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00:02Mysterious ruins in the heart of Iraq.
00:06Could clues here reveal evidence of the lost city of Babylon
00:10and its legendary Tower of Babel?
00:13There is no doubt that we are standing in one of the most important places on earth.
00:18The Bible says that the Tower of Babel is tall enough to reach the heavens,
00:24a plan so audacious it enrages God.
00:28It's such a statement, it's such a legacy.
00:31But did the Tower actually exist?
00:36Could the ancient Babylonians really construct a skyscraper?
00:43Today, investigators use pioneering drone scanning technology
00:48to investigate the biblical story.
00:52This is what we are looking for,
00:55the foundations for something that looks like this.
00:59With unprecedented access to a country which still bears the scars of war,
01:05we'll unearth the truth.
01:08We'll blow apart the fabled city of Babylon.
01:12We'll reconstruct the lost Tower of Babel.
01:15and reveal ancient engineering genius
01:20to discover the secrets of this mysterious lost world.
01:32Iraq.
01:35For decades, this country has been torn apart by war.
01:41But in ancient times, this land is once home to a thriving civilization we call Mesopotamia.
01:50It's the place where humankind first begins to write, read, and live in cities.
01:59It's most famous city is Babylon.
02:03Home to spectacular monuments, including the legendary Hanging Gardens.
02:12Today, the surviving fragments of this lost world fascinate archaeologists.
02:20But years of conflict means the area has barely been investigated.
02:25Now, our cameras have been granted unique access to follow archaeologists
02:30as they venture into this rarely seen country.
02:35I was a barok here, a barok here, a barok here.
02:38I am with that family here, man.
02:43In this dusty desert landscape is said to lie the fabled Tower of Babel.
02:50Its mighty terraces make it a monument so immense,
02:54it marks the center of the world.
02:59The Bible describes how the tower rises so high,
03:04it touches the heavens.
03:08An example of human pride that enrages God.
03:15But could a tower so tall truly exist?
03:18And if so, where does it stand?
03:27Jeff Allen investigates ancient sites in the world's most war-torn regions.
03:35In times of turmoil, what seems often most important is the present.
03:39It's my job to take care of the past and make sure that it is protected.
03:51Today, Jeff is on a mission to find one of Iraq's most famous monuments.
03:58We know that Babel is a real place.
04:02It's the Hebrew word for Babylon.
04:06Babel means Babylon.
04:08The largest city in the ancient world,
04:11fabled for its awe-inspiring beauty.
04:15The Tower of Babel has been imagined by artists for centuries.
04:19Here is a classical depiction of tower.
04:23It's actually kind of like a giant wedding cake.
04:27A large circular tower that reaches up through the heavens.
04:31This is what we're looking for.
04:34The foundations for something that looks like this.
04:40The remains of ancient Babylon lie on the banks of the river Euphrates.
04:45Near Iraq's capital, Baghdad.
04:50The former dictator, Saddam Hussein,
04:54inaccurately reconstructs much of Babylon directly on top of its ancient ruins.
05:01He even builds this modern palace for himself.
05:07Making the task of unearthing the real Babylon even harder.
05:13Babylon has a long and well-attested description of its wonders through history.
05:20Today, after neglect and periods of turmoil,
05:24it's difficult to see that quite often.
05:26But if the tower really existed,
05:29it would have been here.
05:34Over 2,000 years ago,
05:36a stunning spectacle rises out of this landscape.
05:43The main entrance to Babylon is through the magnificent Ishtar Gate.
05:48Clad in dazzling blue and decorated with ornate animals marching into the city.
05:56And inside the gate is the most glorious city in the ancient world.
06:03Home to the fabled Hanging Gardens.
06:07Legend says, created for a queen.
06:12And in the center of it all,
06:14stands a stairway to the sky.
06:17But did this tower really exist here?
06:21And if so, in what form?
06:28Jeff works with an Iraqi antiquities team to investigate this mystery.
06:33It makes perfect sense that something here
06:37inspired the biblical story of the great tower.
06:41When the tower is built,
06:43Babylon is home to thousands of enslaved Jews.
06:47They are held in captivity following the Babylonian conquest of ancient Israel.
06:52And it's here in Babylon that the Jews write the first books of the Bible.
