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The cult, however, has not been important; the physical mass is too solid, lacking in movement, and human interest naturally centered in the spirit or deity who dwelt therein. +305+. Mythological fancy has made them the abodes and places of assembly of gods and glorified saints, usually in the north. The mythical Ekur was the dwelling place of Babylonian deities.
'Temples will be built in thy honor, In all quarters of the world thy cities will be situated, Thy cities will reach up to Ekur. Show thyself strong among the gods, so that thy name be powerful. Ramman, however, is afraid of the contest. Ramman answered the speech, Addressing his father Anu: 'My father, who can proceed to the inaccessible mountain?
Hence Ekur became also one of the names for temple, as the seat of a god. The dwelling of the dead was regarded as a part of the 'great mountain. It belonged to Ekur, and the fact that it was designated simply as Ekur, is a valuable indication that the dead were brought into close association with the gods.
Like Aralû and the designation Ekur, it embodies the close association of the dead with the gods. The dead not only dwell near the gods, but, like the gods, they can direct the affairs of mankind. Their answers to questions put to them have divine justification. From this view of the dead to the deification of the latter is but a short step.
No city had been created, no creature had been made, Nippur had not been created, Ekur had not been built, Erech had not been created, Eanna had not been built, Apsû had not been created, Eridu had not been built, Of the holy house, the house of the gods, the habitation had not been created. All lands were sea. Here we have the definite statement that before Creation all the world was sea.
In the eastern half of the city was Enlil's great temple Ekur, with its temple-tower Imkharsag rising in successive stages beside it. The huge temple-enclosure contained not only the sacrificial shrines, but also the priests' apartments, store-chambers, and temple-magazines.
Surrounded by seven walls and strongly guarded, it was a place to which no living person could go and from which no mortal could ever depart after once entering it. To Aralû all went whose existence in this world had come to an end. Another name which specifies the relationship of Aralû to the world is Ekur or 'mountain house' of the dead.
As a hemisphere it suggests the picture of a mountain, rising at one end, mounting to a culminating point, and descending at the other end. Hence by the side of Esharra, another name by which the earth was known was Ekur, that is, 'the mountain house. Diodorus Seculus, in speaking of the Babylonian cosmology, employs a happy illustration.
This association is also indicated by the later use of Aralû as the designation of the mountain within which the district of the dead, Aralû proper, lay synonymous, therefore, with Ekur. We shall see in the course of this chapter that the dead are placed even more than the living under the direct supervision of the gods.
Like Marduk, who, it will be remembered, is also originally a phase of the solar deity, Nin-ib is called the first-born of Ea; and as the rising sun he is appropriately called the offspring of Ekur, i.e., the earth, in allusion to his apparent ascent from a place below the earth.
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