Ziggurat of Borsippa

32.3920°N, 44.3417°E.

The ziggurat of Borsippa, dedicated to the god Nabu and known to its builders as Eurmeiminanki — the House of the Seven Lords of Heaven and Earth — in modern Babil Governorate, Iraq. Construction was initiated in the second millennium BCE and rebuilt at its largest scale by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (~580 BCE). Original base 82 metres per side; original height approximately 70 metres on seven terraces. The surviving core rises 47 metres above the plain — making it the tallest ziggurat ruin in Mesopotamia — and is fused into a glassy black mass at the top from a lightning strike or kiln-fire that vitrified the upper courses in antiquity. Excavated by Hormuzd Rassam in 1879 and 1880, who recovered foundation cylinders of Nebuchadnezzar inscribed with the dedication and a builder's prayer. Borsippa is named in two places in the Hebrew Bible and identified in the Talmud as the location of the Tower of Babel — a tradition local guides still tell.

The tallest standing ziggurat in the world, with a melted summit, in a city that has been called the Tower of Babel by its own inhabitants for two thousand years.