Babylon, the Tower of Babel, and the E.U. Parliament building

Buckle up, this one’s a controversial debate

Despite wanting to be a scholar of the ancient world, and being at least somewhat aware of the Brexit world I currently live in, I hadn’t previously considered the aesthetic similarity between the Tower of Babel and the EU Parliament building in Strasbourg. The idea to actually write about the issue as a blog post only came on the train whilst reading Michael Seymour’s excellent Babylon: Legend, History, and the Ancient City, in which he discusses the representations of the city of Babylon through medieval and renaissance art. It wasn’t until my partner tapped me on the shoulder saying, ‘You know, my biology lecturer thinks the Tower of Babel looks a bit like the EU building,’ when the realisation came – this is a spicy topic that could make for a nice mini research project. So here we are.

Now as far as debating about the EU goes, there’s plenty of hot takes afloat in this conversation. Whilst doing a bit of digging online, I found there were many other blog posts and websites discussing the relationship between the EU and the story of the Tower of Babel. Many of these, unsurprisingly, were written from the perspective of people who identified as Christians. Fair enough, for centuries the only thing we knew about the Tower of Babel was from the story of Genesis. Harmless, right? After reading some of the articles, a few similar themes seemed to pop out. The first of which was the EU’s relationship with the occult. Oh boy. The second spicy theme was the completely unbiased viewpoint of Leavers, with such gems like ‘Why we must Leave the European Union’, supported with images like Figure 1 below.

This post is not meant to fuel hate or depict either side of the debate as a fountain of fake-news and spreader of deceit. If anything, I’m going to approach this as objectively as I can and try to dispel any myths that may have arisen. I am not an architect, I am not a political activist, as always I’m just writing about something I found interesting.

Origins – The Tower of Babel

Fortunately for readers of this post, I’ve already written a piece discussing the Tower of Babel and the origins of the story, so feel free to click here and have a skim. For fellow brethren who subscribe to the TL;DR doctrine, most classical knowledge about the Tower of Babel originated with the passage of Genesis 11, which tells the story of Nimrod and his followers. In an attempt to reach closer to God and collaborate as one people, their hubris lead them to construct a magnificent city with a whopping great tower in its centre – the Tower of Babel. Halfway through construction, God notices the work and dotes on the consequences of a united human race; he subsequently causes Nimrod’s followers to speak in different tongues and scatters them all over the earth. For some, this can be seen as an allegory for the diversity of peoples through language, for others its an example of God’s divine insecurity concerning human willpower.

The real life Tower of Babylon can be identified as the long-destroyed Etemenanki – which was itself a gigantic structure of almost a hundred metres tall. Etemenanki was a ziggurat, a Mesopotamian structure dedicated to the patron deity of its city. In Babylon’s case, Etemenanki was dedicated to the god Marduk, with the top of the ziggurat sporting the house of Marduk, one of the holiest sites of the city since it was closest to the sky (where Marduk reigned). Unfortunately, we don’t have a crystal clear idea of what this magnificent ziggurat would have looked like, though there have been many modern digital recreations – a lot of which look excellent, in my opinion. Figure 2 is one such creation, whereas Figure 3 is an actual surviving ziggurat (sort of, it was reconstructed a bit), found in the nearby Mesopotamian city of Ur.

A veeeery condensed ancient history of Babylon since the tower’s construction to its decline would be: Neo-Babylonians, Persian Empire, Alexander the Great, the Seleucids, Parthians, Sassanids, and finally the Rashidun Caliphate. After all these different periods of occupation, and multiple shifts in political power to other cities, its no wonder Babylon began to fade into classical obscurity.

Subsequently, the reasons why Etemenanki failed to survive are equally numerous, ranging from unfinished restoration projects to the centuries-old practice of local inhabitants using the tower’s bricks to construct their own buildings (after all, no one was using the temple anymore). However we know that even from the time of Alexander the Great the Tower of Babel was in a poor state, slowly crumbling to pieces. During Mesopotamia’s Hellenistic period, the seat of royal power shifted from Babylon to Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, and so Babylon began its long hibernation into obscurity and confused accounts.

