The Tower of Babel

"The Tower of Babel," Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 1563.

— "And all the earth was one language, one set of words. And it happened as they journeyed from the east that they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. 

And they said to each other, "Come, let us bake bricks and burn them hard." And the brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar. And they said, "Come, let us build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, that we may make us a name, lest we be scattered over all the earth." 

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the human creatures had built. And the Lord said, "As one people with one language for all, if this is what they have begun to do, nothing they plot will elude them. Come, let us go down and baffle their language there so that they will not understand each other's language." 

And the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth and they left off building building the city. Therefore, it is called Babel, for there the Lord made the language of all the earth babble. And from there the Lord scattered them over the earth."

[Genesis 2:1-9, translated by Robert Alter]