06:58They write about the tower in the book of Genesis.
07:04What they were doing was describing what they saw.
07:08And what they saw must have been right here.
07:16The city covers over 2,000 acres.
07:26Yet decades of war mean only a tiny fraction of its original buildings have been excavated.
07:35There is no doubt that we are standing in one of the most important places on earth.
07:41Babylon at the peak of its fame is the work of a great warrior king.
07:46Nebuchadnezzar.
07:52Iraqi archaeologist Amar Moshin Abood finds evidence that Nebuchadnezzar built the city.
07:59Mr. Jeff, as you know there is many bricks have a stamp in the start gate.
08:06And the stamp belongs to king Nebuchadnezzar.
08:09And now I will show you what they wrote.
08:13Dinger nakudu urri ussa, it's meaning Nebuchadnezzar.
08:18Lugal kadinger raki, it's meaning king of Babylon.
08:24Astonishingly, the bricks of the ancient city are still stamped with its builder's name.
08:30Nebuchadnezzar.
08:34The city of Babylon is founded around 2200 BC.
08:39It grows to become the capital of the mighty Babylonian Empire.
08:46It attracts a string of conquerors who destroy and rebuild the city over the centuries.
08:58But it's in Nebuchadnezzar's reign in the 6th century BC that Babylon reaches its peak.
09:09He builds the Hanging Gardens.
09:12And the Ishtar Gate.
09:14It's now the largest city in the world.
09:21But does he build the Tower of Babel?
09:25This is a sensitive military zone.
09:28But to search for the tower, Jeff's been granted special permission to take to the air.
09:44The team uses a high resolution drone to capture an extraordinary view of ancient Babylon.
09:58This site of Ishtar Gate.
10:01Atlas.
10:02A good processional way.
10:03Yes.
10:04A bit of Nymark.
10:05See the damage of the roof.
10:07Yes, yes, yes.
10:08Perfect.
10:09Perfect.
10:10From the air, the vast scale of the city starts to become clear.
10:18The drone takes over 200 high resolution photos.
10:24As it soars over the sprawling site.
10:30Take this photo.
10:33This is okay.
10:35From high above the modern day reconstruction of Babylon,
10:39the drone reveals the remains of the legendary city.
10:45Mysterious shapes now covered in millennia of desert sand and vegetation.
10:53Oh, that's our dream right there.
10:55Yes.
10:55I see, I see.
10:57Jeff looks for the remains of the tower, hunting for signs of giant circular foundations.
11:04But the images reveal something unexpected.
11:09Babylonians built straight walls.
11:11We don't find many curved walls.
11:15So it's highly unlikely that the tower of Babylon was round in form.
11:23It may not look like the old paintings.
11:27But the drone detects something unusual here.
11:37A huge square mound rises up from the undergrowth beyond the walled city.
11:46Could this be the remains of the tower of Babel?
12:08Babylon, Iraq.
12:11After years of restricted access to this former war zone.
12:16Investigators searching for the tower of Babel find a mysterious mound.
12:20Enormous in size.
12:24Could this be evidence of the tower?
12:27Right here stood something so immense and probably one of the largest structures of its kind in its day.
12:41It measures exactly 300 feet, which is the size of a football field.
12:48It must have been an immense building.
12:54The size of these foundations clearly say that this could be the tower of Babel.
13:04At the edge of the site, archaeologists unearth a cylindrical tablet.
13:10Inscribed in an ancient language that tells of a great tower called Etimenanki.
13:18That's so tall, it reaches the heavens.
13:22And hidden deeper in the foundations are hundreds of ancient bricks.
13:28Each exactly 12 inches square.
13:33And stamped with the name, King Nebuchadnezzar.
13:40Is Etimenanki really the tower of Babel?
13:48Jeff needs proof.
13:52The inscription on the tablet says the tower that once stands here is so colossal it reaches the heavens.
13:59This matches the description of the tower in the Bible's Book of Genesis.
14:05But if the tower stands so tall, where's the rest of it?
14:12Jeff works with archaeologist Amar Moshin Abud to search for clues.
14:17We've heard rumors that something really interesting exists in a nearby town of El Hilla.
