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The Tower of Babel in Art and Literature (6 Examples)

Explaining the existence and diversity of languages spoken around the globe, the Tower of Babel is an origin story that resounds throughout history, art, and literature.

The story of the Tower of Babel is told in the Book of Genesis 11:1-9, offering a parabolic, aetiological explanation as to why so many diverse languages are spoken around the world – and why, as a result, speakers of different languages struggle to communicate with each other. Originally, the world was monolingual. As the people migrate eastward, they come to the land of Shinar (southern Mesopotamia), where they resolve to build a city and tower that will reach up to the heavens. Yahweh, however, foils their plans by scattering them across the earth and confounding their language so that they can no longer understand each other and thus cannot continue building the tower. In doing so, a polyglottal humanity is born. It is a powerful origin story that has resonated with writers and artists throughout the ages. Here, we look at six examples of works of art and literature inspired by the Tower of Babel.

1. Folio 17v, The Bedford Hours (c. 1410-30)

Within the Roman Catholic faith, books of prayer for certain canonical times of day are known as books of hours. Manuscript examples from the Middle Ages are often lavishly illuminated , and few more so than The Bedford Hours , which boasts more than 1,200 historiated roundels.

The Bedford Hours was originally created to mark the wedding of Anne of Burgundy and John, Duke of Bedford (which, of course, is where the manuscript’s name is derived) on May 13th, 1423. On Christmas Eve 1430, however, Anne of Burgundy gifted the precious manuscript to the nine-year-old King Henry VI, her nephew.

Within a series of miniatures depicting scenes from the Book of Genesis, on Folio 17v of the Bedford Hours, the concurrent construction and divine demolition of the Tower of Babel is depicted in a full-page miniature. Laborers continue working on the construction of the tower, and Nimrod and his retinue come to survey their work (a scene taken from Flavius Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews , perhaps, rather than the Book of Genesis, in which Nimrod is not mentioned). All the while, however, divine forces are working against them. Thus, the image underlines the warning against greed and megalomania, as stated in the Book of Genesis.

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Please check your inbox to activate your subscription, 2. james joyce, finnegans wake (1939).

Published in 1939, Finnegans Wake is a monumental work within literary modernism. Deeply experimental and, according to some at least, near impenetrable in its linguistic idiosyncrasies, it is also a self-conscious inheritor of the legacy of the fall of the Tower of Babel: namely, the confusion of tongues. “The word ‘Babel’ is,” according to Jesse Schotter, “referred to at least twenty-one times in the Wake.” James’ preoccupation with the infamous tower is signaled from the very beginning of the novel, as “Finnegan’s fall” echoes “the fall of the Tower of Babel,” or, as Joyce refers to it, the “baubletop” (see Further Reading, Schotter, 89; Joyce, 5).

The confusion of tongues was a concern shared by many others besides Joyce in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was, after all, during this time that so-called “universal languages” were being invented, including Basic English, Novial, Volapuk, Istotype, and, most famously perhaps, Esperanto .

Like these “universal languages,” Joyce incorporates elements of tens of languages into Finnegans Wake – and, in earlier drafts of the novel, he even incorporated some Esperanto . If, however, these “universal languages” were attempts to overcome the confusion of tongues that resulted from the fall of the Tower of Babel, Joyce resists such attempts in his novel, reveling instead in the rich, polyglot cacophony that resulted from the fall of the “turrace of Babbel” (see Further Reading, Joyce, 199).

Joyce was skeptical of attempts to recover or return to a supposedly “pure” language that predated not only the fall of the Tower of Babel but the fall of man, too. In Finnegans Wake , as Schotter observes: “Joyce provides in his own version of a universal language not the solution to the problem of Babel but Babel itself” (see Further Reading, Schotter, 100).

3. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The (Great) Tower of Babel and The (Little) Tower of Babel

That the Tower of Babel exercises a fascination over the cultural imagination is especially true of Pieter Bruegel the Elder . Such was his obsession with the Tower of Babel that he painted it not once, not twice, but three times. The (Great) Tower of Babel and The (Little) Tower of Babel , however, are the only two pieces to survive, as the earliest piece of the three (a miniature painted on ivory) is lost. It has been suggested that Bruegel’s fascination was linked to the Reformation and the resultant rift between the Catholic Church (in which services were in Latin) and Protestantism.

Though The (Little) Tower of Babel is roughly half the size of The (Great) Tower of Babel , at first glance, the two paintings seem compositionally very similar, both depicting the construction of the Tower of Babel, the structure that dominates both paintings.

