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Babel is the famous one, but Babylonians, Greeks, the Quran, Mexico, China and the Zambezi all tell of people trying to build or climb their way up to the gods, and failing.
In Genesis the people of Shinar build a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and God scatters them and confuses their language. The same city, Babylon, had a real temple tower, the ziggurat Etemenanki, about 90 meters tall. But the idea of building up to the sky is older and wider than one city. Jubilees adds that a mighty wind knocked the tower down. A Greek source quoted by Eusebius tells the same story with the winds helping the gods. Homer has two young giants who try to stack three mountains to scale heaven.
The Quran gives the tower to Pharaoh, who asks Haman to build it so he can look at the God of Moses. China remembers a time when heaven and earth were deliberately cut off from each other. In Mexico a story was told of the great pyramid at Cholula, and in Africa of masts and poles stacked up to reach the sky or the moon. Some of these were written down after missionaries arrived, which matters, and the notes say so.
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Hebrew Bible
And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
Same and different: The model for the rest: one language, a brick tower, God comes down and scatters the builders; no destruction of the tower is mentioned.
Jewish (Second Temple)
for in his days they built the city and the tower, saying, “Go to, let us ascend thereby into heaven.” ... And the Lord sent a mighty wind against the tower and overthrew it upon the earth
Same and different: Same as Genesis but adds that the tower was 43 years in building and that a wind threw it down.
Babylonian / Greek (Abydenus, after Berossus)
They say that the first inhabitants of the earth, glorying in their own strength and size, and despising the gods, undertook to raise a tower whose top should reach the sky, where Babylon now stands: but when it approached the heaven, the winds assisted the gods, and overturned the work upon its contrivers
Same and different: Same tower at Babylon and same confusion of languages; different: the builders are giants ('strength and size') and many gods, helped by the winds, knock it down. It may already reflect Jewish influence.
Greek
They threatened to make war with the gods in Olympus, and tried to set Mount Ossa on the top of Mount Olympus, and Mount Pelion on the top of Ossa, that they might scale heaven itself, and they would have done it too if they had been grown up
Same and different: Same attempt to reach heaven by piling things up; different: the builders are two giant boys stacking mountains, and Apollo kills them before they grow up.
Islam
so kindle for me (a fire), O Haman, to bake the mud; and set up for me a lofty tower in order that I may survey the god of Moses
Same and different: Same baked-brick tower built to reach God; different: it is one king's arrogant project in Egypt, not a whole people's at Babylon.
Chinese
Then he commissioned Khung and Li to make an end of the communications between earth and heaven; and the descents (of spirits) ceased.
Same and different: Not a tower but the same theme from the other side: once heaven and earth were in contact, and a ruler deliberately cut the connection after people misbehaved.
Aztec / Nahua (Cholula)
Not knowing how to reach the sun, and charmed with its light and beauty, they decided to build a tower so high that its top should reach the sky.
Same and different: Same tower to the sky built by giants and thrown down by heaven, with the builders scattered; Frazer himself points out the clay-and-bitumen detail looks borrowed from the Bible, so missionary influence is likely.
Lozi (A-Louyi), Upper Zambezi
So men said, “Come, let us make masts to reach up to heaven.” They set up masts and added more masts, joining them one to the other, and they clambered up them. But when they had climbed far up, the masts fell down, and all the men on the masts were killed by the fall.
Same and different: Same urge to climb to a god who has withdrawn to the sky, and the same collapse; different: no city, no languages, the sky god Nyambe has simply left earth.
The Babel story is closely tied to a real place. Babylon's ziggurat Etemenanki, 'House of the foundation of heaven and earth', stood about 90 meters tall, and Jews exiled in Babylon in the 6th century BCE would have seen it. Many scholars read Genesis 11 as a satire of Babylonian pride, built on a pun between Babel (Akkadian Bab-ili, 'gate of god') and the Hebrew balal, 'to confuse'. The Greek fragment from Eusebius may already mix Babylonian and Jewish traditions. Beyond the Near East, the overlap has two main explanations. First, stories of a time when heaven and earth were close, followed by a separation, are very common worldwide, and building or climbing up to the sky is a natural way to tell them. Second, some versions were written down by missionaries or after contact with Christianity, and may have been shaped by the Bible; Frazer flagged this for the Mexican Cholula story. Rather than a shared source, scholars see a common idea (a lost connection to heaven) with the specific Babel details spread by the Bible.
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