Stephen L. Harris proposed this occurred during the Babylonian captivity. Isaac Asimov speculated that the authors of were inspired by the existence of an apparently incomplete ziggurat at Babylon, and by the phonological similarity between Babylonian "Bab-ilu", meaning "gate of God", and the Hebrew word "balal", meaning "mixed", "confused", or "confounded". Philippe Wajdenbaum suggests Genesis 11:3 was directly referencing Herodotus' description of the construction processes used in Babylon and Etemenanki in Histories book I 179 & 181, and was therefore written in the Hellenistic period.