14:26The bustling city of El Hilla is once a battleground in the Iraq War.
14:32And more recently, the site of ISIS insurgency.
14:36Amar has been granted special access to this old abandoned synagogue in El Hilla.
14:42He believes the site may provide further evidence for the tower's existence.
14:48Many of the buildings around the city have bricks of different size.
14:55But on these buildings, many bricks have 12 inches.
15:00These bricks are exactly the same size of Babylon bricks.
15:05They do not have Nebuchadnezzar's name on them.
15:08But their unique size is the same as found at Babylon.
15:13These distinctive bricks are embedded in buildings all over the old town.
15:19The people who built El Hilla, they used the bricks from ancient Babylon city.
15:29Established in the 11th century AD, El Hilla is a thriving city on the banks of the Euphrates,
15:36just miles from ancient Babylon.
15:41People from El Hilla take bricks from the ruins of Babylon,
15:46then use them to build their own city.
15:51Over many centuries, people travel from far and wide to gather the bricks,
15:57repurposing them into homes and even a huge dam.
16:04The potential to be used and reused again and again obviously was important to people,
16:10and that's why today we see very little left of a standing tower,
16:13a mound of broken bricks and rubble.
16:19The bricks that once make the tower have long gone.
16:24But nearly 3,000 years ago, could the ancient Babylonians really construct a skyscraper?
16:49Archaeologists believe they have identified the site of the legendary Tower of Babel,
16:54here in Babylon, Iraq.
16:58The Bible tells us we once all speak the same language.
17:03But our arrogance in building a huge tower angers God.
17:07He punishes us by making us all speak different languages.
17:12But can the ancient Babylonians really build so high that it enrages God?
17:21The ancient bricks that survived provide clues to the tower's structure.
17:26In the center of the foundations are bricks made of compacted mud and straw.
17:33Millions of them form the tower's core.
17:38All around them are rows and rows of another layer of bricks.
17:44Together they create a base the size of 30 tennis courts.
17:49On top, more bricks stack up to create a hollow tower.
17:55But are mud bricks strong enough to build a tower so high the ancients believe it touches the sky?
18:09Much of ancient Babylon is built using bricks made of mud taken from the Euphrates River.
18:15It's pressed into molds, strengthened by adding straw, then dried in the sun.
18:21This traditional method is still widely used.
18:28Dr. Ezeldin Yazid is a professor of construction engineering at the American University in Cairo.
18:37Dr. Ezeldin Yazid wants to find out how tall you can build using the same sort of bricks available to
18:42Nebuchadnezzar.
18:46Dr. Ezeldin Yazid wants to find out how tall you can build using the same sort of bricks available to
18:54Nebuchadnezzar.
19:01Dr. Ezeldin Yazid wants to find out the exact strength of this mud and straw reinforced brick.
19:13We are going to do a compressive strength test on one of the sun-dried clay brick.
19:18Dr. Ezeldin Yazid wants to find out the strength of the brick.
19:19By that test, we'll determine the strength of the brick.
19:21By the strength, I mean the force per unit area.
19:23If we got that, we'll know if we can build with that brick or not.
19:27And how high can we go based on that strength.
19:39I guess we'll stop the test now.
19:41The bricks keep cracking and falling apart like we see, and that's what we define final failure.
19:47So how high can the ancient Babylonians build with these bricks?
19:52We cannot build any high-rise building higher than 20 meters at most with those kind of bricks.
20:01That's only 65 feet.
20:08So what is the Babylonian secret?
20:18This is another kind of brick which is also composed of clay or mud, except the difference in this brick
20:23is fire dried.
20:25This mud brick is shaped and then placed into a kiln.
20:29It's fired at over 350 degrees Fahrenheit for three days.
20:35The remains of ancient kilns like this are found across the region.
20:42But does this fired mud brick allow the king to build a taller tower?
20:49Ez conducts the stress test on the brick fired in the kiln, gradually increasing the pressure.
21:04So we reached ten times the load for sun-dried, and cracks start to appear from that side.
21:12It is amazing to have ten times stronger brick by just firing it.
21:24Ez now calculates how high Nebuchadnezzar can build with his fired bricks.
21:30If you stack the bricks on top of each other, you can build a structure which is about 85 meters
21:36high.
