The Rise of Babylon – The New Atlantis.
Part 1.
In the Critias we find that the primordial world was governed by the allotment of the gods, and this is also how the story of Bablyon will end…
"In the days of old the gods had the whole earth distributed among them by allotment. There was no quarrelling; for you cannot rightly suppose that the gods did not know what was proper for each of them to have, or, knowing this, that they would seek to procure for themselves by contention that which more properly belonged to others. They all of them by just apportionment obtained what they wanted, and peopled their own districts; and when they had peopled them they tended us, their nurselings and possessions, as shepherds tend their flocks, excepting only that they did not use blows or bodily force, as shepherds do, but governed us like pilots from the stern of the vessel, which is an easy way of guiding animals, holding our souls by the rudder of persuasion according to their own pleasure;-thus did they guide all mortal creatures. Now different gods had their allotments in different places which they set in order. Hephaestus and Athene, who were brother and sister, and sprang from the same father, having a common nature, and being united also in the love of philosophy and art, both obtained as their common portion this land, which was naturally adapted for wisdom and virtue; and there they implanted brave children of the soil, and put into their minds the order of government; their names are preserved, but their actions have disappeared by reason of the destruction of those who received the tradition, and the lapse of ages." (Critias)
The Tower of Babel
We pick up after the flood in the Book of Genesis chapter 10. It lists the sons of Cush, but it doesn't list Nimrod as one of his sons. Instead, it says that Cush begot, or fathered, Nimrod. It then goes on to say that Nimrod was the first one to begin to be a mighty one, a giant as the stories tell, on the earth. It excludes him from the genealogies for that reason and says that he was a mighty hunter against the Lord. In Genesis Chapter 11 it says.
"Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”
If you will recall, the city of Atlantis was built upon a magnificent plain with a hill in the center. At the top of the hill, was a temple to Cleito, the mother of the Nephilim of Atlantis and the human wife of the god Oceanus. This city was staged with three metals, Bronze, Tin, and Orichalcum.
It is the belief of modern Biblical and Historical Scholarship that the Tower of Babel refers to a ziggurat and not a cylindrical tower. All the extra biblical myths concerning the tower describe it to be staged. We know the ziggurats were a large part of early Mesopotamia, and we find the building of these ziggurats to coincide with the same themes of the Bible, such as in "Enmerker and the Lord of Aratta" describing the erection of such a temple as well as the confusion of tongues.
The most likely candidate for the this ziggurat is Etemenanki, which means the Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth. This is very much like the cosmic mountain or cosmic tree motif in the Ancient Near East. In the old legends, the cosmic tree or mountain reaches through the three planes of the universe, the under world, the earth, and the heavens. Ezekiel 31 is a good example of the cosmic tree motif. We can also see clear examples of this in the story of Jacobs Ladder where the angels descend upon a ladder (many say it was a ziggurat), or when the angels descended upon Mt. Hermon, or when Oceanus descended upon the hill where Cleito lay. It’s pretty easy to imagine it going up because we see it go up from the perspective of the earth, but it also went down, into the underworld. In the myth of Nergal and Ereshkigal, Nergal decends into the underworld through the ziggurat Simmiltu, the Temple of the Stairway to Pure Heaven in Sippar. So the ziggurats were seen as actual gateways between the underworld, earth and heaven. Babylon itself means Gate of god.
Now while they are called Temples they did not serve a religious function. There were specific buildings for that task. These were houses. Pallis S. writes…
“Anyone who has perused the whole of the material is struck by the remarkable fact that Etemenanki [the fabulous ziggurat of Babylon] is nowhere mentioned in the description of the course of the [akitu] festival though numerous other sacred localities in Babylon are referred to. Nor do we meet with any reference to ceremonies performed here. Indeed, I believe I may add that beyond the constant reference to the building of Etemenanki or "its head" in the inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian kings, and the frequent mention of it in hymns where it is referred to or invoked in conjunction with Esagila, Ekur and other temples, we find nothing about Etemenanki or its religious uses in the entire Assyro-Babylonian literature” (1926 The Babylonian Akitu Festival)
Now it turns out there is a very good reason why these ziggurats were not used in the festival of Akitu, because this ziggurat isn’t just a gateway, it is a recreation of the hill of Atlantis with Cleito, right in the center. Harriet Crawford writes…
"It is usually assumed that the ziggurats supported a shrine, though the only evidence for this comes from Herodotus, and physical evidence is nonexistent. It has also been suggested by a number of scholars that this shrine was the scene of the sacred marriage, the central rite of the great new year festival. Herodotus describes the furnishing of the shrine on top of the ziggurat at Babylon and says it contained a great golden couch on which a woman spent the night alone. The god Marduk was also said to come and sleep in his shrine.”
Not only did it serve the same function, it had the same decorations as Atlantis. In the reconstruction of Etemenanki by Nebuchadnezzar he writes...
“I have completed its magnificence with silver, gold, other metals, stone, enameled bricks, fir and pine. The first which is the house of the earth’s base, the most ancient monument of Babylon; I built and finished it. I have highly exalted its head with bricks covered with copper.”
Remember the metallic colors of Atlantis were, Gold (Bronze) Tin (Silver) and the center Red Orichalcum (Copper). By some means, this ziggurat was a mouse trap for the Watchers, recreating the conditions in which Cleito tempted the watchers. This cosmic mountain reached up to the heavens at the temple head baited with a priestess laying in wait for the decent of a watcher. Upon seeing the plain in Shinar, Nimrod thought to restore the lost world of Atlantis with divine blood by tempting the watchers with women. The watchers fell in the past by their own temptations and rebellion, but Nimrod sought to overcome them with temptation, and by doing so he put himself at war with God.
Yahweh set himself against Nimrod, He destroyed the ziggurat, He cursed their language, and He dispersed them. When He destroyed the ziggurat He also destroyed the part of that cosmic mountain that reached to the heavens. The damage was already done, however, as a few of the Nephilim had already been born. As mankind began to disperse, God assigned lands to them and reestablished the boundaries. “When the Most High assigned lands to the nations, when he divided up the human race, he established the boundaries of the peoples according to the number in his heavenly court.” (Deuteronomy 32:8)