The Tower of Babel is embedded in our collective cultural memory as an etiological tale of multilingualism. The story itself, however, depicts the emergence of languages as a negative, the impetus for division and cultural dissent, a purported reflection of the city of Babylon itself. In contrast to this prominent linguistic memory, the linguistic history of Babylon and ancient Mesopotamia thrives on multilingualism. The story of multilingualism in Babylonia is not about senseless babble, but about the fundamental place of language and translation in creating and replicating knowledge.