21:38That's nearly the height of three Lincoln Memorials.
21:45With bricks fired in the kiln, the ancient Babylonians can build over four times higher than with mud and straw
21:52bricks.
21:56But there is a way of building even higher.
22:01Ez believes a very large clue lies close to the university in Cairo.
22:08Pyramids actually work nicely because they spread the weight of the building along the larger area at the base.
22:18The Egyptians start building pyramids in the third millennium BC as tombs for royalty.
22:26The Babylonians have their own version, stepped into tears, called a ziggurat.
22:33Not a tomb, but a statement of power, built by a king.
22:38Ez believes the Tower of Babel is a ziggurat.
22:42This shape allows the ancient Babylonians to build taller than ever before.
22:49Now, Ez wants to know, how tall is that?
22:57Ez uses the data from the stress test to create a computer model.
23:02It simulates a ziggurat, built with King Nebuchadnezzar's bricks.
23:08No, no, no. Same thing. So, remove that.
23:11And this building is 90 meters.
23:15It's almost 300 feet high.
23:19Nearly the same height as the Statue of Liberty.
23:23That's amazing.
23:26It's an astonishing demonstration of Babylonian know-how.
23:30But bricks alone do not guarantee this megastructure will last.
23:37Ancient Jewish texts say that a great wind sent by God destroys the Tower.
23:44Can the real Tower weather this region's many storms?
24:02The Tower of Babel, a stepped pyramid that soars 300 feet into the skies.
24:09How does this magnificent ancient wonder survive in a region of extreme heat, floods, and earthquakes?
24:21The Tower of Babel is an incredible feat of ancient engineering.
24:28Millions of hard, baked mud bricks make up the terrace's exterior walls.
24:35And in between the bricks, builders use a type of mortar described in the Bible as slime.
24:43A thick black glue to cement them together.
24:49So, what exactly is this mysterious slime?
24:54And how does it help the Babylonians build structures that last?
25:05Today, archaeologists are returning to Babylon in a region long scarred by war.
25:12Jeff Allen thinks a clue explaining the mysterious slime lies in the remains of ancient Babylon's walled city.
25:18The Bible describes Babel's construction.
25:23It says the builders used a slime and mortar.
25:27And if you look at this, you can see a black substance that's similar to as described in the Bible,
25:34used as a mortar between the bricks of Ishtar Gede.
25:41In Egypt, Dr. Ezeldeen Yazid believes he knows what the black slime is.
25:48A sticky, semi-solid oil called bitumen.
25:53It seeps naturally from the ground in oil-rich Iraq.
25:57In ancient times, this appears on the oily surface of the land.
26:03But does bitumen do more than hold the bricks in place?
26:07To find out, Ez and his team build a model ziggurat.
26:12The inner core is made from bricks dried in the sun.
26:16The outside is made from bricks fired in the kiln.
26:19Just like the Tower of Babel.
26:23They coat the exterior with a layer of bitumen.
26:29Then they build a second ziggurat.
26:33Without bitumen.
26:36They are going to put water on both of them and see what will happen.
26:42This rig is designed to simulate the heavy spring rainfall in Iraq.
26:49Both ziggurats get a soaking.
26:57And here, here it is.
26:59So, the clay starts to come out from the opening.
27:02The water soon permeates the uncoated ziggurat.
27:07It soaks the structure's dried mud core.
27:10But the bitumen-coated ziggurat seems to be fine.
27:14Can you see how nicely the bitumen penetrate between the brick?
27:18And that's why the building is totally intact.
27:22As the mud inside the bare brick model erodes away,
27:26its walls lose their support.
27:28We consider what we see is structure integrity failure.
27:32The uncoated ziggurat is no match for the forces of nature.
27:42As we remove the bricks, all the clay on the top layer has gone away.
27:47All of it saturated with water.
27:49And if the rain continues for maybe weeks or months,
27:52what we'll see is a total collapse of the mud.
27:56It's another story for the ziggurat coated in bitumen.
27:59Beauty means beautifully insulate the inner and outer part of the building from the water.
28:05The biblical account seems true.
28:08The so-called slime really does hold the tower together
28:12and allow the Babylonians to build a skyscraper.
