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In the same way, it is because seven was popularly sacred that the world was divided into seven zones and that the planets were fixed at seven, not vice versa. The opinion of some scholars that the zikkurats were used for astronomical observations remains a pure conjecture, of which it cannot even be said that it has probability in its favor.
The names of the zikkurats at Erech and Borsippa, 'the house of seven zones' and 'the house of the seven divisions of heaven and earth, respectively, while conveying, as we saw, cosmological conceptions of a more specific character, may still be reckoned in the class of names that embody the leading purpose of the tower in Babylonia, as may also a name like E-temen-an-ki, 'the foundation stone of heaven and earth, assigned to the zikkurat to Marduk in Babylonia.
From this list we learn that in the old temple sacred to Anu and Ramman, in the city of Ashur the oldest Assyrian temple known to us, some twenty deities were worshipped. Images at least of these deities must have stood in the temple; but, since there is a distinct reference zikkurats in the list, for some of them special sanctuaries of some kind must have been erected within the precinct.
Hommel, Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens, p. 19. Written ideographically, as the names of the zikkurats and of all sacred edifices invariably are. See above, p. 459. Inscription G, col. i. l. 14; D, col. ii. l. 11. IIR. 50; obverse 20. See p. 472. Kosmologie, pp. 171-174.
Both interpretations have a scholastic aspect, however, and the very fact that there are two interpretations, justifies the suspicion that neither furnishes the real explanation why the number seven was chosen. It by no means follows from the names borne by the zikkurats at Lagash and Uruk that they actually consisted of seven stories.
The height of the zikkurats varied. Those at Nippur and Ur appear to have been about 90 feet high, while the tower at Borsippa which Sir Henry Rawlinson carefully examined attained a height of 140 feet. The base of this zikkurat, which may be regarded as a specimen of the tower in its most elaborate form, was a quadrangular mass 272 feet square and 26 feet high.
The older zikkurats were imposing chiefly because of the elevation of the terrace on which they were erected, and inasmuch as the ideal of the temple is realized to all practical purposes by the erection of a high edifice on an elevated mound, the chief stress was laid upon the height of the terrace.
In the large court in front of the zikkurats there stood the jars used in connection with the cult, and the presence of these jars furthermore suggests that there was an altar in the great court, precisely as in the case of the Solomonic temple. In the larger of the temples found by Layard, there was a smaller hall in front of the large one.
In these smaller zikkurats, the height of each tower, as in the first three stories of the tower at Borsippa, appears to have been alike; but the mass diminished in proportion in order to secure a space for a staircase leading from one story to the other. This method of ascent was older than the winding balustrade, which was better adapted to the more elaborate structures of later times.
Still, there may have been some symbolism which led to the choice of three, four, or seven stories, inasmuch as these numbers have a sacred import among so many nations. For the number seven, the influence of cosmological associations is quite clear. The two most famous of the zikkurats of seven stages were those in Babylon and in Borsippa, opposite Babylon.
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