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46 Athanasius Kircher Turris Babel Amsterdam, 1679 fol. in 4s:* -2*4 A-2F4(with 28 plates, some folding) 275×155mm Vet. B3 b.33 |
   | Among the most impressive features of Athanasius Kircher’s Turris Babel were its illustrations, engraved by C. Decker, a German craftsman resident in Amsterdam. The plate of the Tower of Babel itself was based on a drawing by Lievin Cruyl (c.1640–1720), a Flemish artist who worked largely in Rome. The spiral design of the Tower is reminiscent of the archaeological remains of Mesopotamian temple towers, and is taller and thinner than the designs of Matthaeus Merian or of Pieter Bruegel and his imitators. Catalogue no.46, plate between pp.40 and 41. full size (138 K) |
In succession to his reconstruction of the history of the Ark (catalogue no. 37), the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1601–80) attempted a similar history of the Tower of Babel. This traced events following the Deluge, as the sons of Noah moved eastwards from Ararat to the plain of Shinar (Genesis 11:2). It described the building of the Tower of Babel, under the tyranny of Nimrod, which had required the work of fifty thousand men, and argued that, despite such effort, it was impossible for this very high building to have reached to the moon, as some had suggested. Using evidence derived from Annius of Viterbo’s spurious amplification of the history of Berossos, Kircher also proposed that Nimrod’s successors as rulers of Babylon had erected a temple in the form of a tower on the ruins of his structure. Following the Jewish historian Josephus, Kircher argued that the original builders of the Tower were seeking protection from future inundations, having recently descended from the safety of the mountains of Ararat to the flat lands of Shinar, and that, as descendants of Ham (the son whose offspring Noah had cursed) they were afraid of attack or of divine punishment. He suggested that God had frustrated this attempt to escape from his power by confusing the speech of the builders of Babel.
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Arno Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel, (4 vols. in 6 parts, Stuttgart, 1957–63, reprinted Munich, 1995), vol. 3, part 1, pp.1368–70; Don Cameron Allen, Mysteriously Meant (Baltimore, 1970), pp.119–33. |