Monday, January 9, 2012
Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel gets a bad press. A misunderstanding surely. ;)
According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, Babel comes from Hebrew Bāel 'Babylon', which is from Akkadian bāb ili 'gate of God'.
cf. Bhartrhari's statement in the Vakyapadiya, "tad dvāramapavargasya" [Grammar] is the door to liberation.
Just coming at it from another angle.
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interesting aspect, so far unknown to me. Just looked it up.
ReplyDeleteThe German Wikipedia-article says the same:
"Der akkadische Name Babylons lautete als piktographisches Sumerogramm geschrieben KÁ.DINGIR.RAKI (KÁ „Tor“, DINGIR „Gott“, =a(k) GENITIV, KI Determinativ für Städtenamen), in akkadischer Silbenschrift jedoch Babilla. Ab Anfang des zweiten Jahrtausends v. Chr. wechselte er in die aus dem Sumerogramm hergeleitete babylonische Entsprechung Bābili(m) (bāb „Tor“ [sc. von bābum] ilim „Gottes“ [Gen. von ilum]), wovon sich später der griechische Name Babylonia ableitete."
transl.:
"The accadian Name of Babylon means in sumerian pictogram KÁ.DINGIR.RAKI (KÁ=gate, DINGIR=god, a(k)= genitiv, KI=determinative for a name of a town), in accadian syllabic writing it is Babilla. At the beginning of the 2nd millenium BC it was changed to the babilonic Babili(m): bab=gate + ilim=of god, wherefrom later the greek Babylonia derives."