chief gods and lesser gods in the way that the Annunaki were the offspring of An.
In the the story of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh said that the Annunaki were the judges of the underworld. Interestingly there was a deuterocanonical book discovered in the Dead Sea scrolls called the Book of Giants where Gilgamesh was identified as one of the pre flood giants.
Were the Anunnaki the memory of the giants killed in the flood that pagans worshipped?
Were the Anunnaki the angels themselves who mated with human women creating the giants?
It does seem that the pagan pantheon came from the Genesis 6 rebellion but were they the angels or the giants or both?
Based on etymology I would say the Anunnaki were the angels if you understand that Anunnaki were the sons of An in the same way that Genesis talked of the benei Elohim, the sons or children of God.
I would say a combination of both, after the Noachian flood and man again rebelled at Babel and worshiped idol gods. So that a pantheon developed with a father type god that created other lesser gods to be worshiped. The An and Anunnaki pantheon was the first set of gods that Sumer or also Kengir which was the first post diluvian culture worshiped.
Another perspective is the Deuteronomy 32.8-9 idea that The highest God disinherited the nations and put them under demons and the Lords portion was his people the Jews. The next question would be were the Anunnaki worshiped before Babel but after the flood, so were the Anunnaki the demonic gods that God later divided among the 70 nations to rule over them. Or were the Anunnaki the demonic gods the most High gave to the Sumerians?
In closing I can not say for sure the mystery of the Anunnaki but I do strongly suspect that the Anunnaki being the children of An had something to do with the children of God in Genesis 6.
In concluding I want to say that I known not every theory presented was absolutely proven. A preponderance of evidence has been shown that I believes proves my case as a whole. I feel it would be impossible to look at this whole case with a open mind and heart and not conclude that the case was proven! So what do I say was my proven case?
- The earliest human civilization was near the landing of Noah’s Ark in the Anatolian steppe region. Then people went west into Mesopotamia for a easier life.
- At one time all of humanity spoke one language that was universally understood. All human language came from one source.
- There was a language catastrophe in Kengir (ancient Sumer) as the Bible in the Book of Genesis states in Shinar which is Sumer/Kengir.
- This is a lesser point, but that the King who built the Tower of Babel was Etana 𒂊𒋫𒈾 of Kish who may have been the Biblical son of Ham, Kush.
Thank you and God bless to all !
Truth in Mikra 
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