Nach dem Alten Testament (1 Mos. 11, 1-9) ließ Nimrod in Babylon einen Turm bauen, der bis zum Himmel reichen sollte. Gott strafte diesen Hochmut durch Verwirrung der Sprache, auf dass die Völker in alle Welt zerstreut würden. --- Die Wahl des Themas steht ganz in der Amsterdamer Maltradition. --- Sarah Elliston Weiner: "Despite the small format which dictates a miniaturist technique, Savery includes all the traditional elements of the construction scene, treating them in an inventive fashion. Fires glow in the furnaces at the left while two windmills in the center foreground suggest a Netherlandish setting. But it is the architecture of the tower that especially attracts our attention. At the base, a bulbous structure which is reminiscent of Bosch's fantastic and hellish architecture marks the entrance; at the top, the spiraling forms seem to cut into the glowing sky. The entire structure can be read as a series of inclined stories mounted on a heavy horizontal base, the formula that Van Cleve had used. The same architectural formula is to be found in representations of the Pharos, the lighthouse at Alexandria, which was one of the wonders of the ancient world. Savery's tower, and also Van Cleve's resembles the lighthouse in the series of Wonders of the World after Maarten van Heemskerck issued in 1572. Indeed, the compositional formula used by Heemskerck and by other artists in depicting the Seven Wonders corresponds to what we repeatedly encounter in Babel paintings: a figure in autority accompanied by attendants occupies a corner of the foreground while overseeing the architectural wonder in the middle ground. Savery, by drawing upon forms associated with the Pharos, may have intended to suggest that the Tower of Babel belongs among the marvels of antiquity" (Weiner 1988, S. 107f.).