Babel monument

The Babel monument, Babel ziggurat, or Tower of Babel was an early unfinished ziggurat, or stepped pyramid, mentioned in the Bible.

The Judeo-Christian creation myth holds that roughly a century after the flood, humans settled in Shinar (now Iraq), whose capital was Babylon (near modern-day Hillah). The leaders got the bright idea to build a tall ziggurat as a monument to unite the people. Its design is thought to have resembled Etemenanki, completed centuries later. Construction stopped when God noticed that the people were disobeying the command given to Noah to "fill the earth" and confused the languages of the workers.

The Biblical account of the construction of this ziggurat (Genesis 11:1-9) is often used as a test case for constructed languages.