Benjamin of Tudela describes the Tower of Babel among his records of his journey through Babylon in the Twelfth Century:
The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela
ומשם ארבעה מילין למגדל שבנו דור הפלגה והוא בנוי מלבנים הנקראים אגור
ואורך יסודו כשני מילין וברחבו כארבעי' אמה וארכו כמו מאתים אמה ובין
עשרה עשרה אמות דרכים ובהם שם עולים בעיגול מסבבין עד למעלה ורואין ממנו
מהלך עשרים מילין כי הארץ מישור ובתוכו נפלה אש מן השמים ובקעה אותו עד
התהום
Thence it is four miles to the Tower of Babel, which the generation
whose language was confounded built of the bricks called Agur. The
length of its foundation is about two miles, the breadth of the tower
is about forty cubits, and the length thereof two hundred cubits. At
every ten cubits' distance there are slopes which go round the tower
by which one can ascend to the top. One can see from there a view
twenty miles in extent, as the land is level. There fell fire from
heaven into the midst of the tower which split it to its very depths.
(Adler translation)
Four miles from hence is the tower built by the dispersed generation.
It is constructed of bricks called al-ajurr; the base measures two
miles, the breadth two hundred and forty yards, and the height about
one hundred canna. A spiral passage, built into the tower (in stages
of ten yards each), leads up to the summit, from which we have a
prospect of twenty miles, the country being one wide plain and quite
level. The heavenly fire, which struck the tower, split it to its very
foundation. (Asher translation)
In the Nineteenth Century Sir Austen Henry Layard visited this tower as well and described it thus:
Nineveh and Babylon p. 277-279
The Birs Nimroud, ‘the palace of Nimrod’ of the Arabs, and ‘the prison
of Nebuchadnezzar’ of the Jews; by old travellers believed to be the
very ruins of the tower of Babel; by some, again, supposed to
represent the temple of Belus, the wonder of the ancient world; and,
by others, to mark the site of Borsippa, a city celebrated as the
highplace of the Chaldaean worship, is a vast heap of bricks, slag,
and broken pottery. The dry nitrous earth of the parched plain, driven
before the furious south wind, has thrown over the huge mass a thin
covering of soil in which no herb or green thing can find nourishment
or take root. It rises to the height of 153 feet, and has on its
summit a compact mass of brickwork, 37 feet high by 28 broad. Neither
the original form nor object of the edifice, of which it is the ruin,
had, previous to my visit, been determined. On one side of it, beneath
the crowning masonry, lie huge fragments torn from the pile itself.
The calcined and vitreous surface of the bricks fused into rock-like
masses, show that their fall may have been caused by lightning; and,
as the ruin is rent almost from top to bottom, early Christian
travellers, as well as some of more recent date, have not hesitated to
recognise in them proofs of that divine vengeance, which, according to
tradition, arrested by fire from heaven the impious attempt of the
first descendants of Noah. Even the Jews, it would appear, at one time
identified the Birs Nimroud with the Tower of Babel. Benjamin of
Tudela, who saw it in the twelfth century, gives the following curious
account of the ruin. 'The tower built by the dispersed generation is
four miles from Hillah. It is constructed of bricks, called Al-ajur
(the word still used by the Arabs for kiln-burnt bricks); the base
measures two miles, the breadth 240 yards, and the height about 100
canna. A spiral passage, built into the tower (from ten to ten yards),
leads up to the summit, from which there is a prospect of twenty
miles, the country being one wide plain, and quite level. The heavenly
fire which struck the tower, split it to its very foundation.’ No
traces whatever now remain of the spiral passage spoken of by the
Jewish traveller.
