I’ve been intrigued by the Tower of Babel for a long time, so I’ve decided to really dig into it via art (and maybe writing) by making it my Lent project. Every day, an exploration of some aspect or interpretation or tangent of this very brief (nine verses, Genesis 11:1-9), enigmatic story. Here’s the first.
Sermons in Stones 
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February 23, 2023 at 8:58 am
Maddy
If you are interested in other writers’ takes on this story, Ted Chiang has a novelette called Tower of Babylon that blew my mind. All of his short stories are incredible and weird.
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February 23, 2023 at 9:44 am
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Yes! I have read it–mind also blown! And I am interested in all of it. I poked around to see who might have made art on the subject aside Escher, whose print I have somewhere in a past entry, and it turns out that it was a very popular theme for a certain period in European painting. There’s a linguist /Sinologist who collected as many as he could find on his website. Thanks for the rec!
What I loved about the Chiang story was the imagining of how the Tower would be its own culture, like spaceships in stories about multigenerational journeys between planets (since that’s what they’ll be assuming we don’t invent warp speed 😉). What about you?
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February 23, 2023 at 4:58 pm
Maddy
Yes, I think I had a similar reaction — all those little subcultures as he climbed. The idea that people were living out their entire lives in one section of the tower, because it took so long to build. Dropping a tool and waiting years to get it back…
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