Babel
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Babel. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a place which confusion of sounds-as, for inor circumstances in stance, by several people speaking at once is tic. The reference is to the confusion of the predominating characteristongues divinely sent in consequence of the building of the Tower of Babel (Gen. xi: 1-9). The magnificent temple of Belus, asserted to have been originally this tower, is said to have had lofty spires, and many statues of gold, one of them 40 feet high. In the upper part of this temple was the tomb of the founder, Belus (the Nimrod Scriptures), who was deified after death. of the sacred BAB-EL-MANDEB (i. e., the gate of tears), so called from the danger arising to small vessels from strong currents, is the name of the strait between Arabia and the continent of Africa, by which the Red Sea is connected with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. Within the strait , but nearer to Arabia, lies the bare, rocky island of Perim, since 1857 occupied by the British as a fort; its guns command the entrance to the Red Sea.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the native name of the ancient city of Babylon, meaning Gate of God. According to Genesis, the children of Noah journeyed into the plain of Shinar to erect a tower, known as the Tower of Babel, which should reach unto heaven. They were prevented from carrying out their impious design through a confusion of tongues. Being unable to understand each other, they broke up into small parties and separated. Curiously enough, the cuneiform inscriptions recently exhumed in the ruins of the old Babylonian Library relate at some length the history of a lofty tower which came to grief,--some accounts say through a high wind. This is not at all improbable, when we recall that the building material of Mesopotamia consisted for the most part of adobe or sundried brick. The word babel has passed into literature to indicate a jargon of sounds. See Babylon All great works in this world spring from the ruins. Of greater projects-ever, on our earth, Babels men block out, Babylons they build. --Robert Browning.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 still repeated the classical story that the tower was the "magnificent temple of Belus" with "lofty spires" and a 40-foot gold statue, while Aiton's in 1910 could only gesture at cuneiform tablets "recently exhumed" describing a lofty tower blown down by wind. Robert Koldewey's German excavations at Babylon, running from 1899 to 1917, actually laid bare the foundations of Etemenanki, the stepped ziggurat of Marduk rebuilt by Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II — a mud-brick platform roughly 91 metres square, which is now the accepted real-world model for the tower, and nothing like a spired temple. Scholars also now treat the "gate of God" reading Aiton's gives as the Babylonians' own explanation of their city's name, while Genesis deliberately plays it against the Hebrew verb balal, "to confuse." As for Bab-el-Mandeb, Perim's British guns are long gone: the island passed to South Yemen in 1967 and is Yemeni today.
Written for this edition, 2026.