28:17The beauty about that thing is that we are using the very same technology today.
28:24But what does this ancient wonder look like when complete?
28:29And why do the ancient Babylonians build it?
28:48Ancient Babylon, home to the Tower of Babel.
28:54Constructed from mud and bitumen.
28:56One of the largest buildings in the ancient world.
29:00But what does it look like when complete?
29:03The book of Genesis says it's so tall it reaches the heavens.
29:14Ancient tablets in Babylon describe the tower's magnificent summit.
29:21It gleams a brilliant blue.
29:25And molded into the brickwork.
29:28Intricate depictions of a strange animal.
29:32A mythical hybrid, part snake, part dragon.
29:38Shimmering spectacularly in the hot sun.
29:42This celestial skyscraper towers above Babylon.
29:49How do the Babylonians create such a spectacular masterpiece
29:54clad in a brilliant blue?
30:03King Nebuchadnezzar plans to build the most magnificent tower ever seen.
30:08He wants its blue summit to dominate the horizon.
30:12But that gives the king a problem.
30:15Looking around at the landscape, lots of greens, lots of browns.
30:20But no blue.
30:22So question is, how did the ancient Babylonians get such brilliant blue glazes?
30:31Archaeologist Zahed Taj-Edin investigates what makes the tower so blue.
30:38Zahed specializes in the glazes on ancient artifacts and tiles.
30:44He begins by examining Nebuchadnezzar's own description of the tower,
30:49found on a tablet in Babylon.
30:52I built Etimenaki, the zikorite of Babylon, and brought it to completion,
30:57and raised high its top with the pure tile, glazed with lapis lazuli.
31:05So, lapis lazuli. Here it is.
31:09Lapis lazuli is a semi-precious stone.
31:13Its intense blue color makes it prized across the ancient world.
31:18It's mentioned several times in the Bible.
31:22Zahed investigates how the king can possibly cover the top of the tower with a semi-precious stone.
31:30He makes a glaze by mixing lapis lazuli with a natural glue called gum arabic.
31:37Now the lapis lazuli powder is fixed with gum arabic, and it's kind of like semi-permanent.
31:42So they would use it on decorating maybe friscoes or later in decorating manuscripts.
31:51But this glaze also needs to be weatherproof.
31:55They might thought if they put it in the kiln, they might have like a permanent result.
32:01And then they can use it on the bricks.
32:08To fix the glaze, Zahed bakes the tile in his kiln.
32:13Here it is after firing.
32:16It's no longer beautiful and blue and dazzling.
32:19So, yeah, it's failure.
32:23The vivid blue glaze has disappeared.
32:26Yet Nebuchadnezzar says he uses tiles of lapis lazuli on his tower.
32:33Zahed thinks he knows how he does it.
32:36It starts with the art of glass making.
32:39They already were experimenting with the glass, which is silica, pebbles.
32:44If you grind it and heat it, you need about 1,700 degrees for it to melt.
32:51Craftsmen make glass by heating silica, which comes from sand or rocks until it melts.
32:59Liquid glass can also be used to produce shiny glazes for pottery.
33:09Nabuchadnezzar now has a new challenge for his workmen.
33:13He wanted lapis lazuli color.
33:16To create different colored glazes, they add minerals to the ground up silica pebbles.
33:23Zahed paints on a glaze containing two minerals readily available to the ancient Babylonians.
33:30Copper oxide, which looks dark green.
33:33And blue cobalt.
33:43So here we are, the moment of truth.
33:47Lapis lazuli blue.
33:51So that addition transformed the glaze into this kind of deep blue.
33:56And now we know why in ancient Mesopotamia they would refer to this bricks as lapis lazuli.
34:05The Tower of Babel's builders create an ingenious way to cheaply mimic the blue color of lapis lazuli.
34:13That was great alchemy, great secret.
34:18All of the sudden have this glass that substitute semi-precious stones right at hand.
34:28It's such a statement.
34:30It's such a legacy.
34:31It's there to stay and still impress us today.
34:35And the striking color it creates gives a clue to the purpose of the tower.
34:43The Babylonians worship the god Marduk.
34:48He wears an elaborate horned crown of gold and lapis lazuli.
