Genesis 11:3

Let us make brick. The plain of Babylonia, alluvial in formation, lacked stone of any kind but had an ample supply of clay for making brick. Lower Mesopotamia has as a result always been a land of brick buildings, in contrast to Assyria, where stone is plentiful. Most bricks, in ancient as in modern times, were sun dried, but bricks for public buildings were baked in the fire to make them more durable. This process was employed by the earliest settlers in Mesopotamia, as the Bible and the spade both testify.

Brick for stone. Writing for the Hebrews in Egypt, a land of majestic stone monuments and public buildings, Moses explains that in Babylonia brick was used because of the lack of stone. This detail, like many others, attests the historical and geographical accuracy of the Genesis narrative.

Slime had they for mortar. Another exact detail concerning Babylonian methods of construction. The Hebrew word here translated “slime” means, more accurately, asphalt or bitumen. Mesopotamia abounds in oil and related products, and asphalt wells existed in the vicinity of Babylon as well as in other parts of the country. Having discovered the durable quality of asphalt, early Babylonian builders used it extensively in the erection of buildings. Asphalt binds the bricks together so well that it is difficult to save any of them when a building is demolished. In fact, it is almost impossible to detach bricks from ancient ruins in whose construction asphalt was used.