In addition, the two towers are architecturally very similar, evoking (according to John Malam) the Roman Colosseum. Just as the Colosseum had once seemed to depict the might of the Roman Empire, it now stands as a reminder of the ultimate transience of even once-powerful empires, and so the likeness Bruegel draws between the Colosseum and the Tower of Babel is apt. Both towers are also tilted and therefore unstable: in both paintings, the foundations are shown to be weak and the tower itself crumbling in places.

However, where The (Great) Tower of Babel is set on the edge of a cityscape, The (Little) Tower of Babel is surrounded on three sides by open countryside. Moreover, in The (Great) Tower of Babel, Nimrod and his entourage make an appearance (just as they do in Folio 17v of The Bedford Hours ), while The (Little) Tower of Babel is eerily devoid of human figures.

4. Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel” (1941)

“La Biblioteca de Babel” (The Library of Babel) is a 1941 short story by the acclaimed Argentinian writer and librarian Jorge Luis Borges. The story is set, as Borges’ narrator explains, in a universe that consists of an enormous library “composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries” (see Further Reading, Borges, 78).

Though the vast majority of the books in each room are compositionally formless and incoherent, among the shelves are also all the coherent books ever written. These books, however, are few and far between, and “for every sensible line of straightforward statement, there are leagues of senseless cacophonies, verbal jumbles and incoherences” (see Further Reading, Borges, 80). As for the books that are seemingly incoherent, the narrator suggests that some may only seem incoherent because a language in which they would become legible has yet to be devised.

As things stand, however, this means that the books are useless, much to the despair of the librarians in this universe. While some librarians are driven to destroy incoherent books (though the library is so vast that “any reduction […] is infinitesimal”), one “blasphemous sect” suggests “that all men should juggle letters and symbols until,” by chance, they re-produce the much longed for coherent, canonical books – thus exacerbating the original problem (see Further Reading, Borges, 83). Other librarians, however, seek a book that might provide an index or compendium for the library’s collection, devised by a quasi-messianic librarian (the Man of the Book) who has gone through the library archives.

The story can be read in light of Borges’ 1939 essay “La Biblioteca Total” (The Total Library). Here, Borges makes an explicit reference to Borel’s infinite monkey theorem, to which he only obliquely alludes in “The Library of Babel.”

5. Lucas van Valckenborch, La Tour de Babel, 1594

Lucas van Valckenborch the Elder was a contemporary of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and, like Bruegel, he painted the Tower of Babel more than once. Before his 1594 painting, he also produced a painting of the Tower of Babel in 1568 and then went on to produce another in 1595. All three seem to be influenced by Bruegel’s works, though this is especially true of the 1568 and 1594 paintings. Also, like Bruegel, van Valckenborch drew inspiration from the Roman Colosseum in constructing his own Tower of Babel.

It is perhaps little wonder, however, that van Valckenborch was drawn to painting the Tower of Babel just as Bruegel was. As a contemporary of Bruegel, he was responding to many of the same historical events, including the fallout of the Reformation. Against this backdrop of religious strife within Western Christianity, the Catholic Church was also embarking on a series of major construction projects, including St. Peter’s Basilica.

If van Valckenborch sought to draw a parallel between the Catholic Church’s construction projects and the Tower of Babel in his paintings, the parallel would imply an indictment of the Catholic Church. And, as van Valckenborch and his brother and fellow artist Marten fled Antwerp (just as the figures in the foreground of his 1594 painting appear to be fleeing Babylon before the fire spreads) in the wake of the Beeldenstorm of 1566 before eventually taking refuge in Germany, it is thought that he was in all likelihood a Protestant .

6. A.S. Byatt, Babel Tower (1996)

Published in 1996, A.S. Byatt’s Babel Tower is her third novel focusing on the life of Frederica Potter. When Nigel, Frederica’s affluent and sadistic husband, attacks her with an axe, she flees their marital home with their young son, Leo, and moves to London. She finds employment as a teacher in an art school and mixes with poets, painters, and Jude Mason, a novelist whose latest work is being put on trial. When Nigel files for divorce, the two legal battles play out in tandem.

At the heart of Babel Tower is the question of language and the ways in which it can both facilitate and frustrate communication. During her divorce proceedings, Frederica’s literary tastes are weaponized against her, as her husband’s lawyers seek to convince the jury that a reading woman cannot a good mother make. Nor does the jury believe that Nigel attacked her with an axe. In this way, Byatt flags up the wiliness of the language of the law court.

Meanwhile, Jude’s novel, Babbletower, is on trial for obscenity. The suffering of the heroine of Babbletower , Lady Roseace, mirrors that of Frederica. Yet where the Jury seem inclined to view Frederica’s trauma as fiction, they view Jude’s fiction as pornography .

