30 November 2007

Inscription of King Nebuchadnezzar on Tower of Babel (Borsippa).




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.

We say for the other, that is, this edifice, the house of the seven lights of the earth, the most ancient monument of Borsippa.

A former king built it, (they reckon 42 ages) but he did not

complete its head.

Since a remote time, people had abandoned it, without

order expressing their words.

Since that time the earthquake and the thunder had dispersed

the sun-dried clay.

The bricks of the casing had been split, and the earth of the interior had been scattered in heaps. Merodach, the great god, excited my mind to repair this building.

I did not change the site nor did I take away the foundation.

In a fortunate month, in an auspicious day,

I undertook to build porticoes around the crude brick masses,

and the casing of burnt bricks.

I adapted the circuits, I put the inscription of my name in the Kitir of the portico.

I set my hand to finish it. And to exalt its head.

As it had been in ancient days, so I exalted its summit.

Inscription of King Nebuchadnezzar on Tower of Babel (Borsippa). Cited in "The Signature of God/The Handwriting of God" by Grant R. Jeffrey (p.40)