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50 free Tower of Babel trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Tower of Babel trivia quiz covers the nine-verse story in Genesis 11 and everything that grew from it: the plain of Shinar, brick and bitumen, the pun on balal, and what the tale was meant to explain. It then digs into the history behind the myth — the Etemenanki ziggurat of Marduk in Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar and Alexander, Herodotus, Koldewey's dig, and the Sumerian tale of Enmerkar. It also covers Nimrod and Josephus, the Book of Jubilees and its 2.5-kilometre tower, the midrash of bloody arrows, the 72 languages, Islamic and Mormon versions, Bruegel's Colosseum-shaped tower, Doré and Escher, Metropolis, the Babel fish, Borges, Ted Chiang and Iñárritu's Babel. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation. Enjoy this one? Try our Bible and Ancient Mesopotamia quizzes next.
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Q 01What happens to the city when the builders are scattered?
It is left unfinished
Genesis 11:8 says they 'left off to build the city'; the phrase 'Tower of Babel' never actually appears in the Bible.
Q 02What does the Babel story set out to explain?
Why humans speak different languages
It is an etiology: God confounds one shared speech and scatters the builders across the earth.
Q 03In which land do the builders settle before starting the tower?
Shinar
Shinar is the Hebrew Bible's name for southern Mesopotamia, the region of Babylon.
Q 04What did the builders use in place of stone and mortar, according to Genesis?
Baked brick and bitumen slime
The detail matches real Mesopotamian construction, where bitumen from local springs cemented fired bricks.
Q 05What did the builders hope to avoid by making a name for themselves?
Being scattered over the earth
The irony is that scattering is exactly what God does to them.
Q 06How many verses long is the Tower of Babel story?
Nine
Modern scholars usually assign the passage to the Jahwist source of the Pentateuch.
Q 07According to Genesis, the name Babel comes from which verb?
Balal, to confuse
It is a pun: the Hebrew words for Babylon and 'to confuse' sound alike, which is how English got 'babble' by folk association.
Q 08What did the Akkadian name Bab-ilim, from which Babylon derives, mean?
Gate of God
Even that is probably a folk etymology of an older, non-Semitic name, Babilla, of unknown meaning.
Q 09Which real Babylonian ziggurat is most often identified as the inspiration for the tower?
Etemenanki
Its Sumerian name means Temple of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth, and it was dedicated to Marduk.
Q 10To which god was Babylon's great ziggurat dedicated?
Marduk
Herodotus called it the temple of Zeus Belus, Hellenising the god's title Bel.
Q 11Which two Neo-Babylonian kings famously rebuilt Babylon's ziggurat in the 6th century BCE?
Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II
Sennacherib of Assyria had destroyed Babylon in 689 BCE, and it took 88 years to restore the city.
Q 12How tall was Babylon's ziggurat according to the ancient Esagila tablet?
About 91 metres
Seven storeys on a 91-metre square base; modern engineers doubt mud brick could bear that height, so scholars dispute the figure.
Q 13Who had Babylon's ziggurat demolished in 323 BCE for a rebuild that never came?
Alexander the Great
Q 213 Baruch's 463-cubit height beat every real building until which one?
The Eiffel Tower
That is about 212 metres; the Eiffel Tower of 1889 finally exceeded it at 324 metres.
Q 22In 3 Baruch, what tool did the builders use to try to pierce heaven?
A gimlet
They wanted to know whether the sky was clay, brass or iron; God struck them with blindness and confused speech.
Q 23Per one midrash, why did the builders believe war on heaven was possible?
Arrows shot skyward fell back bloody
The Talmud (Sanhedrin 109a) records that some of that generation wanted to fight God in heaven.
He died in Babylon that year; his successor Antiochus Soter never finished the project.
Q 14Which German archaeologist's digs after 1913 confirmed the ziggurat's mud-brick base?
Robert Koldewey
The ruins lie about 90 kilometres south of Baghdad.
Q 15Which Greek historian described Babylon's ziggurat as the temple of 'Zeus Belus'?
Herodotus
Until the Esagila tablet was translated in 1876, his account was the only detailed description known.
Q 16Which Sumerian legend has a parallel tale of a great temple and a plea about languages?
Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta
Enmerkar of Uruk builds a ziggurat in Eridu and invokes Enki to restore — or, in Kramer's reading, disrupt — linguistic unity.
Q 17Which biblical king do Josephus and later tradition blame for ordering the tower?
Nimrod
Genesis itself never says he built it, only that Babel was part of his kingdom.
Q 18How does Genesis describe Cush's son, the king linked to the tower?
A mighty hunter before the Lord
He was the son of Cush and great-grandson of Noah, and king in the land of Shinar.
Q 19In which work, around 94 CE, did Josephus name the tyrant behind the tower?
Antiquities of the Jews
He wrote that God confused the people rather than destroying them, since the Flood had failed to teach them.
Q 20How tall does the Book of Jubilees say the tower was?
5,433 cubits and 2 palms
That is roughly 2.5 kilometres, about three times the height of the Burj Khalifa; the book also says it took 43 years to build.
Q 24What are the tower builders called in Jewish sources?
The generation of secession
One midrash has them planning to top the tower with an idol holding a sword against God.
Q 25Into how many languages was speech divided at Babel, by the usual medieval count?
72
The figure comes from adding up Noah's descendants in Genesis 10; the Mishnah's count of 70 reflects a shorter Hebrew list.
Q 26Does the Quran contain a Tower of Babel story?
No, though Islamic literature has similar tales
Al-Tabari's 9th-century history has Nimrod build a tower in Babil and mankind's Syriac split into 72 tongues.
Q 27In the Book of Mormon, whose family prays not to have their language confounded?
Jared
God leads them to the Valley of Nimrod and then across the sea to the Americas.
Q 28Whose 1563 Tower of Babel painting in Vienna is the most famous depiction?
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
He painted a smaller version too, now in Rotterdam, and a lost miniature on ivory in Rome.
Q 29Which Roman building inspired the arches of Bruegel's tower?
The Colosseum
Christians of the time saw the Colosseum as a symbol of both hubris and persecution; Bruegel had visited Rome in 1552-53.
Q 30Where is Bruegel's smaller 'Little' Tower of Babel displayed?
Rotterdam
It is half the width and height of the Vienna panel; X-rays show it once matched the larger picture even more closely.