https://abaj.ai/tags/borges/Recent content in Borges on Aayush Bajaj's Augmenting InfrastructureHugoen© 2026 Aayush BajajSun, 19 Jul 2026 00:46:28 +1000https://abaj.ai/blog/babel/Sun, 19 Jul 2026 04:38:16 +1000https://abaj.ai/blog/babel/<p>This page is for the richness of Babel.</p> <p>There are at least four Babels worth keeping in one place: a real tower, a story about the tower, a library built out of the story, and a piece of software I use every day. They are all the same idea wearing different clothes — <strong>the totality of language, and what it costs</strong>.</p> <h2 id="the-tower-that-actually-stood">the tower that actually stood<a href="#the-tower-that-actually-stood" class="post-heading__anchor" aria-hidden="true">#</a> </h2> <p>Babel was a real place before it was a metaphor. The name is <strong>Bab-ilim</strong> — &ldquo;gate of the god&rdquo; — Babylon, on the Euphrates, and its tower was the <strong>Etemenanki</strong>: &ldquo;the temple of the foundation of heaven and earth,&rdquo; a seven-tiered ziggurat of baked brick and bitumen sacred to Marduk, rising perhaps 90 metres over the city. It was old when history found it — damaged and rebuilt across centuries, most famously restored by Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605–562 BCE), who recorded the work in glazed-brick boast: its top was to &ldquo;rival the heavens.&rdquo;</p>