Athanasii Kircheri ... Turris Babel sive archontologia: qua primo priscorum post diluvium hominum vita, mores rerumque gestarum magnitudo, secundo turris fabrica civitatumque exstructio, confusio linguarum & inde gentium transmigrationis, cum principalium inde enatorum idiomatum historia, multiplici eruditione describuntur & explicantur
Athanasius Kircher's 1679 Latin treatise Turris Babel, printed in Amsterdam for a learned readership, reconstructs post-Flood history, the Tower of Babel and the origin of languages. Its engraved plates show imagined ancient architecture: a stepped multi-tiered tower with a domed summit, a walled city laid out on a grid under a looping sky banner, and a triumphal arch flanked by colonnaded arcades. A designer could draw on their dense, ruled linework, bird's-eye city plans and monumental scale for historical or fantasy settings.
