The Tower of Babel and the Aztec Chief

Around 1000 BC, the ancient Greek poet and writer Homer wrote a rather fantastic story describing a great war between the Greeks and a powerful city called Troy. For many centuries, this story was considered a myth, or legend, until a German explorer named Heinrich Schliemann, who was captivated by Homer's story, began a search for the ancient city. In the early 1870s, with the help of a British archeologist, Schliemann discovered the site of Troy.

Ancient legend became an historical fact, now let me turn your attention to the Tower of Babel.

The story of the Tower of Babel has captivated the imagination of mankind for millennia. It describes a time when all mankind was living in close proximity and speaking one common language. This unity gave them the potential to achieve almost anything they would desire to do. The record goes on to explain that mankind had largely fallen under the sway of a despotic leader named Nimrod, who was attempting to defy God's will for man. He began to gather people into a great city, which included a grand structure designed to protect man from the wrath of God. To thwart the tyrant's evil plan, God, by a miracle, divided the people into different linguistic groups, and scattered the people to various regions around the globe.

Rather than dismiss the biblical story in Genesis as a myth, consider the following historical records:
A clay tablet that long predates the Bible was found in southern Sumer. In 1968 a translation of the message was published in The Journal of the American Oriental Society:

In those days, the lands Subur (and) Hamazi, Harmony [of] tongues…The whole universe, the people in unison spoke, To Enlil in one tongue…Then… Enki, the lord of abundance, (whose) commands are trustworthy …Changed the speech in their mouths, set up contention into it, Into the speech of man that (until then) had been one.

This is not the only such ancient record that is not connected with the Bible. In 1875, a great archeologist and explorer for the British Museum, George Smith, translated another Chaldean tablet, likely inscribed about 1800 BC. It is published in a book called The Chaldean Account of Genesis:

His heart was evil…against the father of all the gods…of him his heart was evil…Babylon brought to subjection, (small) and great he confounded their speech. Their strong place (tower) all the day they founded; to their strong place in the night entirely he made an end... Bitterly they wept at Babi [Babel]…very much they grieved…"

In the days immediately following the Spanish conquest, an Aztec chief named Ixtlilxochitl, recounted much of their history to a Spanish priest, himself an historian. The priest, named Durán, wrote an account found in a text entitled Historia Antigua de la Nueva España, in 1585:

…all was a plain…and immediately after the light and the sun arose in the east there appeared gigantic men …they determined to build a tower so high that its summit should reach the sky. Having collected materials for the purpose, they found a very adhesive clay and bitumen, with which they speedily commenced to build the tower; and having reared it to the greatest possible altitude, so that they say it reached to the sky, the Lord of the Heavens, enraged, said to the inhabitants of the sky, "Have you observed how they of the earth have built a high and haughty tower…? Come and confound them…" Immediately the inhabitants of the sky sallied forth like flashes of lightning; they destroyed the edifice and divided and scattered its builders to all parts of the earth.

Fernando Ixtlilxochitl also related another account, part of a collection of an anthology called Ixtlilxochitl Relaciones. These were included in a book compiled by the Englishman Lord Kingsborough, entitled, Antiquities of Mexico:

…after men had multiplied, they erected a very high "zaculai," which is today a tower of great height, in order to take refuge in it should the second world be destroyed. Presently their languages were confused, and not being able to understand each other, they went to different parts of the earth. The Toltecs, consisting of seven friends, with their wives, who understood the same language, came to these parts, having first passed great lands and seas, having lived in caves, and having endured great hardships in order to reach this land; they wandered 104 years through different parts of the world before they reached Hue Hue Tlapalan…520 years after the Flood…"

Clearly this story, of an attempt to build a society opposed to the will of God, resulting in the division of mankind through the creation of different languages, is present in cultures far removed from one another in both distance and time. As our German archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann reasoned, if a legend exists in multiple sources, behind that legend there must be a truth.

The account of the tower of Babel is recognized by peoples who knew nothing of the Bible and who had likely never met a Hebrew, yet maintained a tradition that supports the Biblical record. 

We should be cautious lest we, as those who totally dismissed Homer's story of Troy, make the same error when considering the accounts of the Bible.