May / June '18 Lite Challenge: A stairway to heaven

**Tenia** · 05-26-2018, 11:06 AM

Hi everybody and greetings !
It's been a long time since I post anything on this forum. Before I got sick, I had started a map of Babylon, for now with just the walls and main arteries, leaving placeholders for the various temples and the hanging garden and I didn't find the courage to continue. I will try to take advantage of the very free theme of this challenge to remotivate myself and model Etemenanki (during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II) apart, in the hope, if I manage to finish it, to integrate it in the future to the babylon map.
Apparently, even if the dimensions of the base seem known, there are several hypothesis about the architecture of the Tower and the interpretation of the Esagila tablet (I decided to leave aside the imaginary representations and the description of Herodotus).
I will use below the "ninda" or "Gar" as unit of measurement (5.94 meters, which I will round to 6 meters in the model not to give me migraines.)
The base is therefore a square of 15 ninda side.
The most numerous representations are based on a general height of 15 ninda and the first floor of 5.5 ninda, with a main staircase finishing at the base of the third floor. However, another interpretation of the tablet concludes that the total height would be 11 ninda and 2.5 ninda for the first floor. With a length of the main staircase of 8.5 ninda and a ratio of 1 to 2 for the slope (the steps found during the excavations would be 16cm long and 32cm high), the main staircase would finish at the base of the fourth floor (I feel I have lost everyone

). It is this second hypothesis that I will try to model.
In short, here is a first sketch:

### Latest WIP ###

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**Bogie** · 05-26-2018, 03:59 PM

Welcome back Tenia, glad you are up to joining the challenge. It's bad enough converting back and forth from an ancient system to a modern one without the conversion factor being 5.94. Rounding up to 6 is a great idea, and none of the original pyramid designers are going to care.