“…as for the palaces and the other buildings, time has either entirely effaced them or left them in ruins; and in fact of Babylon itself but a small part is inhabited at this time,” – Diodorus Siculus, Library, 2.9.9, writing in the 1st century BCE

Representations of Babylon and the Tower

Before we move on to the famous painting of the Tower of Babylon that people can usually identify, I want to look at the way the Tower has been represented through history – picking apart some of the biblical and medieval accounts that popularised ideas about Babylon before its 19th century excavation. First turning to the Bible, the city of Babylon is generally regarded with a lot of disdain within the holy scripture. Since the sack of Jerusalem by the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II, the subsequent accounts concerning Babylon within the Bible are met with fury and sorrow by Jews and Christians alike – summarised nicely by this Psalm (and cracking Boney M tune):

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.” – Psalm 137:1, NIV

By the time the book of Revelation was being written, Babylon had become known almost like an obscenity. One particular passage evokes Babylon’s reputation for promiscuity and ungodliness within the early Christian faith:

“There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. The name written on her forehead was a mystery: BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES, AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” – Revelation 17:3-5, NIV

We can certainly start to see how negative connotations of Babylon would have spread throughout the Christian faith, and thus the “western world” at large. As we shall see in a bit, these one-sided viewpoints to summarise a city with millennia of history still seem to resonate today. Returning to the early medieval period (c.500 CE), by this point the western idea of civilisation east of the Byzantine Empire began slowly fizzling out. Roman influence didn’t extend into Mesopotamia as far as many would have liked, so the western unfamiliarity of the land only increased exponentially following the rise of the Sassanids in the 200s CE. The only knowledge of the once-great city of Babylon survived through the Bible. That was, until medieval travel writing became popular.

Arguably one of the defining characteristics of the early medieval period was the rising influence of Islam. With the establishment of the Abbasid city of Baghdad right in the middle of Mesopotamia, once again the regions political seat of power transitioned, pushing Babylon even further back into obscurity. By the time medieval travellers and geographers from Europe arrived in the region, the highlight of the region would have – of course – the bustling metropolis of Baghdad. Why bother travelling south of this dream-city? Might as well stop there, right? Because of Baghdad’s status and reputation as the heart of Mesopotamia, there began a tradition of confusing Baghdad with Babylon, even confusing other prominent Islamic cities like Cairo with Babylon.

Even if some travel writers managed to distinguish Baghdad from Babylon, the Tower of Babylon itself became confused with other ancient sites during the medieval period. This time though, the authors reportedly saw the physical remains of the infamous Tower, writing about how, although crumbled and in a sorry state, the Tower undoubtedly existed south of Baghdad. Most likely, it was the awesome sight of Borsippa/Birs-Nimrud that inspired such descriptions. As Figure 4 shows, Borsippa also sported a ziggurat, and was another prominent ancient Mesopotamian city, but was not the Biblical tower that history remembers.

As the renaissance rolled around, and classical knowledge of the ancient world began seeping back into the ‘west’, knowledge about Babylon began to creep back into the public eye. People in Europe were becoming more educated, more literate, and even began challenging the medieval conventions set up following the fall of the Roman Empire – after all, the Renaissance also coincided with the Reformation movements erupting all around Europe during the 14th-16th centuries. It was this period of early enlightenment and religious revolution that the most infamous depictions of the Tower of Babel came to the public eye: the paintings of Pieter Brueghel (Figure 6 and 7.)

There they are, folks.

Now here’s the mythbusting part – these paintings don’t really look much like your typical tower, they’re a bit more… how to put it… Colosseum-ish? Precisely. These images were not made to evoke Babylonian or Near-Eastern architecture, they were designed to look like the Flavian Amphitheatre of Rome, known popularly as the Colosseum. Of course, art is very subjective, but it cannot be ignored that the design of these towers bears resemblance to the symbol of Rome and Roman influence.

These paintings were made in 1563, at the height of the Reformation: half a century since Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, decades since Henry VIII created the Church of England, there was plenty of anti-Catholic sentiment afoot within Europe at this time. By linking the story of Nimrod’s hubristic decadence to Catholicism by depicting the Tower of Babel as the Colosseum – now THAT was a controversial statement. Confronting and challenging the centuries-old traditions of Europe was the trend of the 16th century, and completely on-trend with the rise of Protestantism, it can certainly be argued that Brueghel’s paintings were anti-Catholic and anti-Rome in nature.

The Parliament building

So far, we’ve established that the legacy of the Tower of Babel has been one of obscurity and half-whispers, the most famous depictions of it being either inaccurate, confused, or downright anti-Rome propaganda. Let’s now turn to the juicy part of the discussion – the correlation between the Tower of Babel and the EU Parliament building in Strasbourg. Before we address the controversial stand points many have regarding the EU, let’s look at the building itself (Figure 8).

Located in Strasbourg, France, the EU Parliament building is also known as the Louise Weiss building, and was completed in 1999. It is one of the seats of the European Parliament, a position it shares with the Espace Leopold building of Brussels and the Konrad Adenauer building of Luxembourg. It’s most distinctive feature is its circular tower, 60m tall and dripping with symbolism.

