Relatively few Neo-Babylonian steles are known today and only one of them dates to the reigns of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar II.[[114]] The badly-damaged, rounded-top "Tower of Babel Stele" (Nbk. 1), which was until recently housed in the Schøyen Collection (near Oslo), has a left-facing image of the king standing before a(n idealized) representation of Etemenanki engraved on the top of the obverse face;[[115]] the monument is now in the possession of the Republic of Iraq and the stele is to be displayed in the Iraq Museum (Baghdad). Babylon's ziggurat appears in lieu of the usual symbols of the moon (Sîn), the sun (Šamaš), and the planet Venus (Ištar); this is something that is presently unique among Neo-Babylonian royal monuments.[[116]] A short, three-line epigraph identifies the temple-tower as "[E]tem[en]anki, [the z]iggurat of [B]abylon." In a similar fashion to some statues of Gudea, the most famous ruler of the Second Dynasty of Lagash, the "Tower of Babel Stele" has temple plan(s) carved on it. The first, which is above the image of the ziggurat on the stele's face, represented the main temple that sat atop Marduk's temple-tower at Babylon, and the second, which is on the object's upper left side, probably depicted the plan of the temple that stood on the upper tier of Eurmeiminanki ("House Which Gathers the Seven Mes of Heaven and Netherworld"), the ziggurat of the god Nabû at Borsippa. The main inscription is engraved below the images of Nebuchadnezzar and Etemenanki, in three columns, as well as in a single column on the now-missing lower right side.[[117]] The text was written to commemorate the construction (and completion) of the (twin?) ziggurats Etemenanki and Eurmeiminanki. Unlike Nabonidus' free-standing stone monuments, the "Tower of Babel Stele" is relatively small: it is only 47 cm tall; this is slightly bigger in size than the steles that Ashurbanipal had made for Esagil and Ezida.[[118]]
114 The ten steles firmly attributed to Nabonidus, including two written in the name of his mother Adad-guppi, as well as one fragmentarily preserved monument comprising sixteen fragments, were discovered at various sites in Babylonia (Babylon, Larsa, and Uruk), at Ḫarrān in Turkey, and at Tēmā at al-Hayit in Saudi Arabia. For further information, see Weiershäuser and Novotny, RINBE 2 p. 20.
115 The authenticity of the monument has been recently called into question. See, for example, Dalley, BiOr 72 (2015) cols. 754–755; Lunde, Morgenbladet 2022/29 pp. 26–33; and Dalley, BiOr 79 (2022) cols. 428–434. The authors of the present volume, following a firsthand examination of the object (14–15 September, 2023), like many scholars (especially R. Da Riva, A.R. George, and O. Pedersén), consider the "Tower of Babel Stele" an authentic, contemporary Neo-Babylonian monument; Novotny initially had some reservations based on published and unpublished photographs, however, those doubts disappeared after studying the object from the original, following RINBE's editorial principles. Further information about the stele's authenticity, as well as other details about its imagery and inscription, will be addressed in the commentary of Nbk. 1 (Babylon Stele).
116 The divine images might have appeared on the top of the stele, just above the king. This part of the object appears to have been intentionally cut off.
As pointed out by A.R. George (personal communication), depictions in ancient art often present ideals and thus an ideal ziggurat would have had seven tiers (six stories plus the main temple). Assuming that an "ideal" Etemenanki is shown on the "Tower of Babel Stele," then one could argue that the image of Marduk's ziggurat at Babylon on that monument was not a true-to-life representation.
117 Given the extant contents of the final preserved line of col. iii, it is certain that the inscription must have continued in a fourth column of text. Like the "Tarif Stele" of Nabonidus (Weiershäuser and Novotny, RINBE 2 pp. 180–182 Nbn. 43), the inscription's conclusion was written on the stele's right edge. The now-missing text would have included the end of the building report and the concluding formula.
118 BM 90864 and BM 90865 are respectively 35.9 and 39 cm tall; see Novotny, Jeffers, and Frame, RINAP 5/3 pp. 58–62 Asb. 246 and pp. 72–75 Asb. 254. A pink marble stele of Ashurbanipal's brother Šamaš-šuma-ukīn (r. 667–647) from Borsippa is even shorter: BM 90866 (Frame, RIMB 2 pp. 252–253 B.6.32.3) is a mere 31.2 cm tall.
Jamie Novotny & Frauke Weiershäuser
Jamie Novotny & Frauke Weiershäuser, ' Stone Stele (only Nebuchadnezzar II) ', RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, The RIBo Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2024 [/ribo/babylon7/RINBE11Introduction/SurveyoftheInscribedObjects/StoneSteleonlyNebuchadnezzarII/]