TIGER

Greeks used word byblos for papyrus, supposedly after some Phoenician city that it was imported from. Thing as simple as paper and yet so many mysteries:

• the name of the Phoenician city was Gebal, but Greeks "mispronounced" it as Byblos
• etymology of word papyrus is unknown, it's not an Egyptian word, they used a different one
• same region, same popular product, words papyrus and byblos are obviously similar and probably of same origin, but, according to mainstream science, these words are not related(!), though any linguist knows that p/b and r/l are easily confused in speech and to make it more obvious the second consonant of both words has shorter or no vowel following it, compared to the first one

Is it, maybe, that Bible name is derived from same word byblos? What sounds like byblos and is so bad that word Bible shouldn't come from it? ... Babil city, aka Babylon? The Cyperus Papyrus plant used to produce papyrus doesn't grow in Mesopotamia today, but that may be due to environmental problems that accumulated since: soil salinity and lack of water.

Original name of Babylon sounded like Ba(r)bar written as 𒌓𒆠𒌓 bar-(ki)-bar where 𒆠 ki might have been silent since it just means place. They believe it's an Akkadian text, no Sumerian one survived. Ba(r)bar was later mispronounced as Babil. Makes sense, yet there is no plausible explanation for etymology of Ba(r)bar. One of the most famous cities of Ancient World, yet we don't know the origin of the name. Another mystery!

There is common Persian/Arabic word bahr which means large river or sea. So, if it was a phonetic text, bar-(ki)-bar would sound very much like river-(place)-river. This is exactly what Mesopotamia means in Greek: a place between rivers. Coincidence? 𒌓𒆠𒌓 may have been not a city name but a region name: today Babil is a province in Iraq.

Babylon was built on Euphrates. Why call it river-(place)-river? It was not a capital of the region when it was built. The name must have come from somewhere else. Something that sounds like "b-b-l" or "p-p-r" ...

Greeks have never seen a tiger in Greece but they did see them around Tigris (they used to live there), so they called the animal after the river (Tigris meant arrow in Persian, probably also a reference to god Ti(g)r). Euphrates is near Tigris, the tigers must have lived there as well. Persian word for tiger is babr that also somewhat matches the ba(r)bar. There are at least two lion cities I know of: Lviv and Singapore.

Babylon original name being Babr/Tiger would explain not just the byblos/papyrus but also Whore of Babylon described as a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast. Yes, tiger is not really red, and neither were the Native Americans, yet they were called redskins too, it's an allegory. As a matter of fact there is another well known big-cat like red mythical beast description from anitiquity that is directly linked to Persia/India: Manticore ... Persian: مردخوار mard-khar ... man-eater ... legendary creature from ancient Persian mythology ... the body of a lion ... size of the largest lion, with cinnabar-red fur. If somebody has never seen a tiger the shortest way to describe it is a red lion, given that Greeks didn't have word for orange back in those times.

One more way to read 𒌓𒆠𒌓 phonetically is to suggest that only first b sound of 𒌓 glyph was used, so it's: B-(a)-B-(r)? Compare to "LA" and "NYC". I can totaly imagine special "BB" abbreviation for the regional capital. This capital is called Samarra (Saladin Governorate, Iraq) today, the 52m/171ft tall "mosque" on the left was built in 848 when this city was a capital of the civilized world "Abbasid Caliphate". Bible is not up to date: the tower of Babel was finished.

BTW, it's taller than Colosseum and Tomb of Hadrian, but looking at primitive design one can trust it was built earlier. I'm not claiming this is exactly THE tower of Babel, but you get the idea. "Abbasid" architecture style matches the Babylonian one: same unbaked sun-dried bricks, same simplistic geometry. The difference is the Babylonian "pagan" statues, frescoes and enamelled tiles. Until you learn that mosque ... walls were paneled with mosaics of dark blue glass ... stucco carvings within the mosque in floral and geometric designs, etc. The "too pagan" stuff was probably torn off by censors later, yet Islamic design is still very into blue (sky?) and tile/mosaic:

Left: reconstruction of Babylon Right: 1622 Madrasah in Bukhara, Uzbekistan Babylonian had no letters all over it, obvious lack of literacy, but it's the same composition and palette, these aren't millenia apart.