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I can almost fancy that the erection of this sun-temple was suggested by the magnificent sunny prospect which its position commands.
For a long time we stood on this spot, and turned and turned again, for fear of losing any part of this gigantic panorama. On one side the mountain-range, with its valleys, rocks, and gorges; on the other the immense plain of Caelosyria, on the verge of which the ruins of the Sun-temple were visible, glittering in the noontide rays.
The Heliopolitans were naturally the servants of the Sun-god above all other gods, and they were the first to call themselves "Sons of the Sun," a title retained by the Pharaohs throughout all subsequent history. It was Ne-user-Râ who built the Sun-temple of Abu Ghuraib, on the edge of the desert, north of his pyramid and those of his two immediate predecessors at Abusir.
Ebabbar, the great Sun-temple, was at Sippar, and it is to the Sun-god that the city is naturally allotted in the new Sumerian Version. Cf. Zimmern, Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Bab. Relig., pp. 116 ff. The last of the five Antediluvian cities in our list is Shuruppak, in which dwelt Ut-napishtim, the hero of the Babylonian version of the Deluge.
That Hammurabi, however, calls the sun-god of Larsa, Utu, may be taken as an indication that, as such he was known at that place, for since we have no record of a sun-temple at Babylon in these days, there would be no motive that might induce him to transfer a name, otherwise known to him, to another place.
We shall have occasion in a succeeding chapter to trace the history of the sun-temple at Sippar so far as known.
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