As the above examples attest, the story of the Tower of Babel has had a lasting hold on our collective cultural imagination. On a broader scale, it speaks to our sense of global fragmentation, and, within our private lives and personal relationships, it reminds us of the treachery of language, which is at once our primary means of communication and yet fraught with the latent danger of miscommunication. As such, it seems more than likely that the Tower of Babel will maintain its firm grip on the cultural imagination for many years to come.

Further Reading:

Borges, Jorge Luis, “The Library of Babel,” trans. by James E. Irby, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings , ed. by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (London: Penguin, 2000), pp. 78-86.

Byatt, A.S., Babel Tower (London: Vintage, 1997).

Joyce, James, Finnegans Wake (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

Malam, John, Pieter Bruegel (Minneapolis, MN: Carolrhoda Books, 1999).

Schotter, Jesse, “Verbivocovisuals: James Joyce and the Problem of Babel,” James Joyce Quarterly , 48, 1 (2010), 89-109.

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By Catherine Dent MA 20th and 21st Century Literary Studies, BA English Literature Catherine holds a first-class BA from Durham University and an MA with distinction, also from Durham, where she specialized in the representation of glass objects in the work of Virginia Woolf. In her spare time, she enjoys writing fiction, reading, and spending time with her rescue dog, Finn.

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La tour de Babel

Toute la terre avait une seule langue et les mêmes mots. Après avoir quitté l'est, ils trouvèrent une plaine dans le pays de Shinear et s'y installèrent. Ils se dirent l'un à l'autre: «Allons! Faisons des briques et cuisons-les au feu!» La brique leur servit de pierre, et le bitume de ciment. Ils dirent encore: «Allons! Construisons-nous une ville et une tour dont le sommet touche le ciel et faisons-nous un nom afin de ne pas être dispersés sur toute la surface de la terre.»

L'Eternel descendit pour voir la ville et la tour que construisaient les hommes, et il dit: «Les voici qui forment un seul peuple et ont tous une même langue, et voilà ce qu'ils ont entrepris! Maintenant, rien ne les retiendra de faire tout ce qu'ils ont projeté. Allons! Descendons et là brouillons leur langage afin qu'ils ne se comprennent plus mutuellement.» L'Eternel les dispersa loin de là sur toute la surface de la terre. Alors ils arrêtèrent de construire la ville. C'est pourquoi on l'appela Babel: parce que c'est là que l'Eternel brouilla le langage de toute la terre et c'est de là qu'il les dispersa sur toute la surface de la terre.

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La tour de Babel

Écrit par moïse* dans genèse 11:1-9, ~1 mins.

11 Toute la terre avait une seule langue et les mêmes mots. 2 Après avoir quitté l’est, ils trouvèrent une plaine dans le pays de Shinear et s’y installèrent. 3 Ils se dirent l’un à l’autre: «Allons! Faisons des briques et cuisons-les au feu!» La brique leur servit de pierre, et le bitume de ciment. 4 Ils dirent encore: «Allons! Construisons-nous une ville et une tour dont le sommet touche le ciel et faisons-nous un nom afin de ne pas être dispersés sur toute la surface de la terre.»

5 L’Eternel descendit pour voir la ville et la tour que construisaient les hommes, 6 et il dit: «Les voici qui forment un seul peuple et ont tous une même langue, et voilà ce qu’ils ont entrepris! Maintenant, rien ne les retiendra de faire tout ce qu’ils ont projeté. 7 Allons! Descendons et là brouillons leur langage afin qu’ils ne se comprennent plus mutuellement.»

8 L’Eternel les dispersa loin de là sur toute la surface de la terre. Alors ils arrêtèrent de construire la ville. 9 C’est pourquoi on l’appela Babel: parce que c’est là que l’Eternel brouilla le langage de toute la terre et c’est de là qu’il les dispersa sur toute la surface de la terre.

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Marcel Broodthaers Tour de Babel (Tower of Babel), 1966

• Marcel Broodthaers (Bruxelles, 1924 - Cologne, 1976)
• Tour de Babel (Tower of Babel), 1966
• Glass jars, print, cotton, wood , 95 x 50 x 50 cm
• Gift of the New Smith Gallery, Brussels, 1966
• Inv. 1966-031
• © Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne

Marcel Broodthaers’s career was as prolific as it was brief, giving rise to books, films, photographs, sculptures, objects, drawings and installations, among others. His career as an artist began with his first exhibition at the Galerie Saint-Laurent in Brussels in April 1964, which he titled Moi aussi, je me suis demandé si je ne pouvais pas vendre quelque chose et réussir dans la vie. Cela fait un moment déjà que je ne suis bon à rien. Je suis âgé de quarante ans… (I, too, wondered if I couldn’t sell something and succeed in life. I’ve been good for nothing for a while now. I’m forty years old…). The exhibition featured his very first sculpture, Pense-Bête (Ghent, S.M.A.K., on long-term loan from the Collectie Vlaanderen), a bundle of fifty copies of his final slim poetry collection set in plaster. This wry display set the tone for the rest of his career, characterised by sharply witty interplay between image, object and writing.

