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Thus the name E-Kur, 'mountain house, though evidently an appropriate designation for the zikkurat, becomes the term for the sacred area which included in time a large series of buildings used for the cult, whereas the zikkurat itself receives the special name of 'house of oracle'; and similarly in the case of the various other religious centers of Babylonia, the name of the zikkurat is distinct from that of the sacred quarter the temple in the broader sense.
Moreover, the sacred character of the zikkurat speaks against the supposition that it should have been put to such constant use, and for purposes not directly connected with the cult. In the numerous astronomical reports that we have, there is not a single reference from which one could conclude that the observations reported were made from the top of a zikkurat.
The average number of stages of the zikkurat appears to have been three, as at Nippur and Ur, or four, as at Larsa. In the pictorial representations of the towers, we similarly find either three or four.
The zikkurat, the great court, the shrines, and the smaller structures formed a sacred precinct, and it was this precinct as a whole that constituted the temple in the larger sense, and received some appropriate name. Thus E-Kur at Nippur, E-Sagila at Babylon, E-Zida at Borsippa are used to denote the entire sacred precinct in these cities, and not merely the chief structure.
Within the temple area and bordering on it there were smaller shrines, while in front of the zikkurat there was a large open place, where the pilgrims who flocked to the sacred city, congregated. The sacrifices which formed the essential feature of worship were brought, not at the top of the zikkurat, but on altars that were erected at the base.
To emphasize the fact that the zikkurat was the temple for the god, a small room was built at the top of the zikkurat, and it was a direct consequence of this same distinction between a temple for the gods and a temple for actual worship that led to assigning to zikkurats special names, and such as differed from the designation of the sacred quarter of which the zikkurat formed the most conspicuous feature.
Complementing in a measure, the cosmological associations that have been noted in connection with the zikkurat, the papakhu of Marduk was regarded as an imitation of a cosmical 'sacred chamber. As the zikkurat represented the mountain on which the gods were born and where they were once supposed to dwell, so the sacred room was regarded as the reproduction of a portion of the great mountain where the gods assembled in solemn council.
No doubt, as the towers increased in height, other variations were introduced as, e.g., in the proportions of the stories without interfering with the essential principle of the zikkurat. The ungainly appearance presented by the huge towers was somewhat relieved by decorations of the friezes and by the judicious use of color.
The special position which the zikkurat thus came to occupy is, of course, merely an outcome of the growth of the religious centers of the country, and involves no departure from the religious ideals of earlier days.
However this may be, there can be no doubt that the structures of various size found around the zikkurat at Nippur served as dwellings for the priests and the temple attendants, as stalls for the temple cattle, as shops for the manufacture and sale of votive objects, and the like.
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