34:56Marduk's shrines and temples throughout Babylon are decorated lavishly with the rich blue color.
35:04And the city's processional way is clad in lapis blue.
35:09Ready for the annual New Year parade they hold in Marduk's honor.
35:17The tower was a shrine dedicated to the god Marduk.
35:22The sides most likely were decorated with dragons.
35:26This was Marduk's sacred animal.
35:33The immense tower is built to honor the Babylonian's god.
35:40But why does the Bible claim the tower is so tall it reaches the heavens?
36:00The legendary Tower of Babel.
36:03Its story is recorded in the Bible.
36:07With unique access to Babylon, archaeologists believe they've found the site of this fabled ancient wonder.
36:16The tower is an ancient 300-foot-high ziggurat known to the Babylonians as Etaminanki.
36:25The Bible says it's so tall it touches the heavens.
36:31Medieval paintings show the summit of the tower shrouded in clouds.
36:40This is a typical depiction of the Tower of Babel.
36:44The one thing they all have in common is the structure that reached into the clouds.
36:51But does the tower really stretch that high?
36:54Or is this an exaggeration made by the enslaved Jews of Babylon, who write the Bible story?
37:01Jeff once again turns to his eye in the sky.
37:08Up it goes!
37:11They take the drone up to an altitude of 300 feet.
37:17The same height as the top of the tower.
37:21It allows Jeff to imagine what Babylonians standing on its summit could once see.
37:29The spectacular city stretches out beneath.
37:33But the tower is a long way from reaching the clouds.
37:47Jeff thinks he has a more likely explanation for the tower's fabled mist-covered pinnacle.
37:56Excavations, when they were done here previously, they could not go lower than a few meters because of the high
38:02water table.
38:03Babylon, of course, is next to the river.
38:08Over time, the Euphrates has changed course.
38:11And 2,500 years ago, the river runs close to the tower.
38:18Historically, it was much closer.
38:20So the tower would have stood there, right next to the river.
38:28A few hundred miles from Babylon, there are vast mountain ranges.
38:34With snow-capped peaks which help to feed the nearby rivers.
38:39In the spring, the mountain snow melts, swelling the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
38:45And flooding Babylon in the plains below.
38:50It meant that in the spring, the ground surrounding the ziggurat was more waterlogged than it is today.
38:59And after a cold desert night, the morning sun would heat the ground, creating this kind of mist.
39:08The Babylon ziggurat right next to the river is engulfed in this mist, as if it's touching the clouds.
39:17We know that the same effect exists at other places.
39:22For example, the Taj Mahal.
39:25But at Babylon, imagine a 300-foot tower surrounded by a sea of clouds.
39:33A mist.
39:35And resting on top of it, this brilliant blue shrine.
39:40Must have been amazing.
39:43This atmospheric phenomenon may explain why the tower is believed to touch the heavens.
39:53But according to ancient Jewish texts, God is so angered by this ambitious project, that he sends a great wind
40:01and destroys it.
40:04Today, investigators piece together the true fate of the tower.
40:12Babylon is conquered by the Persians after Nebuchadnezzar's death.
40:17They prohibit the worship of the god Marduk and smash a hole in the tower.
40:23The Greek king, Alexander the Great, captures Babylon from the Persians,
40:28and tears down the damaged tower with plans to rebuild it.
40:34But in 323 BC, Alexander dies, leaving the Tower of Babel as a pile of bricks, ripe for looting over
40:43the coming millennia.
40:46Centuries of war keep Babylon in ruins until Saddam Hussein builds a palace on the site.
40:55Today, Jeff and the World Monuments Fund work with local conservationists to safeguard the once magnificent city of Babylon for
41:04future generations.
41:06It is of immense significance and important to us that we have been asked to participate with our Iraqi friends
41:13in preserving their history.
41:17Not just for the people of Iraq to only see, but for the whole world to experience their great accomplishments.
41:25The Tower of Babel is an extraordinary triumph of engineering.
41:31Using just mud, straw, and bitumen, the Babylonians build a tower more magnificent than any seen before.
41:43Shining a brilliant blue, it soars into the skies.
41:49A spectacular monument to human ingenuity.
41:54The Empire of Babel'sisia's
41:56The-
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