In 1966, the museum showed two of Broodthaers’ works at the second Salon international de galeries pilotes , one of which was this Tour de Babel . It comprises seven rows of glass jars, each holding the same image of a woman’s nose and smiling mouth, taken from a magazine. The jars are arranged in a ring on seven, round, wooden planks, piled to form a tower that could possibly grow higher forever. That same year, Broodthaers built his Tour visuelle ( Visual Tower, Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art) on the same principle, featuring a wide-open eye rather than a smile. Building on the work of the new realists and pop art, Broodthaers’ first pieces stage everyday items – in this instance, glass jars and advertising imagery, in other works moulds and eggshells – and underline their serial nature by means of repetition and accumulation. While Tour de Babel does not include any text, unlike other works from the same period, its title does point to a further reading, the repetition of identical mouths countering the multiplicity of languages in the biblical Tower of Babel, the crowning metaphor for the ambiguity inherent in human language.

Exposé actuellement

Bibliography.

Deborah Schultz, Marcel Broodthaers. Strategy and Dialogue , Bern/Oxford, Peter Lang, 2007.

Catherine Lepdor, ‘Sourires en pots de Marcel Broodthaers,’ in  Le Miroir vivant: René Magritte, Marcel Broodthaers, Bruce Nauman, Markus Raetz , Les Cahiers du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne 6, 1997: 20-26.

Véronique Dabin et Catherine David (eds.) , Marcel Broodthaers , exh. cat. Paris, Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Madrid, Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Paris, Réunion des musées nationaux, 1991.

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The Tower of Babel

Pieter bruegel the elder 1563, kunsthistorisches museum wien vienna, austria.

“[…] Go to, let us build us a city and a tower , whose top may reach unto heaven;and let us make us a name […]. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower […]. And he said: […] let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one nother’s speech. […] and they left off to build the city.” (Gen. 11:4–8.) King Nimrod, who appears as builder along with his entourage at the bottom left of the painting, is not mentioned in the biblical text. Only the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, who collaborated with the Romans, combined records from different sources to create the legend that became accepted (Antiquitates Judaica I,4; 93–94 AD). In the book illumination of the Early and High Middle Ages, local buildings that were less than monumental were used as models for the architecture of the Tower of Babel. Starring in the 16th century, artists orientated themselves on the Mesopotamian type of step-shaped ziggurat (temple tower), which, however, was rectangular rather than round. Bruegel ’s monumental composition had several forerunners in Netherlandish painting, but his work became the most famous classic among the Tower of Babel depictions and was frequently copied in many different variations. The sense of scale is provided by the flemish-style port city, which is impressively tiny in comparison to the tower. With meticulous precision and encyclopaedic interest Bruegel depicts an abundance of technical and mechanical details, from the supply of the building materials in the busy harbour to the various cranes and the scaffolding on the unfinished brick foundation. He sets the workers’ dwellings into the stone outer structure, which blends elements of classical with Romanesque architecture , and they appear to be more than merely temporary. By anchoring the building on the rocky slope, Bruegel creates the impression of static equilibrium. Reaching up to the clouds, the building, however, is optically distorted and appears to have slightly sunk into the ground on the left side. This is an artistic gesture, on the one hand enhancing the impression of the building’s monumentality, and on the other hand alluding to human hubris and the impossibility of completing the tower because “the Lord confused the language of all the earth”. (Gen. 11:9.) © Cäcilia Bischoff, Masterpieces of the Picture Gallery. A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2010

• Title: The Tower of Babel
• Creator: Pieter Bruegel the Elder
• Creator Lifespan: ca. 1526/30 - 1569
• Creator Nationality: flemish
• Creator Gender: male
• Creator Death Place: Brussels
• Creator Birth Place: Breda ?
• Date Created: 1563
• Style: flemish Mannerism
• Provenance: Collection of Emperor Rudolf II.
• Physical Dimensions: w155 x h114 cm
• Inventory Number: GG 1026
• Type: painting
• Medium: Oil on Wood

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La tour de Babel

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