Plain of Shinar

The alluvial plain between the lower Tigris and Euphrates in southern Mesopotamia — the heartland of Sumer and later Babylonia — where Genesis 11 places the people who set out from the east, settle on the plain of Shinar, and resolve to build a city and a tower with its top in the heavens. The tower (the Bible calls it Babel, "gate of the god") is the iconic Mesopotamian ziggurat, a stepped temple-pyramid of mud brick. Daniel and Zechariah continue to use "Shinar" as a poetic name for Babylonia centuries later.