According to mythdetector.ge (the link to the actual source was faulty so this is the best I’ve got), the group that designed the Louise Weiss building, known as Architecture Studio, took inspiration from Roman Amphitheatres when drawing plans for the building’s aesthetic. We can certainly see the similarities between the parliament building and classical amphitheatres such as the Colosseum. Is this a coincidence that Brueghel’s painting took similar visual inspiration? Perhaps. Was the parliament building designed with the same anti-Catholic sentiment that Brueghel’s paintings were? Very unlikely, though there are plenty of blog pages that would argue otherwise. Speaking of these blog pages, lets have a look at some of the arguing-points that often appear when comparing the EU Parliament building to the Tower of Babel.

Controversy and Hot Takes

On one side of the argument, we have the theory that the building was designed with Roman Amphitheatres in mind – evoking the might of Rome and the strength of a multicultural populous, possibly even linking to ideas of democracy and republicanism (values which were key to Rome’s history). mythdetector.ge takes this viewpoint, asserting that “symbolising the idea of democracy in a movement was one of the main goals during the construction works of the building“. On the other hand, there are arguments suggesting that the parliament building was designed purposely to look like the Tower of Babel – the godless symbol of hubris and Babylonian licentiousness.

Instead of unpacking each of these hot takes and stamping my own ideas about the EU onto them, I’ll post the arguments below. I’m not endorsing these opinions, nor am I saying I disagree with them, instead I’m going to leave it up to the reader to interpret them:

“They [the EU] symbolical linked themselves to the Tower with the architecture of the Parliament building in Strasbourg depicting an unfinished Tower of Babel…The men in Shinar were stopped by God and were not able to build a single nation state, instead God divided them by language. This is the division that the EU and Brussels wants to reverse. A United States of Europe directly contradicts the will of God.” – http://www.christiansurvivalnet.com/

“What we can expect to see from the EU on this path: A gradual introduction of tyranny; the elimination of the worship of God to introduce dependence on power; all people speaking the same language and the same religion; rejecting God while trying to become gods” – https://fourhorsemen66.com/

“If the EU meant to have a secular state, why would it openly used symbols based on an ancient biblical model which according to the scriptural text, are spiritually dark and end up being destroyed.” – mattbell.org (no, I’m not going to grammar check them)

“But the E.U. is a fount of many voices, “out of many, one,” so to speak, and amounting to babble only in the eyes of critics. But the critics may be correct. The E.U. is a quagmire, but less of a babble, literally or figuratively, than the United Nations: Many more voices, even more babblicious.” – architecturehereandthere.com

“There is so much occult symbolism in the European Union it is impossible to believe it is an accident.” – newspunch.com

Summary

At this point, I feel I have to reiterate that Brueghel’s painting was NOT how the Tower of Babel actually looked. As mentioned earlier, the actual visual image of Etemenanki/the Tower is lost to time, though archaeological records and other surviving ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia certainly shed some light as to how the Tower may have looked. That is, if the Tower of Babel can be attributed to Etemenanki at all.

Concerning Brueghel’s depiction of the Tower of Babel, there is a strong argument to suggest that the painting was based on the Flavian Amphitheatre – based on the Renaissance traditions of challenging tradition, the rediscovery of classical knowledge to challenge the Bible, and the rise of Protestantism during the 16th century.

Finally, when looking at the Louise Weiss building of Strasbourg, known as the EU Parliament building, it may seem easy to see the similarities between the design of Brueghel’s Tower of Babel and the parliament building. If the designers of the building are being honest, it may merely be a coincidence that the visuals of the building’s exterior used the same inspiration Brueghel used for his Tower – the Colosseum.

To conclude, it almost goes without saying that expressing anti-EU sentiment in the same vein as anti-Nimrod narratives is dangerous. Using word-for-word interpretations of the Bible to push an argument is dangerous. Attributing the EU and modern institutions to the occult and the apocalypse is dangerous. Basically: don’t read everything you see as law, and don’t be afraid to dig a little deeper when you notice the visual similarities between things you morally or politically disagree with. I’ve tried to be as objective as possible with this blog post, and if you disagree with anything I’ve said or would like to argue otherwise, feel free to let me know.

Biblography

• Diodorus Siculus, Library, trans. C.H. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library, Volume I, 1933
• Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, trans. W. Whiston in The Works of Flavius Josephus, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo, 1895
• Kurdadze, D. Photomanipulation about the building of the European Parliament in social network, Myth Detector, 2017, retrieved from: https://www.mythdetector.ge/en/myth/photomanipulation-about-building-european-parliament-social-network
• Leick, G. Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City, Penguin Books, London, United Kingdom, 2002
• McEvedy, C. Cities of the Classical World, Penguin Books, London, United Kingdom, 2019
• Seymour, M. Babylon: Legend, History, and The Ancient City, I.B. Tauris, London, United Kingdom, 2016
• + a bunch of websites I don’t trust enough to cite as bibliography, but have put their URLs next to their respective quotes/images